The only weapons left him were that small revolver, a small knife hidden in one of his boots, and a fine, thin saw embedded in the wide rim of his hat.
He handed over the other weapons with apparent cheerfulness. Then he saw in the midst of the crowding redskins the one who had attacked him the day before, and whose mustang he had killed. This Indian gave him a black look, and the scout knew that he would prove an implacable and treacherous foe.
The presence of this Indian explained, it seemed, the attack on Latimer’s house. It was hostility to Buffalo Bill, fomented by the rage of this redskin, which had brought it about. Buffalo Bill himself was the object of the attack.
The excited cries of the redskins showed full well that they understood the importance of their capture.
“Fortunately, the Indian whose mustang I killed isn’t a chief,” was the scout’s reflection. “He would have me burned at the stake!”
With feelings of uneasiness, he allowed himself to be bound and led away.
Nebuchadnezzar still snorted and showed his dislike of Indians; yet he was forced to go along, and he received on his rough hide some heavy blows and kicks as the reward of his protests.
The distance which the Indians traversed was not great. They had a camp not far off, and to it they conveyed the scout, who was not greatly surprised, on arriving there, to find prisoners in the camp before him. Latimer was there, together with Nick Nomad and Pizen Kate.
Latimer maintained a gloomy silence; but Nomad received Buffalo Bill with sundry cackles, and Pizen Kate in a manner befitting her previous performances.
“That is what comes of a husband runnin’ away from the wife of his bosom,” Pizen Kate declared, with a snapping of her eyes. “If he had stayed to home, dutiful and kind, as he ort, this would never ’a’ come about; but he had to leave me alone, forlorn and forsaken, and this is the result of it. I’ve been givin’ him a piece of my mind about it, too.”