"What have I to fear, pard?"
"If you don't fall in love with her, you are a different man from what I take you to be."
"You have been caught, I see."
"Yes, I'm gone, clean gone; but I guess that is all the good it will do me, for I suppose her lover is that poor fellow Brandon."
"You only think her lovely just because she is the only woman you have seen on the frontier. She is doubtless as ugly as an old maid."
"Just wait and see her, and then say which of us is wrong," said Harding, with a confident smile.
As the coach turned around a cliff, neither Doctor Dick nor Harding saw that there was a man standing among the piñons watching them. He had, from his position, been able to see the coach a mile away, as it wound along the valley, and he had watched it as it approached with seemingly the deepest interest.
He stood erect, like a soldier on duty, one hand resting upon a repeating rifle, the other grasping a field-glass, which he had occasionally raised to his eyes and viewed the coming stage.
He stood like a sentinel, and had been there for an hour or more before the coach rolled into view.
A glance was sufficient to show that the silent sentinel on the cliff was none other than Buffalo Bill, the chief of scouts.