“Vale, dot vouldt furnish some excidemendt!” protested the German.
“I should think, Schnitz, thet ye’d had ernough fer one day!” Nomad growled.
“I am a hawg for excidemendt,” the baron admitted.
Down at the Wells Fargo office they found Juniper Joe, with a number of other men, most of them shippers of the treasure taken by the road agents. They had been filing claims for repayment by the company.
“I cain’t afford to lose that ten thousand dollars, y’ know,” the scout heard Juniper Joe remarking, as he entered the door. “It’s a lot o’ money; I paid the company fer safe transportation, and I expects it to make good.”
Some of the other claimants said much the same thing.
The office was crowded, for, in addition to these men, a lot of loafers were hanging round, their ears open for news and gossip.
Having entered, Buffalo Bill and his pards stood by the door, almost at first unnoticed, listening to the talk, trying to get a “line” on something.
The agent seemed flustered and nervous; apparently, he did not know what the powers who were over him would think of his action in sending the treasure across the mountain with the prospectors. He even admitted that he expected a “call down,” as he had exceeded his authority in doing it.
“I suppose I ought to have let her gone by the stage,” he said. “Likely if I had the stage would have been held up, and the stuff taken, and instead of one dead man and another in the hospital, the cañon down there beyond Stag Mountain would have been full of them.”