“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, 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.