This remark puzzled the boy. Captain Lawless was speaking, and yet he was speaking of another Captain Lawless! What did it mean? He cocked up his ears to hear something more that would throw some light on the mystery.
“Ye’ll find him deader’n a smelt,” remarked one of the robbers. “What’s the use o’ botherin’ with him any longer? Rigged out in his clothes, ye look enough like him ter be twins. Nobody’ll ever know the difference between the two o’ ye, an’ if the deed is left at the black rock, ye kin take over the mine without any one ever bein’ the wiser.”
“Keno,” said the bogus Captain Lawless; “I’ll try it on.”
Thus a light dawned on Cayuse’s brain. The real Lawless was dead, or dying, and a counterfeit Lawless had taken his clothes and was playing the rôle in order to get the Forty Thieves Mine!
Some of Buffalo Bill’s pards might have made post-haste for Sun Dance with this news, but that wasn’t the little Piute’s way. The outfit of robbers might go to Medicine Bluff, and they might not. Cayuse would follow them and make sure just where they did go.
Naturally, they outdistanced him, but when they had vanished, he continued to follow their trail. Close to Pass Dure Cañon luck struck across the boy’s path, for he met Hawk, the Cheyenne. Hawk was trailing a cayuse behind him, and the cayuse was burdened with a couple of white-tail deer.
After making sure that Hawk was a friend, and willing to do a service for pay, the Piute made a deal with him. For a ten-dollar gold piece, which Cayuse extracted from his medicine-bag, the Cheyenne agreed to carry a message to Buffalo Bill, at Sun Dance, and to lend Cayuse the led horse.
The two deer were unshipped and hung to the limb of a tree where they would be safe from coyotes, wolves, and other “varmints.” While the Cheyenne was taking care of the deer, Cayuse was skinning his piece of bark from a tree and drawing his diagram.
He proceeded fairly well until he got to the point where he wished to tell the scout that there were two men posing as Captain Lawless. The communication of this fact seemed beyond the art of picture-writing; but the boy attempted it by drawing two figures to represent Lawless, and placing a pair of mule’s ears over one, to signify that there was something wrong with that particular figure.
When the Cheyenne and the Piute parted, the Cheyenne had the gold piece and Cayuse had the led horse. They went in different directions.