Buffalo Bill found evidence of a recent explosion in a trail that led to the old mine by another way than they had come. For rods around the ground was covered with newly shivered rock, and a great mass had crashed down the mountainside.
“You remain here, Cayuse,” said the scout, after studying the situation for a moment; “I am going down into the gulch. If I am not back in an hour leave Skibo to guard the horses, and with Nomad follow my trail.”
“Ugh!” was the only reply of the Indian boy.
More than one hundred feet down the sharp and rocky incline the scout came upon the carcass of a pony.
“Ah!” he said, “the trail was mined, and horse and rider blown over the brink.”
Careful search revealed no trace of his pard, but still farther down he found the bushes beaten down, as though a body had been dragged.
It was what he had half feared since finding the evidence of a mined path—Hickok had been killed by a bomb and his body dragged away to dump into some old mine shaft or otherwise hidden from possible searchers.
The scout followed the trail for some distance in the brush along the base of the dump, and then came to a sharp angle in the rock, where a narrow shelf led down a circuitous way, apparently into the mouth of another entrance to the mine above, at a lower level.
The scout crept cautiously forward, ready for instant action if Bloody Ike or his pals were expecting callers.
But not even Buffalo Bill was prepared for the move which was adopted by the wretch hidden in the rocks above.