“This is as strange as the singular disappearance of my friend Nomad.”
“Don’t you think you are just a little given to imaginings, Cody? Pardon the suggestion. You saw your friend go into a room, which, according to your own story, he could not have gone into and got out of without your knowing it. And now you have seen me talking with an Indian by the front gate, when all the while I have been here in the house.”
A certain sense of giddy bewilderment attacked the level-headed scout. Could he have been subject to hallucinations? The very suggestion was enough to give him a severe mental start.
“Pardon me,” he said. “I was sure of those two things. But if you say you were not out there, of course I accept your statement. But I saw some one there that I took to be you.”
Latimer laughed, and the frown vanished from his face.
“That’s more like you, Cody! I have given you no occasion to think I would lie about a matter of that kind, or would have any occasion to deceive you.”
“That is true,” the scout admitted.
“There may have been no one out at the gate,” Latimer urged.
Buffalo Bill could not admit that, puzzled as he was.
To make sure that he had not been wholly the victim of some optical delusion, as soon as he ceased talking with Latimer he walked out to the gate, and there scanned the ground, looking for tracks of the mustang. While thus looking he heard his name called by Pizen Kate.