Читать книгу Buffalo Bill's Boy Bugler; Or, The Last of the Indian Ring - Ingraham Prentiss - Страница 5

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Buffalo Bill had hoped to escape recognition for a time until he could look into conditions in that locality, but he was not to be so fortunate, as he learned the moment the four pards were alone in their large double room.

Bozeman was only one of many of the older towns the scout expected to visit, in prosecution of his mission, to rout the rogues who were stealing both from the government and the nation’s charge, the red man.

“Pa-e-has-ka make um listen,” said Cayuse, as soon as the door had closed upon the outside. “Heap bad palefaces call Long Hair ‘Buffalo Bill.’ Pards in home of Great Father tell on string and talks. Pa-e-has-ka get letter come Virginia City. Bad Crow warriors wait in pass, shoot Pa-e-has-ka.”

“Where did you get that?” asked the scout of his Indian boy pard.

“All same make um believe sleep on floor Red Tiger Saloon; hear bad paleface talk.”

“Did you learn their names?”

“One Jim Price, other all same Dave. Jim give Crows bad blankets, bad meat, bad whisky. Dave sell Indians sand for hunting grounds, Jim pay Dave good blankets, good meat, good rum.”

“I see; Price is the Indian agent, and Dave is a land shark?”

“Ugh!”

“And they are going to send me a fake message, purporting to come by wire from Washington, to report at Virginia City. Then on the way I am to be ambushed and shot by Crow bandits?”

“Ugh!”

“Where do these fellows hang out?”

“All same Red Tiger—drink heap rum.”

“Perhaps I had better run over to the Red Tiger for a little while before turning in,” remarked the scout, once more buckling on his belt which he had removed.

“Me go?” asked Cayuse, an appealing look in his black eyes.

“Ole Skibo like pow’ful well to tote along, Mar’s Billyum,” urged the colored giant.

The scout laughed and said:

“Yes, if you wish, but I think it would pay you better to turn in and sleep.”

“My sentiments, pard,” added Wild Bill, as he sought the bed.

The other three went out quietly at a side door without meeting any one, and the noisy crowd in the barroom drowned all sound of their egress. Five minutes’ walk brought them to the Red Tiger Saloon, a place of ill repute, even for this wild country. There the cutthroats and gamblers congregated, and scarcely a week in the year passed without its tragedy at the Red Tiger. Card disputes sometimes ended in wholesale shooting, and, only two weeks before, three funerals resulted from one night’s rough house in the infamous inn.

When Buffalo Bill and his pards arrived the crowd had reached a stage of drunkenness which dulled its perception, and the strangers were unnoticed. Several men were stretched out on benches and floor in drunken stupor, and others were drinking or wrangling as to whose turn it was to treat. Others were attempting, with drunken persistence, to play cards, but the stakes at the corners were knocked about by gesticulating elbows, and coins rolled about the floor.

Cayuse looked about for a moment, and then approached the scout. In a low tone he said:

“Price play cards with heap fool drunks; steal um money; Dave drunk.”

The scout easily picked out Price, and when opportunity offered approached unnoticed. He also secured a good look at the debauched face of Dave, so that he could recognize the fellow if they ever met again.

Price was too drunk to be acute, but he was still sharp enough to rake in all the money of those with whom he was pretending to play.

Buffalo Bill closely watched the manipulations of this representative of Uncle Sam, and was soon convinced that the fellow was an unmitigated scoundrel who would rob his best friend if opportunity offered.

One man at the table, a miner, had been robbed of his last cent, despite his protest of unfairness. And then the inevitable row was started. The victim bunglingly attempted to pull a gun, and his motion was followed by half a dozen others who were grouped about the table.

Price was not so far intoxicated as the others, and deftly jerked a gun to a level with the other’s breast. Somebody in the crowd accidentally or otherwise discharged a revolver. A fusillade followed, principally into the floor and ceiling, but when the smoke cleared the man who had been robbed by Price was on the floor writhing with a bullet through his body, and Price was pushing through the drunken, shouting men with a smoking revolver in his hand. He had shot the man he had robbed and was getting away before officers arrived.

There was no doubt regarding who had shot the miner, in the mind of Buffalo Bill.

Buffalo Bill did not care to be held to testify in the pretended investigation which was bound to follow, so he and his friends slipped away. The report of the coroner would be the usual one: “Shot by an unknown in a volley by barroom crowd.”

Outside the scout awaited for a time the action of the town’s protectors. In half an hour the sheriff arrived, and in another half hour the Western coroner came to take charge of the remains.

Justice certainly did not move on the “hot foot” in that city of “courage juice” and bad men.

As the scout and his faithful negro and Indian pards were moving away there came a terrific explosion from the direction of the hotel. A moment later a red glare sprang up, and then hoarse shouts and screams of anguish rent the air.

“Must be a boiler explosion,” exclaimed the scout, hastening on, “and at or near the hotel,” he added.

His worst fears were realized. The disaster had occurred at the hotel, but it was not a boiler explosion. The entire wing in which Buffalo Bill and his pards had been assigned quarters had been blown up by some powerful explosive.

No other explanation was possible than that some one had placed a heavy explosive under the wing with malicious intent, the proprietor, who was soon found by Buffalo Bill, declared.

Hundreds of people flocked to the scene, and among them Buffalo Bill sought for his pard, Wild Bill Hickok, the man from Laramie, the hero of scores of daring exploits.

The wing was wrecked and the hotel burning, but the scout still hoped that by some miracle his partner had escaped.

The night wore away, and the fire was conquered only when the hotel was in ashes. Two other guests of the hotel were missing, and half a dozen had been more or less seriously injured.

Buffalo Bill haunted the scene of disaster. He could not give up hope that Hickok had escaped. But no clue was uncovered that led to any other conclusion than that Wild Bill had perished miserably.

Then Buffalo Bill began an investigation on his own hook to discover the author of the tragedy. Lambert, the hotel proprietor, had no idea regarding the miscreant or his object. He—Lambert—did not know that he had an enemy, and he could not imagine the object of any man in destroying his property, and at the same time taking the lives of innocent people.

The scout began to suspect that he and his pards were the object of the dynamiters.

“Were there any inquiries yesterday,” he suddenly asked of Lambert, “concerning the sleeping quarters of any of your guests?”

The hotel man started, and then answered:

“Yes; Dave Green asked me about you and your party—who you were and what rooms you had. He said he guessed he would see if he couldn’t sell you a quarter section up the valley.”

“Who was with him at the time?”

“Jim Price, the Indian agent.”

“Did you see either of these men about town after the explosion last night?”

“Yes, I saw Price, and he said Green was laid away, ossified, at the Red Tiger.”

“How soon after the explosion did Price appear?”

“Why, he showed up while we were trying to pull the people out of the wreck before the fire drove us away.”

“Thank you,” said Buffalo Bill.

“Why, you don’t suspect Jim Price of anything like that, do you?”

“Oh! I thought he might prove to be a good witness if an inquiry was made,” answered the scout.

In his own mind Buffalo Bill was satisfied that Price had attempted to blow the scout and his pards into eternity. So far as brave Hickok was concerned it seemed that the wretch had been successful.

Buffalo Bill had succeeded better than he had expected in the beginning of the unraveling of the government’s skein of Indian difficulties.