CHAPTER I.
MYSTERIOUS DOINGS.
“What was that, Crawling Bear?”
“Ugh! Fire-gun make um big ‘boom.’”
“It was a fire-gun, all right, but where did the report come from? That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
Two horsemen were riding along a bleak, desolate-looking cañon, on route to the mining-camp known as Sun Dance. One was a white man, and the other an Indian. The white rider was William Hickok, of Laramie, better known as “Wild Bill,” and his companion was a Ponca warrior.
Both Wild Bill and Crawling Bear had keen ears, and the muffled report of the rifle came to them distinctly—not from right or left, from ahead or behind, or above, but seemingly from the ground under their horses’ hoofs.
Another report reached them, coming from the same place as the first, and Wild Bill, with a puzzled look, drew rein and rubbed his hand over his forehead.
“Am I locoed, or what?” he muttered. “It’s a trick of the echoes, I reckon. Somebody is having a little gun-play in this vicinity, and the bottom of the gulch picks up the sound and throws it back to us.”
The Indian made no response, although from his actions it seemed quite clear that he did not accept the white man’s explanation.
Wild Bill rode on, and a sharp turn in the cañon brought him upon something which led to a revision of his theory concerning the rifle-shots.