He pulled the handcuffs from his pocket and flourished them in the air.
Dell came up to him, smiling. She put away the revolver and reached out her hand.
“One belongs to me,” she said coaxingly.
“Certainly,” answered the scout, snapping one of the handcuffs about his right wrist. “There’s yours, Calamity Jane;” and he snapped the other cuff about Dell’s left wrist. “It’s a good long way to town, sis,” he added, in a kindly tone, “and we’d better be moving.”
Without paying the slightest attention to Little Cayuse or the horses, Buffalo Bill started to climb the rough valley wall, dragging Dell with him.
The secret of the spring—Geronimo’s secret—had wrought its folly in the usually well-balanced brain of the scout.
He was going to town, and he was taking his sister with him. Obsessed with this one idea, which he clung to with all the morbid earnestness of a man deranged, he went on and on.
Night deepened, the stars in the Arizona sky brightened against the velvet vault like so many diamonds. One star guided Buffalo Bill; the “pointers” in the “Dipper” showed it to him, and he followed as he would have followed a compass.
From somewhere, far away, came the wild, shrill chant of the Indian boy. The chant died out like a lisping of waves on a rocky beach.