There was but one thing strange and puzzling—the shoes the baron had on his feet; they bobbed up into full view as he fell forward under the pull of the ropes. Then even that mystery was solved; the baron was wearing Dutch wooden shoes. That explained the gigantic tracks in the sand. The baron, wearing those monstrous wooden shoes, had been the man following the tracks of the pony. He had reached the spot where he now was, had been detected there by the red-feathered Indians, and was now their prisoner. It was impossible to help him, though near enough to be distinctly seen, he was still too far off to be reached quickly. Throwing him to the back of one of their ponies, the Indians bore him off, as Buffalo Bill turned his field glasses, for the second time, over to Wild Bill. “Schnitzenhauser,” he said, as if it were difficult to believe, “and captured by the Red Feathers! That’s the Toltec town right ahead of us, in that hole, I think, and they’re taking him there. But we can’t do anything, just now.” The only thing they could do was to watch and wonder while the Red Feathers made off and disappeared with their prisoner. “Wooden shoes!” grunted Nomad almost incredulously. “What war ther Dutch fool w’arin’ them fur, somebody tell me!” But no one was able to inform him. CHAPTER XXII. THE BARON AND TOLTEC TOM. Schnitzenhauser, a prisoner in the town of the mysterious Toltecs, to which he had been taken hastily, was met there by a white man, who visited him in the little prison into which he had been thrown. It was a marvelous prison—a gem of marble and gold; Schnitzenhauser had never even dreamed of anything like it, and he had been carefully inspecting it. The bars across the narrow window seemed to be of pure gold, though, as they were so hard and strong, some alloy must have been used. The lock and the key of the door, also, seemed to be gold. The German was wondering if he could not in some manner wrench those gold bars away, and, on getting out, carry them off with him, for he hoped to escape, and it was a sudden lust for gold which had brought him into his present peril. While the German was testing the gold bars by feeling of them and licking them with his tongue, the door was opened, and the white man mentioned came in. Red-feathered Indians were visible behind the white man as the door swung open, but he closed the door with a jerk, and none of the Indians offered to enter. “Howdy!” he said, looking at the German. “Yaw,”, said the German, staring in surprise, yet pleased to know that a white man was in this place. “I vass pooty goot, bud I don’t like diss chail pitzness. How you vass yourselluf, heh?” “Set down there, and let’s have a talk,” said the white man, motioning to a bearskin rug on the floor, while he dropped down against the opposite wall.