It was nearly midnight when Buffalo Bill, on foot, returned to the camp. “They’ve got enough for the present, sir, and are all on the jump for their village; but I will go out mounted at dawn and alone, keeping on their trail for a day, at least, until sure what they will do,” he said to Captain Keyes. “And shall I camp here, Cody, or return to the fort?” asked the captain. “Better rest here until day after to-morrow, sir, and then return by slow march toward the fort, so I can overtake you, if they meet other bands and return, for there may be more of them. “If I see nothing suspicious, sir, please say to Major Armes that I will return to the fort within two or three days.” “All right, Cody, and I hear you are going to have a squadron of negro scouts?” “Yes, sir, for it will give the colored troops confidence, and I believe I can make good scouts of them, while the Indians are as scared of the black soldiers as the latter are of them--they don’t just understand their being black and call them ‘Heap Black Paleface Braves.’” “Not a bad name, either, if they will only prove braves; but the Indians are experts in giving names. “Now get what rest you can, for you need it, and I know of no man who could do what you have.” Ten minutes after Buffalo Bill was fast asleep; but at dawn he woke up, and his pack horse and a fresh riding animal having come up, he had breakfast, mounted, and rode away on his lone trail. That day every sign pointed to the fact that the Indians had been so badly beaten that though they had met a couple of bands of their comrades, they did not turn back, but went on to their villages together. It was toward evening of his second day’s trail, as he came to a good camping place, that Buffalo Bill decided to halt for the night, when he was startled by hearing a human voice calling to him, and the words spoken in a low tone. Out of a thicket staggered a tall, gaunt form, with black face, haggard, and showing deep lines of suffering, while his clothing was in rags, his feet wrapped in deerskins, a foxskin cap upon his head, a tattered blanket, and a rifle, revolver, and knife his weapons. CHAPTER XVI. THE NEGRO MESSENGER. “Well, my poor fellow, who and what are you?” asked Buffalo Bill, as he dismounted and stood before the vagabond negro. “I’s mighty near starved ter death, an’ I’d died soon ef I hadn’t had you find me, boss,” was the answer. “I seen you comin’, and I lay low and was goin’ ter let you pass me by, sah, only I seen yer face, and know’d yer were a good man. “If you had been an Injun, sah, or one ob dem bad white men I seen in dis country, I’d ’a’ jist pulled my gun on yer and got yer horse an’ rashuns ter eat, fer de Good Book do say dat preservin’ o’ one’s life am de bestest law o’ natur’, sah.” “So you would have chanced killing me?”