He shivered as his imagination pictured the plight of Dell and Wah-coo-tah and himself, down in the level, with the water pouring in upon them, and Lawless and his men keeping them back from the secret door with their rifles.
“It’s a long road that has no turning,” thought the scout grimly, “and Lawless has run up a score which I shall call upon him to settle. When I am done with him, I shall come back to the Forty Thieves and stay out the three consecutive days and nights; then, when I have earned the deed, I shall turn the property over to Wah-coo-tah—if she lives; and if she does not live, then it shall go to Wah-coo-tah’s mother, the Cheyenne woman.”
This procedure was strictly in line with the scout’s generous nature. As for staying in Sun Dance Cañon and developing the Forty Thieves, the very thought of it brought a smile to his lips.
He could not imagine himself turning from the free life of the plains and mountains to the narrow confines of a mine and the life of a miner.
First, however, he must trail down Captain Lawless and rescue old Nomad and Wild Bill. He would not allow himself to suppose that Lawless would deal cold-bloodedly with his pards, and thought only of pursuing the outlaw to Medicine Bluff and effecting a rescue.
While he was climbing upward, and turning these matters over in his mind, he little dreamed that within a few minutes Chance was to strike one more unexpected note in the odd tune she had recently been playing for his benefit.
Yet so it fell out when, presently, Buffalo Bill stepped from the path he had been following onto level ground at the brink of the cañon.
What he saw first was a dead Cheyenne; beyond the Cheyenne was a group consisting of five men and a boy. The men were in close and animated conversation, and did not see the scout.
To his amazement, the scout discovered that two of the men were Nomad and Wild Bill; the other three were Lonesome Pete, Hank Tenny, and Henry Blake. The boy, of course, was Cayuse.
“Buffler has been my pard fer many a year,” old Nomad was saying, in a husky voice, “an’ I was hopin’, when he cashed in, thet fate might let the pair o’ us be standin’ shoulder ter shoulder, so thet we both mout begin ther long trail tergether. I’ve never felt wuss in my life than what I does this minit, Buffler!” and the old trapper lifted his face skyward, “whyever didn’t ye wait fer yer old pard Nick?”