“Ah! doc, just in time to keep me from killing this gent, and being made a target of myself for half a hundred bullets,” said Buffalo Bill, still unmoved.
“It seems that I am just in time, Bill, and if I mistake not there are men in this crowd who will dangle at a rope’s end for this work, if they harm a hair of your head. What does it mean?”
The ugly element in the crowd was still paramount. It had only received a temporary check by the coming of the Surgeon Scout.
The greatest number of the miners present were now, however, decidedly upon the side of law and order, but the devil in the nature of the others was destined to lead them on to trouble.
They did not care whether Pistols died or not at the hands of Buffalo Bill. They hated Bill and his body-guard because they were the foes of the bad element in the mines. They hated the army, because it put down lawlessness.
Here was a chance to wipe out the chief of scouts and Surgeon Powell, of both of whom they stood in the greatest awe.
This ugly element were sixty to two, and they had nothing to lose. The army would sweep down upon the Yellow Dust Valley, of course, but who could be found who was guilty, who could be punished?
Thus the men who had backed Pistols argued, and with a desire for a row, a wish to sacrifice Buffalo Bill and the Surgeon Scout, and enough whisky in them to make them reckless of consequences, they began to crowd closely upon the center of attraction, where Cody sat still covering Pistols, and with the Surgeon Scout by his side, a revolver in each hand.
It was a most critical moment, for the officer and the scout saw that the authority of the latter was going to be defied.
“Men, don’t mind what Brass Buttons says, for, as he’s chipped inter the game, he goes with Buffalo Bill. Don’t shoot, for that means innocent men hurted, but capter them two gamecocks alive and hang ’em. Does I say right?” and the burly ruffian who had constituted himself leader gazed at the crowd with a look that demanded recognition.