“I see where I’m liable to arrest for ‘breaking and entering,’” murmured Wild Bill, as he once more crouched by the window.
Bloody Ike soon came, and held a long confab with the Indian agent, very little of which Hickok could hear.
As they passed the window moving away, the listening Hickok heard:
“Now, make a clean job of it. Fumbles don’t count. You must settle this Buffalo Bill’s hash and as many of the others as possible.”
“I ought to be able to do it right; I’ve handled the stuff for fifteen years in the mines—and in some other places.”
The last was spoken significantly.
Hickok was anxious to follow the fellows and prevent a tragedy. He had no fears for the safety of Buffalo Bill and his pards, because he had several times seen them about the saloon. He did not believe the Indian agent and Bloody Ike would attempt anything that night, but he wished to follow them and learn more of their plans.
Hickok tried the window, and found it fastened with a heavy prop over the lower sash. It required but a moment to remove this, raise the sash, and leap to the ground, but in that time the men he was after had disappeared.
The Laramie man hastened down the street in the direction they had gone, hoping to catch sight of them, but they had either entered some dive or had seen something to alarm them, and consequently fled.
Hickok finally went back to the Red Tiger, hoping to pick up his pards if he discovered no further knowledge of the plot to destroy not only Cody, but his comrades. The man from Laramie had not discovered the means by which they were to be disposed of, but he had learned that these men were desperate enough to stoop to any crime in order to continue their process of wholesale robbery of the Indian tribes.