Hoofprints of horses showed, and the tracks of men, a considerable body of them. But the tracks were nearly a day old, and could none of them have been made by the man who fired the shots. There was, too, the ashes of an old camp fire. Buffalo Bill inspected that with considerable interest.
“Ah!” he said, as he looked about. “Some one came along after these men had left; and, finding this old camp and the ashes, he built a new fire here; and that was last night; and, whoever he was, he did the shooting.”
“At wolves?”
“Yes, I think so; that seems the most likely guess. Some of the wolves troubled him, and he shot at them.”
He began to search beyond the limits of the camp, hoping to find wolf tracks which would prove his theory.
He stopped this search on observing a soil-stained letter which had been stepped on by a horse, whose hoofs had driven it into the earth, half-covering it.
He took it up and looked at it. To his astonishment, the address side of the envelope bore the name of Nick Nomad.
“Nomad!” he said, staring around as if he half expected to see his old pard of the plains and mountains rise out of the ground there. “Nomad! He was here.”
He looked about; then took from the envelope the letter it held; for the envelope had already been torn open. It was merely a note, on some matter of business of no importance.
“Nomad dropped it by chance. No; perhaps he dropped it purposely.”