Buffalo Bill opened the palaver.  
“I have not come to smoke the peace pipe, but to talk,” he said. “If the talk of the Ute is good then we may smoke the peace pipe. If not, the soldiers and the scouts are ready for battle. They are many, and there will be more behind to come if they are not enough.”
 
“What has the paleface chief to say to Bear Killer, the chief of the Wasatch Utes?”
 
“The Wasatch? If you belong away over there in Utah what are you doing on this side of the great mountain?”
 
“That is the business of Bear Killer—not of the paleface. Bear Killer is like the wind; he goes wherever his spirit wills, and asks leave from no man. What is the talk of the paleface?”
 
“This chief will speak,” said Buffalo Bill, waving his hand toward Captain Meinhold, who came riding up with Wild Bill, thus making the conferring parties equal in numbers.
 
“Where are the two white captives—the girls who were in your possession?” asked the captain sternly.
 
The chief glanced off quickly toward the base of the cliff, where Mainwaring had declared he had seen the girls, and a look of pleasure lighted up his face, for he had supposed the whites had recaptured them already while the fight was going on.
 
“Why does the paleface chief ask?” he said, now ready to prevaricate or do anything else in order to gain time, for he believed that the four braves he had[170] left in charge of the girls had been crafty enough to retreat with them.
 
“Because he has a right,” was the reply. “The father of these girls mourns for them at the fort of the white soldiers. And they must go back to him, safe and well, or not a red man here shall live to say he has seen them! I speak straight and plain. Where are they? I want them, and mean to have them.”
 
“Bear Killer is a great warrior. He is chief of the Wasatch. Many braves follow him——”
 
“Bear Killer, if that’s your name, will be a head less in height very soon if he does not give me a straight answer!” cried the captain angrily. “Where are the girls? Speak—or I pull up that flag and my troops will ride you down!”
 
“Bear Killer, before the battle, sent them away out of danger,” said the chief, again glancing toward the spot where they had been left.
 
“Alone?” asked Buffalo Bill, who had detected the look.
 
“No; with four braves to guard them from harm.”
 
“Wild Bill, ride to that cliff over there. Call half a dozen men to go with you as you pass,” said Buffalo Bill nervously. “Mainwaring said that he saw women there, and I didn’t believe him. He went with only Norfolk Ben in his company, and neither of them knows much about Indians. Go quickly, old fellow, for I feel uneasy.”
 
“You left the girls with four braves?” said the captain to the Ute chief. “Can you not call them in now?”
 
“If I do what will the paleface chief give for the girls whom Bear Killer took from the Shawnees? They are mine by a red man’s right. I took them from the red men—not from the palefaces.”
 
 
“I will give you cold steel and lead, and plenty of both, if you don’t give them up!” was the hot retort. “I shan’t waste any more time in talk. Talking is not my trade. I had rather fight.”
 
“The paleface has seen that the Utes can fight,” said Bear Killer proudly.
 
Then he glanced uneasily toward the hill whither Wild Bill and half a dozen scouts were galloping, as Buffalo Bill had directed.
 
“You will soon see—and feel—what my soldiers can do if these girls are not produced and given up!” said the captain. “I am in no mood for trifling. I have not ridden so far for nothing.”
 
Bear Killer saw with alarm that the cavalry, evidently impatient, were remounting their horses.
 
“We will talk,” he said. “We do not want to fight you palefaces. You have good guns that shoot a great many times, and we do not want to lose many braves for the sake of two women. You may take them.”
 
“Then send one of your braves back with orders to your people to stay where they are, and go up with us to get the girls. My people shall not move unless yours do.”
 
Bear Killer had a struggle with his pride before he could agree to this, but he knew very well what well-armed and mounted white troops could do, so he sent a warrior back, and leaving the truce flags flying between the parties, he rode on toward the cliff with the captain and Buffalo Bill.
 
Wild Bill and his men were there searching rapidly from rock to rock for signs which might lead to the discovery of the girls.
 
Four dead Indians, unscalped, lay upon the ground, pierced by rifle balls.
 
They were seen when Captain Meinhold, Buffalo Bill, and the Ute chief rode up.
 
“Who has killed these braves?” demanded Bear Killer angrily. “These were the guards I left with the girls.”
 
“Mainwaring and Norfolk Ben must have done it,” said Buffalo Bill, turning to the captain. “Were they not at our lines when you passed?”
 
He asked this last question of Wild Bill.
 
“No. The last seen of them was on that cliff, when they got your permission to ride over this way and search.”
 
“These men are cold,” said the captain. “They must have been dead a good while. They were killed before you came near the ground, Wild Bill.”
 
Bear Killer, whose looks showed his passionate indignation, burst out:
 
“The palefaces speak with double tongues! My braves have been killed with big bullets, such as the palefaces use, for lead does not cost them so much as it does the red man. They ask me for the girls after they have killed their guards and taken them.”
 
“It is not so,” replied the captain. “Your braves were not killed by our men, neither have any of us seen the girls.”
 
“It looks very dark. I cannot see my way clear,” said Bear Killer. “My braves are killed—and killed by white men, who do not take scalps. The women are gone. Who did it?”
 
Buffalo Bill, who had joined Wild Bill in the search, cried out:
 
“There have been men here who don’t belong to our crowd—white men, too! They wore moccasins, and all of my men wear boots—so do the soldiers of the captain. Those men came down the hill in the water and hid behind the rocks and shot the braves in the back. Their tracks tell the story.”
 
“Where, then, is Mr. Mainwaring and that man Norfolk Ben you spoke of?” asked the captain.
 
“They must be on the trail of the men who carried off the girls, for beyond here I see no track of the girls,” said Wild Bill.
 
“Go to the top of the hill, some of you, quick!” cried Buffalo Bill. “Th............