Читать книгу Buffalo Bill's Ruse; Or, Won by Sheer Nerve - Ingraham Prentiss - Страница 9

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When he entered the big house Buffalo Bill did not meet Latimer. It seemed useless to search for him, to question him again, after his positive denial. Nevertheless, the feeling had grown within the scout that for some inexplicable reason Latimer was not “playing fair.”

Not finding Latimer readily, he departed from the house and strolled about the grounds. He had much to turn over in his mind. He had not, for one thing, given up solving the mysterious disappearance of Nick Nomad.

As he thus strolled about, he entered the stables where his horse was kept, and as he did so, a form dropped on him from somewhere above, knocking him to the earth; and then a brown hand clutched at his throat, and a knife flashed before his eyes.

It took him but an instant to discover that the would-be knife wielder was the Mexican servant; the only servant on the place, in addition to Nomad.

The Mexican in making his drop had evidently intended to land on the scout’s head, and thus strike him down unconscious; but his heels struck the scout’s broad shoulders; and, though Buffalo Bill went down, he was not knocked out. He writhed about as the Mexican tried to knife him, and then he set his firm fingers in the brown, lean throat, making the Mexican gasp.

However, the Mexican was strong, and he was lively and lithe as a captured snake.

The fight that followed was of brief duration, for the scout’s choking fingers subdued the little brown man in short order.

Buffalo Bill threw the Mexican against the wall. For a time the rascal lay in a heap, limp as a rag. In the meantime, the scout secured the long knife, which had fallen from the lean, brown hand. He was standing before the Mexican, when the latter tried to sit up. The Mexican was clutching at his bruised throat with a motion of pain.

“See here!” said Buffalo Bill sternly. “You would have no right to complain if I should shoot you, for on your part you tried to kill me.”

“No, no!” the fellow pleaded, his black eyes showing fright.

“Will you answer my questions?”

The Mexican stared as if he did not understand, until the scout repeated the inquiry.

“Si, señor,” he gurgled faintly.

“You were set on by some one to do this?”

“No—no, señor.”

“Why did you do it? You tried to kill me!”

“No—no, señor.”

“Then why did you attack me? Answer me straight.”

“For—for dem!”

Buffalo Bill saw that the Mexican had indicated his handsomely mounted revolvers.

“For my pistols? You wanted to rob me?”

“Si, señor,” was the bold confession.

“Well, you are cool about it!” He searched the Mexican hastily and found nothing. Standing before him he pointed the revolver and clicked the cylinder in a suggestive way.

“I think you are lying. Unless you tell the truth, I shall have to shoot you!”

The Mexican’s teeth chattered with fright and his face became an ashen brown.

“Now,” the scout went on, “did some one tell you to attack me here?”

The Mexican was so scared he could hardly speak, but he managed to stammer out another denial.

“No one told you to do it?”

“No, señor.”

“You simply wanted my pistols?”

“Si, señor.”

The scout was in a measure disappointed and baffled. He had thought that perhaps this man had been ordered to assault him. Yet he knew that the lower-class Mexicans are such liars that even their most solemn statements cannot always be believed. So he was still suspicious on that point. He threw the knife to the crouching and whining scamp.

“Clear out!” he said. “And if you trouble me again I shall certainly kill you. Clear out!”

The Mexican grabbed the knife and bolted through the door.

When Buffalo Bill had looked at his horse and had given him some hay, he left the stable. The Mexican had disappeared. On approaching the house the scout once more encountered Pizen Kate, still hunting for her husband. She fairly cackled with glee, when he asked her if she had seen anything of the Mexican servant.

“Say,” she said, waving her umbrella for emphasis, “I’m believin’ that men will soon learn to fly, jedgin’ by him! He was as nigh to flyin’ as a human can git without bein’ actually a bird with wings. He went by here only hittin’ the high places. Well, he was goin’ some when I seen him! What was the matter with him?”

“I told him to get, and he was getting. He tried to murder me when I went into the stables.”

“You don’t mean it?” she cried. “Well, I thought mebby he’d seen the face of my lost husband lookin’ at him from some sing’lar place and imagined he’d seen a ghost. He tried to kill ye?”

“He made a good attempt at it.”

Then she laughed again. “Say,” she said, bending toward him earnestly, “between you and me and the gatepost, there’s somethin’ so mysterious about this here place that I think it needs investigatin’. I’ve lost my husband here and can’t find him. So I’m goin’ to be on guard round here to-night; and if there ain’t happenin’s, then I’m clean out in my reckonin’, and don’t know nothin’. Mark my words, there’ll be happenin’s round here to-night. I kin smell trouble in the air, yes’ as some men kin smell a thunderstorm when it’s comin’.”