Ordinarily she would not have submitted in this way without taking pains to verify his statements; but she had suffered so much physically and mentally that she had lost the faculty of clear judgment. Fear ruled her now more than anything else.
The iron frame of Black John seemed impervious to fatigue. He scaled the rocky slope as sure-footed as a mountain goat. At times he almost ran, even though he carried the girl and the rocks were formidable.
Before Buffalo Bill and his party reached the pony and discovered that it had been abandoned. Black John was over the high ridge out of sight, and descending rapidly toward a valley of which he knew. In his work as a mustanger, and also long before, he had been all through that region; so that he knew every hole and corner of it. He headed now toward a deep gorge, which he followed up some distance, and which led him by and by into a cozy nest, between green hills. Here there was a small cave, in which more than once he had spent a night, and below this cave, and not distant, was a spring of water.
“If we had somethin’ to eat,” he said, when they had gained this hiding place, “we could lay by here a week, until them redskins git tired and clear out of the country. I don’t think they’ll find us here. The way we come was so rocky that a bloodhound couldn’t hit the trail and stick to it.”
He laughed with cool assurance.
As for the girl, she sank down in the cave, tired out and again hopeless.
If they should be cooped up there by Indians any length of time, she fancied that the chance of meeting or finding Buffalo Bill and his companions would be small. And as for Bruce—she shivered when she thought of his possible fate, for she could not rid herself of the fear that he had fallen into the hands of the Indians.
During the night which followed, Black John lay with his rifle out beyond the mouth of the cave, watching for the coming of his enemies, not daring to sleep.
He believed he was safe, but he was not sure of it. Buffalo Bill was a hard man to shake off, when once he set out to run any one down.
During that wakeful night Black John amused and occupied himself by planning his future with the girl whom he now believed he could deceive. He fancied he had gained her confidence, and that she was beginning to like him, and that promised well. He thought, too, that the girl was soundly sleeping throughout the night; but in this he was mistaken, for she slept very little. At the first faint light of day she had crept to the cave entrance and looked out.