“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. “That is where Mainwaring said he had seen them. If only I had believed him then he should not have gone alone.” Wild Bill and some of the other scouts, by different routes, hurried to reach the indicated spot. Those who followed the bed of the little stream were there first. Wild Bill was not among them, but he was not far behind the rest. His report was quickly made. In one spot, where dry sand had blown into a gully, there were the tracks of the girls, of men in moccasins, and over these the small, slender boot marks made by Mainwaring and the broader track of Ben’s brogans. Just beyond this strip of sand there was a sudden descent--a kind of channel between two cliffs--and then the tracks were lost, for it was hard, solid rock in every direction for a considerable distance. “The girls have been taken by these white ruffians who killed their guards,” said Buffalo Bill, who went up himself and examined the tracks. “They must be followed,” said Captain Meinhold. “But it is singular that Mr. Mainwaring and the man who went with him have not returned. Surely he would not be so rash as to follow on the trail alone.” The captain had come up the ascent with Bear Killer. “There is no trail here to find,” remarked Wild Bill. “If he has followed them he must either have seen them or else gone off on a blind chase.” “We’ve got to find out. I wouldn’t have him hurt for anything!” cried Buffalo Bill. “Captain, you can settle the truce with the Ute chief, I reckon, while I try to hunt up Mainwaring and the girls.”