“Yep; ye kin take his own word fer it if ye don’t believe me.”
It was true. As Buffalo Bill afterward learned from Latimer himself, the two outlaw chieftains whom he and Nomad and Pizen had come to run down—to their death, it happened—were the white chief of the Redskin Rovers, and Latimer’s brother, the leader of the outlaw band of white men. The shock of seeing his brother dead, a brother who had apparently passed out of his memory, restored the mind of John Latimer; so that when he recovered from it he was again sane and mentally sound.
The wedding which took place in the big house on the mesa soon after, and which united the “mysterious” youth to the equally “mysterious” maiden, was a great event, and was attended by Buffalo Bill, and by Nomad and “Pizen Kate.”
“Katie,” said Nomad humorously, at that wedding, cracking his face open in a grin, “this hyar makes me think o’ ther time when you and me was—not—married thar in Kansas City.”
“Truly, Nicholas, truly!” assented the man known as “Pizen Kate.” “And ter-night I’d be acchilly happy, I think, if I hadn’t lost my old umbreller.”
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE MYSTERIOUS NUGGET.
The wedding festivities were still in progress when Buffalo Bill received a letter, by “pony express,” from Colonel Montrose, the commander of Fort Cimarron, directing him to come to that station in order to reconnoiter the district and keep an eye upon the Cheyenne Indians who had threatened to break from their reservation.
“I’m sorry you must go, Cody,” said Latimer, when the message was made known to him. “I had hoped that you might be able to linger here a while, and enjoy a more welcome hospitality than was shown you when you first came here.”
Thanking him for the offer, and reluctantly taking leave of his friends, the great scout set forth on the journey, mounted on his favorite horse which had been sent to him from Eldorado.
And while he rode away from these nuptial celebrations, another romance, in which he was destined to play a part, was even now being enacted on the wide, wide-swept plains.