“I’ll get Bascomb!” averred the scout.
“I suppose your pards are done for?”
Buffalo Bill got up and walked to the door. What he felt he hid by turning his back on Markham. For a moment he stood in the doorway looking out at the Pimas; then he went to a bucket, took a drink from a gourd dipper, and went back to his chair opposite Markham. His face was expressionless, except as to the eyes—they flashed like steel.
“I’ll get Bascomb!” said he, his voice vibrant with resolution. “If he’s with Geronimo, I’ll take the two of them. As for my pards, game old Nick and the loyal little Piute, if they’ve crossed the divide, that runs up a personal debt which I owe the renegades, particularly Geronimo.
“You know what it is, I reckon,” he went on, dropping his voice, “to share the same blanket with a man year in and year out; to scout with him at your side; to stand shoulder to shoulder with him in more fights than you can count; to find him at all times a pard to be depended on for sand and sagacity; and——” He broke off curtly. “I don’t need to tell you what the loss of Nick Nomad means to me, or the loss of Little Cayuse.”
“No,” returned the captain sympathetically, “you don’t need to tell me, Cody. The fortunes of war are hard on a man sometimes. You say you’ll get Bascomb, and I hope——”
An orderly, his clothes dusty with alkali, showed himself in the doorway and saluted.
“Come in, Carter,” said Markham. “What’s to pay? Anything new?”
“One of our Apache scouts has jest come in, sir,” answered the orderly. “He reports having been captured by Geronimo, quirted and sent back to Bonita with a message.”
“Send him in,” ordered Markham. “These Apache scouts,” he added to Buffalo Bill when the orderly had vanished, “may be depended on, or they may not. It’s a doubtful point.”