“You better take the ponies.”
“I don’t want anything that ever belonged to one of the red skunks.”
The stern ranchman rode away, and Price somehow felt relief as those keen, dark eyes turned toward the settler’s home and stopped boring under the skin of these fugitives from the law.
Bloody Ike rode out and captured the ponies, and then the two men set off southward, leading two animals not their own. They hoped with these extra mounts to make better time in their flight from the territory where they were too well known for their own comfort. Even the Indians who were friendly with the whites had no use for Price or his gang unless it were to provide amusement at some torture party.
That was what Price feared, but he preferred to take his chances of escape through a country swarming with hostile red men to standing trial for his misdeeds with the array of evidence against him provided by Buffalo Bill.
Price was doubly glad that the grim ranchman was a stranger to him. There were some of these plainsmen who did not seem to understand a joke, and if they knew the joke was on Uncle Sam they might insist on his—Price’s—company back to the military camp.
But Price’s relief at getting off so easily was not long-lived, as we soon shall see.