“The trail is hot now!” cried Buffalo Bill, as the sight of the distant plains met his eyes once more and he saw the stones yet damp where the water had dripped from the Indians’ horses as they had crossed and emerged from a brook. “We’ll soon have the rascals before us, and then we’ll have the girls and teach the redskins a lesson they badly need. We’ll give them a hot time if we can do it without risking the girls’ lives.”  
“There’s a hot time going on already. Look down there!” said Wild Bill, who was ahead and had halted on the crest of a steep descent.
 
He pointed to the valley, where all who were up to him could now see that a terrible Indian fight was going on.
 
“Good!” cried Buffalo Bill. “It’s dog eat dog. We’ll let them fight it out, and then we’ll settle with the winners.”
 
“But the girls? Where are they?” asked Mainwaring anxiously.
 
“Hidden away, most likely, while the fight is going on. They are not there, so far as I can see.”
 
He had been looking over the scene through his field glasses.
 
“If we had any men we could spare or risk I’d like to take a hand in that fight,” the border king remarked, after a few moments. “Those are Snakes who are fighting the Utes, and they’re getting the worst of it, too—but that’s not our lookout. The Utes have got the girls—that we know quite well—and they have most likely hidden them up here in the hills somewhere under guard.”
 
“Let us look for them!” said Mainwaring eagerly.
 
“Not till we see how the fight ends; then we can be ready to play our own hand,” replied Buffalo Bill quietly.
 
“Look back, pard, and tell me what that means!” exclaimed Wild Bill, whose eyes, ever wandering about, had caught sight of several columns of smoke rising away to the north.
 
“It’s a conundrum to me,” said the king of the scouts. “It may be Indians signaling or smoke made by those white ruffians, the Death Riders. Their chief hangout, Nick’s Cavern, is over in that direction!”
 
He turned again to watch the fight going on below.
 
“Those Snakes fight well, but they’ll be clean whipped,” he said, after a while. “The Utes are too many for them and they’re fighting better. There’ll be a big feast for the crows and the coyotes.”
 
“A good thing, too!” growled old Nick Wharton. “The fewer live Injuns on the plains the better.”
 
“Hello! Look up there! Ho, they’re gone!” suddenly cried Mainwaring, pointing to a cliff far over to the right of the party, fully two miles away.
 
“What’s gone? Your senses?” asked Buffalo Bill, noticing how wildly the young rancher gazed at the place where he himself could see nothing but bleak, bare rock.
 
“No, no—the girls! I saw them plainly over there on that rock; and it seemed as if a party of men was hurrying on with them!” said Mainwaring.
 
“I think you must have been mistaken, or some one else would have seen them, too,” replied Buffalo Bill. “They could hardly have got out of sight so soon,[164] either, for you see there is neither tree nor bush on that rock.”
 
“I certainly did see them, and they disappeared so quickly that it looked as if they had sunk right down into the earth.”
 
“I’ve had just such visions,” said the border king, smiling. “And it was when I was in love, too.”
 
“It was no vision; it was real,” persisted Mainwaring.
 
“Well, after the fight is over down there we’ll see what we can find in the way of tracks up there,” said the king of the scouts.
 
Then, his face all aglow with pleasure, he cried:
 
“Here’s some news coming for us now! Here are the men we sent to meet the soldiers coming back!”
 
He spoke truly. The two scouts who had communicated with Steve Hathaway and the troops were hurrying toward him, having sent up smoke signals to hasten the soldiers forward.
 
Their report decided Buffalo Bill to remain where he was until the cavalry got up, but to satisfy Mainwaring he suggested that the latter should take a couple of fresh men and go over to the cliff to see whether he could find any tracks where he said he had seen the two girls.
 
Norfolk Ben, however, volunteered to go, and Mainwaring said he would take him and let the scouts remain.
 
As Buffalo Bill had no belief that there was really any one where Mainwaring said he had seen people he made no objection to this arrangement. He did not know that the young rancher was really rushing into deadly danger, or he would not have let him go out of his sight.
 
But his attention was soon drawn away from the fighting Indians and everything else by the sight of the carbines and sabers of cavalrymen glittering in the pass to the north, and he rode up to greet Captain Meinhold and Lieutenant Lawson, and to take Steve Hathaway by the hand and tell him that he had done nobly and well.
 
“I did my level best, mate,” replied Steve. “I had my life to pay for. Now that I’ve done it, I suppose I’ll be no more use to you.”
 
“Yes, Steve, you will. I’ll enroll you in my band of scouts of the Department of the Platte, if you wish, and you can ride and fight alongside of me if it suits you. If it doesn’t, I’ll do anything else I can to help you. All you’ve got to do is to say what you want, and you shall have it if I can get it for you.”
 
“Thank you, Bill. I know I’m not deserving of much in the way of kindness after the life I’ve led, but I’ll try to turn over a new leaf, and we’ll see how things work out as we go a............