Читать книгу Buffalo Bill's Boy Bugler; Or, The Last of the Indian Ring - Ingraham Prentiss - Страница 7

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Sleeping with his window wide open, as was his custom, “Wild Bill” Hickok, Buffalo Bill’s pard from Laramie, had been awakened by the shooting at the Red Tiger. His first thought was that his pards were in trouble, and, hastily donning his clothes and buckling on his belt, he did not pause to stumble along the corridors and through the crowd of inquisitive loungers, but sprang through the window and landed lightly on the soft earth twelve feet below.

As Hickok approached the Red Tiger, he could see the tall forms of the scout and of Skibo, and knew that they were all right. He would have entered, but, standing in the shadow of a building to reconnoitre, he saw something to change his plans.

Some one passed an open window with a lighted lamp, the rays of which fell upon two men conversing in whispers not twenty feet from him. Hickok recognized one of the men as the sheriff of the county, and the other, he felt quite sure, was the man who had been pointed out as the local Indian agent.

Wild Bill was curious to know what their private confab was about, for he had intuition that it concerned the arrival of Buffalo Bill and his pards.

Hickok glanced about him for means of getting closer to the pair. Near him was a door opening into the corner of the building which seemed to be some sort of a low warehouse,. He tried the door, and it opened readily at his touch; then he stepped inside and softly closed the door behind him. He felt like a burglar, and had no means of knowing what sort of a place it was, because it would not do to strike a match. The windows were uncurtained, and he had noticed that the two men stood close to one of them.

Once more the lamp passed a window in the adjoining building and revealed enough of Hickok’s surroundings to enable him to proceed. He was in a hallway that led to a room in the back and a stair to the story above. Along the corridor next the stairs were tiered barrels of flour, sugar, and pork, but next the outer wall a passage had been left to the room in the rear of the building.

The man from Laramie approached the window near which the men were talking, and, crouching there, could see their heads above the sill clearly outlined against the light of a stable lantern far down the street.

Hickok was wondering how he could raise the window within a foot of the heads of the men without their detecting him, when he discovered that he could hear their whisperings plainly. A pane of glass was gone, and he wondered why they had not heard him.

The first words Hickok distinguished were:

“Of course you’ll have to go through the performance of investigating the case, but don’t ring me in, and Dave was dead drunk all through it.”

“Yes, I’ll have to hold some o’ the boys for witnesses, but I ain’t goin’ in till I think all them that knows anything about it has got away.”

“Say, Rus, do you know what Cody is here for?”

“No; that’s what I’ve been trying to find out.”

“Well, he’s after me first, and Dave, and you, and anybody he can find who is mixed up in this Indian graft. I got a wire from Reynolds to be on my guard.”

The sheriff whistled softly.

“Does he know you yet?” he asked.

“No; he arrived at the wrong time. The trial has brought in so many strangers that it is pretty hard work telling who from which.”

“He must have been sent here by Washington authorities. How did they git wise?”

“Somebody has leaked to make political capital.”

“What’s goin’ to be done?”

“If we could get Buffalo Bill out of the way without direct suspicion, we would be safe for a long time—but how to get rid of him is the problem.”

“Couldn’t we get him outside on some pretext and have him ambushed by Indians?”

“Dave and I planned that, but Sitting Bull has raked in our renegades and taken them down the Yellowstone.”

“What rooms do Cody and his men have at the hotel?”

“The big one in the north wing.”

“Can’t we get at ’em there, some way?”

“I’ve been thinking of that. How would it work to try ‘Bloody Ike’?”

“He’d do it if there was a hundred plunkerino in it.”

“He can have it, and fifty dollars extra for every one of Cody’s men he gets.”

“There he is in the Red Tiger now.”

“Say, Rus, when you go in send Ike out here to me.”

“All right; so long.”

The Indian agent moved a few feet to one side and sat down on a box. Hickok was disappointed. He feared he could not hear the conversation between the agent and Bloody Ike. But his present position was the best he could do. He would wait.

Just then something happened that caused him for the moment to forget the man on the box and look to his own safety. He heard a step on the platform outside, a key inserted in the lock, and some one began fumbling with it. The Laramie man bounded behind some barrels, and crouched there.

The intruder, who was trying to unlock a door that was not locked, finally entered, struck a match, and glanced down the corridor and up the stairs, and then went out, securely locking the door after him and trying it several times after he had locked it.

“I see where I’m liable to arrest for ‘breaking and entering,’” murmured Wild Bill, as he once more crouched by the window.

Bloody Ike soon came, and held a long confab with the Indian agent, very little of which Hickok could hear.

As they passed the window moving away, the listening Hickok heard:

“Now, make a clean job of it. Fumbles don’t count. You must settle this Buffalo Bill’s hash and as many of the others as possible.”

“I ought to be able to do it right; I’ve handled the stuff for fifteen years in the mines—and in some other places.”

The last was spoken significantly.

Hickok was anxious to follow the fellows and prevent a tragedy. He had no fears for the safety of Buffalo Bill and his pards, because he had several times seen them about the saloon. He did not believe the Indian agent and Bloody Ike would attempt anything that night, but he wished to follow them and learn more of their plans.

Hickok tried the window, and found it fastened with a heavy prop over the lower sash. It required but a moment to remove this, raise the sash, and leap to the ground, but in that time the men he was after had disappeared.

The Laramie man hastened down the street in the direction they had gone, hoping to catch sight of them, but they had either entered some dive or had seen something to alarm them, and consequently fled.

Hickok finally went back to the Red Tiger, hoping to pick up his pards if he discovered no further knowledge of the plot to destroy not only Cody, but his comrades. The man from Laramie had not discovered the means by which they were to be disposed of, but he had learned that these men were desperate enough to stoop to any crime in order to continue their process of wholesale robbery of the Indian tribes.

He took a peep inside, but none of his pards were there. The coroner and sheriff were present and several hangers-on.

Hickok hurried away again, determined to get back to the hotel at once and tell Buffalo Bill what he had learned. He had not covered one-half the distance when there came a thunderous crash that made the surrounding low buildings rock.

Hickok paused to locate the direction of the explosion, which seemed to have come from all points of the compass at once. As he looked a familiar figure darted out from between two buildings and made down the street, keeping in the shadow.

“It’s Bloody Ike or I’m an ape,” muttered the Laramie man, taking up the pursuit.

Out of the settlement dashed pursued and pursuer, the latter confident that the former had been up to some deviltry and feeling that in some way it concerned himself and Buffalo Bill.

Half a mile out Bloody Ike reached an encampment of Indian traders who had several horses tethered on the plain. Hickok was near enough, crouched in the grass and weeds, to hear the conversation. The man wanted to buy a pony, and soon struck up a trade. Without even a saddle he mounted and rode away.

He was hardly out of sight before the Laramie man was bartering for a pony. He had noted one in particular that he wanted, for the little fellow was doing its best to get away and follow the animal ridden by Bloody Ike.

Hickok paid a generous price, and the moment he mounted the pony dashed out on the plain, in the direction taken by Bloody Ike, at breakneck speed.

“So,” said the Laramie man to himself, “I guess I can follow the trail if it is dark.”

He leaned well forward on the animal’s neck, and watched its ears outlined against the sky. At every attempt to whinny he slipped his hat over the pony’s nose.

After half an hour’s riding Hickok heard the whinny of a pony, clear and loud, not one hundred yards ahead. The animal he rode would have answered had he not jerked it suddenly back upon its haunches, and then dismounting slipped his hand over its nose until he could prepare a muzzle from the pocket of his heavy coat.

As soon as he was in the saddle, the pony again dashed ahead, as if determined to overtake the animal ridden by Bloody Ike.

The chase led into the foothills and then the rockier, harder climbing. Hickok kept a sharp lookout ahead, for he well knew that the pony he bestrode would overtake the other if possible, and he did not care to come upon Bloody Ike unexpectedly when the latter had halted and discovered that he was pursued.

As yet Hickok believed that his presence was unknown to the man ahead, but in this he soon discovered that he was mistaken, and to his own cost.

Pulling his pony to a standstill in a rough defile, Hickok listened for hoofbeats. Then almost at the pony’s feet he saw a spark, crawling and sputtering toward him.

Hickok hesitated not an instant, but drove the spurs into the animal’s sides, and it leaped to one side with a startled snort.

The pony’s jump took it over the edge of the narrow trail, where it lost its footing, and rider and horse rolled down a sharp declivity just as an explosion shook the hills and flying rock showered about them as they plunged into unknown depths.