Buffalo Bill ducked behind the screen of the mesquite bushes, and he was glad he had taken the precaution to conceal his horse. For there, two or three miles away, was a band of mounted Indians.
The sun glistened on the tips of their spears and tomahawks, and glittered on their gun barrels. Feathers floated from the manes and tails of their ponies, and feathers floated from the plumed headgear of the warriors.
The scout unslung the field glass he usually carried, and leveled it, lying again prone in the grass and looking out from behind the mesquite.
The powerful glass drew the Indians well within range of his eyes.
“Yes, Cheyennes,” he said, “and young bucks from the reservation; and they’ve got Hickok, more’s the pity! Those young rascals are out for scalps and plunder. When they get ‘good’ again, they’ll hurry back to the reservation, slip in some dark night, and swear that they have never been away from it a minute.”
Wild Bill rode upright and seemed not to be seriously hurt, as Buffalo Bill was glad to observe.
Buffalo Bill even fancied that with the glass he could see the proud and defiant look that he knew was on the face of Wild Bill.
The Cheyennes saw neither Buffalo Bill nor his horse.
The scout swept the surrounding country with the glass, looking for Ben Stevens, but saw nothing of him; those Indians were the only things moving, or visible.
“Perhaps he has seen them and has got under cover, just as I have,” was Buffalo Bill’s thought. He knew that Stevens, as a cowboy, was not inexperienced. He was a good borderman and understood Indian ways, and what to do in emergencies. The cowboy life makes one quick of thought, and it does not breed weaklings.