“I’ll ride for help,” said Pawnee Bill, “though you know, Cody, that if you’re to mix in any fighting, I’d rather be in it with you than to eat when I’m hungry.” After a time of discussion, Pawnee Bill departed, on a swift ride for assistance. “I can’t go on,” said Buffalo Bill, “until I’m positive no road agents are on that hillside. So, if you will stay here with Nomad, Lena, I’ll make it my business to find out.” “Look out fer yerself, Buffler, when ye do!” Nomad warned. Black John was as wily and wary as Buffalo Bill. He had seen the scout; and, while leaving the most of his men to guard the pass, he was himself, with a few others, moving swiftly, for the purpose of trapping the scout where he was. Hence it happened that while Buffalo Bill was stealing along under cover of the hills, intending to swing in a semicircle and get behind the outlaws, if they were on that hillside, Black John was riding as silently in a semicircle round in the other direction, intending either to trap the scout and his companions in the scrubby grove, or drive them into the pass, where they would come under the guns of the road agents there. When Black John came in sight of the spot where he thought to find Buffalo Bill, both the scouts were gone. But Nomad was there, with Lena Forest. “Cody and his pard have rid on toward the pass,” was Black John’s conclusion, “and the boyees will rake ’em in there. So here we go for to rake in the two we sees before us. Now we put our hands on them emeralds, fer here’s ther girl that’s got ’em.” He could hardly repress a smile, for he felt the buckskin bag of emeralds pressing in a lump against his flesh, under his coat. But that mention of the emeralds was a bait for the men, and they moved forward with him, making a clever sneak upon the trapper and the girl. Nomad was talking in a fatherly way with Lena Forest, telling her that she was foolish in insisting on staying with Buffalo Bill, when all she could do was to hamper him. “Ye see, I’m older’n he is,” he was saying, “and so I’ve got past ther p’int where I’m skeered ter say my say ter a woman because her face is purty. ‘Purty is as purty does’ ter me now; though onct there war a time when ther sight of a flutterin’ dress would set my heart ter knockin’, and I wouldn’t had any more sense than a two-year-old. Them times is gone by; I’m old, and I’m thet humly that I’m ashamed ter look in a lookin’-glass, and I know it. So I kin afford ter speak plain ter ye. You’re makin’ things hard fer Buffler by insistin’ on stayin’ with him. ’Tain’t no proper place for a woman, and----” “But how can I leave Bruce and----”