Chapter X: Danger and Daring

When Buffalo Bill departed from the island it was his intention to enter the village and discover what he could. If observed while doing it, he fancied that his chances of getting off safely would be increased by the changes made in his attire and the disguise he had adopted.

Thanks to the darkness, he had no trouble in bringing his boat to a landing without discovery at the foot of the rocky bluff just above the first log cabin. He tied the boat there, then climbed the bluff and walked boldly into the village.

Lights were burning in some of the cabins, and he saw here and there a moving form, but the street and the spaces between the cabins were dark.

As the scout passed along he saw that a cabin close by the stream and backed on one side by a high bluff was not only the largest in the village, but was occupied, and that on one side was a sashless, open window. He slipped up to this cabin, and, creeping along the dark wall, gained the open window and looked in.

Several men were sitting there, talking and smoking. They were red-shirted fellows, rough-faced and hard looking. The interior of the room was bare of anything like luxuries. The men sat on stools and logs of wood. There were two or three doors, in addition to the closed door at the front.

Buffalo Bill fixed his eyes on one of the men, who had more of an air of authority than the others.

“Red Reynard!” he said to himself. “He is here.”

The man referred to was younger and smarter looking than his companions. He had his chair tipped against the wall, and he smoked a big brier-root pipe.

“Frisco was lively enough,” he was saying. “Too bad we can’t all pull our freight out of this and enjoy a little of the life they have down there. When we’ve raked in a little more gold dust I think we can try it.”

For a long time the scout stood by the window, listening and watching.

It was plain that Red Reynard had but recently returned from a trip to Frisco, where he had gone with some gold dust, and had brought back a few sorely desired luxuries, one of them being tobacco. All the men were smoking as if the witching weed had not been scented by them for many days.

As Buffalo Bill thus watched, one of the doors opened into this room, and there appeared before his eyes a marvelously beautiful young woman. The thing was so surprising that he fairly gasped. She carried a package under one arm, and after greeting the men and glancing quickly round, she went on toward the outer door.

“Say, there!” Red Reynard shouted at her, bringing the front legs of his tipped chair to the floor with a thud. “Where you goin’?”

“Just to the other cabin,” she said timidly.

“What you got there?”

Her calmness deserted her, and she showed fright.

“Only my jacket,” she said, but her voice trembled.

“I’ll take a look at it!”

Red Reynard’s red face had flushed to a deeper hue, with suspicion that seemed mixed with anger. He rose, stretching out his heavy red hand.

“It’s—just my jacket!” the girl protested, strong agitation now showing in her face and manner.

“I’ll look at it!” he said roughly.

When he came toward her she uttered a suppressed cry, and ran to the outer door, where she tried to go out. But she was too nervous to open the door quickly, or it stuck, for before she could escape, Red Reynard reached her.

“No tricks!” he cried, with an oath. Then he caught her and threw her backward with a cruel jerk, and the package she had been carrying dropped to the floor with a thump. It fell open, and some bags of gold dust rolled out before the surprised eyes of the men.

Red Reynard’s face flushed with wrath.

“That was your game, was it? You sneaked the gold, and then was intending to sneak yourself out of here. Not much you don’t!”

The girl screamed when he caught her by the hair with so rough a touch that he seemed to be dragging it out by the roots. The men in the room did not interfere. One or two of them were brutes enough to laugh.

To see an outlaw and brute like Red Reynard abuse a woman in that manner made the scout’s blood boil. He did not know what relation she bore to the outlaw, if any; yet it seemed she had planned to leave the house without his knowledge, and that intention spoke volumes.

Buffalo Bill dropped his right hand to the revolver that lay in his coat pocket, when he saw Red Reynard throw the woman to the floor. As the scout put his hand on the weapon in his pocket, not having yet made up his mind what to do, the door opened, and Klamath John appeared in it.

The girl was struggling to get on her feet, and Red Reynard had lifted his heavy boot, as if to kick her.

“Get behind me,” said Klamath John, “and I’ll defend you!”

He caught her by the hand and fairly threw her against the wall, at the same time whipping out a revolver and stepping in front of her.

Nothing could have been more surprising to the scout, for he had about made up his mind that Klamath John had lost his life when he tried to climb the rope that swung in the dripping mist over the mouth of the tunnel. But here Klamath John was, appearing at an opportune moment to defend the girl from the abuse of Red Reynard.

The daring and defiant manner of Klamath John astonished Red Reynard. He stopped, and drew his knife.

“So you’ll interfere, will ye?” he snarled. “Then I’ll make a quick finish of you!”

He stooped for an opening, with the naked knife held in his hand, and Klamath John tried to throw up his revolver. The revolver caught in Klamath John’s coat, slowing his movement.

The next moment Red Reynard would have been upon him, and probably would have sunk the knife to his heart. But a shot came through the open window, knocking the knife out of Red Reynard’s hand. Following the shot came Buffalo Bill, who entered the room with a flying leap.

Red Reynard whirled around, startled and unnerved, his hand stinging with pain. The other men had already left their stools and seized their weapons. They stared at Buffalo Bill, who, standing by the window, seemed the coolest man there, notwithstanding his spectacular entrance.

The girl might have gone out at this juncture, if Jim Benton, the prisoner who had escaped from the island, had not appeared, blocking the door. He was wrapped in a blanket that dripped water as he walked, and he seemed to have just come out of the river.

“Down him!” he screamed, indicating the scout. “That man is Buffalo Bill!”

The great scout seemed to stand even more erect, while his fine face flashed defiance.

“Yes, I am Buffalo Bill!” he declared. “It’s a name I’m not ashamed to own.”

With a swift motion he stripped off the disguising beard. Then his hands came up with lightning quickness, each holding a cocked revolver. One of them covered Red Reynard and the other swung around toward the group at the other side of the room.

“I have you all covered,” he announced coolly. “Stand where you are!”

Instead of obeying, one of the rascals lifted his revolver, thinking to use it.

The weapon in the scout’s right hand cracked, and the villain dropped his arm with a howl, the revolver falling from his hand to the floor. The scout’s bullet had broken the arm near the elbow.

“Hands up!” the scout commanded. “And stand where you are!”

Klamath John, who had staggered against the wall, seemed dazed by what had happened. The girl was trying to reach the half-open door. Red Reynard yelled to her to stop, and in the same breath yelled to his men to shoot Buffalo Bill.

“Gimme a pistol, and I’ll down him!” roared Benton, and he picked his chief’s revolver from the floor.

But as he rose with it in his hand, Buffalo Bill’s deadly weapon again spoke, and Benton dropped back against the wall, badly wounded, a bullet in his shoulder. Unfortunately, in his fall he blocked the door to some extent.

Again the scout’s voice rang:

“Stand where you are! I don’t want to kill anybody, but necessity knows no law. I’ll do it, if you crowd me. That girl wants to get out of this room, and she shall go. I expect to follow her, and offer her aid, if I can. And I’ll shoot the first man who interferes with her.”

The cool defiance of the great scout was astonishing. He seemed not to know the meaning of fear, as he thus faced those desperadoes. Several of them were squirming, and he saw that more than one was willing to take even desperate chances. If they rushed him in a body, they might overpower him, or kill him. They knew it, but feared his quick revolvers. To further impress them, he shot off the neck of a whisky bottle that stood on a slab table at the end of the room, near one of them.

“You see that!” he said.

The revolver roared again, and the bullet cut through a small hole in the wall.

“I can drive nails with these things!” he cried, as if boasting.

There was a nail by the door, used for a hanger of some kind. His revolver cracked, and the nail disappeared. He swung the weapon farther around, causing one of the men to duck his head, and the tin cup on the wall flew, with a clatter, across the room, hurled by the bullet.

“This is easy work!” he said. “Do you want a bullet in your eye?”

His next bullet smashed the oil lamp that lighted the room. It was his intention to put out the light without warning, in the hope that the girl and he could escape in the darkness that followed.

“Through the door!” he yelled to her, as he went across the room with quick bounds. Then he heard the girl scream, and he believed she ran outside.

A man stood before him in the doorway whom he thought to be Klamath John. The scout gave a push which sent this man reeling before him through the opening.

The man was Red Reynard. He had recovered possession of his revolver, and he now fired at the scout. But the bullet went wild.

Inside the house pandemonium reigned. The desperadoes were rushing toward the door and the open window, yet were impeded by the darkness and by frequent collisions.

Buffalo Bill took a snapshot at Red Reynard, which dropped the rascal in his tracks; then he looked round for the girl, but failed to see her.

Two of the desperadoes came tumbling through the door to the outside. Both were yelling.

Buffalo Bill ran along the side of the cabin, away from the river, thinking the girl had gone in that direction, but he still failed to see her. Nor did he see Klamath John, whose sudden appearance at the cabin had been so startling and puzzling.

A rattle of revolver fire opened up, as the outlaws began to shoot at imaginary forms by the river. And the scout discovered that men were running toward the cabin from various directions.

Nevertheless, he lingered by the corner of the big cabin, and in his anxiety for the girl he even called to her, though he did not know her name.

His call attracted the attention of the men by the door, and some came in his direction, forcing him to hurry along.

Soon he had half circled around the house, to find himself again by the river, with the big bluff that seemed part of the cabin towering over his head. The darkness was favorable here, and he dropped down close by the bluff.

Men passed him at a quick run, and he heard them calling to each other down by the edge of the water. Then he heard the thump of oars in a boat. In the midst of this he was sure he caught the voice of Red Reynard giving orders.

Two of the men came running back from the river, passing so close to the scout that he might have touched them with his outstretched hand. They did not discover him, but his position there was so exposed and perilous he changed it, sliding away from the bluff, out through the darkness. He did not try to get the boat which had brought him, as he believed it had been found by the outlaws.

“Benton got away from Flynn and Cudjo,” was his thought. “And Klamath John is still living! That will be news for them. He seems to be one of Red Reynard’s men, yet he stood up for that girl handsomely, and I respect him for that. I wonder what became of him, and what became of the girl? If I stay here, though, trying to find out, I’ll run into a bullet pretty soon, and that may end things for me.”

As he thus thought, he was slipping along the ground away from the cabin and the bluff.

When he was far enough out to make it safe, he rose to his feet. Then, after a few minutes of waiting and hesitation, he shaped his course for the island.

This was now of paramount importance, for he believed that Cudjo and the Irishman would be captured there by the desperadoes, guided by Benton, if warning was not conveyed to them quickly.

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