“They throwed some consarned ball o’ powder, an’ ha’r, an’ stuff thet flared up an’ showed my ketchumnappin’ sound ersleep. An’ me’n Cayuse hed ter hedgehog back inter ther darkness right lively, whilst they wuz poppin’ erway at us some cautious.” “You didn’t try it again?” “None whatever wuth mentionin’.” “Well, they’ve slipped our net, and they did it so neatly that we don’t know how they carried it out.” The pards returned to the angle in the wall, and at last discovered that Price and Ike had scaled the wall, probably early in the night, and had made away on foot toward the southwest. By leaving their stamping ponies to deceive the watchers they had made a clean and safe getaway. The pards now hastened out to the mouth of the cañon with all the horses to join the Laramie man. But once more they were disappointed. Wild Bill had disappeared with both his own and Buffalo Bill’s horse. They found where the animals had cropped the grass for a time during the early part of the previous night. Now, out on the broad plain as far as the strong eyes of the scout or of Cayuse could reach, there was no sign of man or beast in any direction. The scout was puzzled. Something had happened of importance to draw Wild Bill from his post of duty. The scout’s first business, however, was to allow the horses to graze, then he would move on toward a river which showed like a silver thread in the greenish-brown plain in the distance. Buffalo Bill believed it must be the Big Horn River, but he had never been in this part of the country before. He was impressed by the magnificence of his surroundings. He had visions of broad, cultivated fields, peaceful herds, and busy villages in this beautiful expanse where now roamed the Indian, the buffalo, and the coyote. The very immensity of it all impressed him. And yet he knew that beyond the threadlike river the grazing lands rapidly degenerated into the barren shale and useless acres of the Bad Lands, where only sage brush and cactus grow, and these of a sickly sort. The wonders of irrigation were then unborn for the West. CHAPTER XXII. HICKOK OUTWITTED BY A THIEF. Sitting silent as a spectre, listening to the grubbing teeth of the horses a few rods distant and for the sound of any approach down the gully on the other side, Wild Bill Hickok observed a ball of fire shoot up into the southern sky in the distance. It burned brightly for a moment and then disappeared. Immediately far in the east another sprang up, and then the west responded, but to the north Hickok could not observe over the higher land. The Laramie man knew this to be some sort of Indian signals, but of course could not pretend to understand their meaning. Shortly the signals were repeated, this time much nearer on all sides. The significance was that the country swarmed with redskins, and that he was in the centre of a vast tract on which there were an outer and an inner circle of hostile outposts.