“Fortunately, the Indian whose mustang I killed isn’t a chief,” was the scout’s reflection. “He would have me burned at the stake!” With feelings of uneasiness, he allowed himself to be bound and led away. Nebuchadnezzar still snorted and showed his dislike of Indians; yet he was forced to go along, and he received on his rough hide some heavy blows and kicks as the reward of his protests. The distance which the Indians traversed was not great. They had a camp not far off, and to it they conveyed the scout, who was not greatly surprised, on arriving there, to find prisoners in the camp before him. Latimer was there, together with Nick Nomad and Pizen Kate. Latimer maintained a gloomy silence; but Nomad received Buffalo Bill with sundry cackles, and Pizen Kate in a manner befitting her previous performances. “That is what comes of a husband runnin’ away from the wife of his bosom,” Pizen Kate declared, with a snapping of her eyes. “If he had stayed to home, dutiful and kind, as he ort, this would never ’a’ come about; but he had to leave me alone, forlorn and forsaken, and this is the result of it. I’ve been givin’ him a piece of my mind about it, too.” “Buffler,” said Nomad, “I’m glad to see ye, and likewise I ain’t glad to see ye. Seems a singular statement, don’t it? But I don’t need to explain.” “I think I should like to have _you_ do some explaining,” said the scout. “About drappin’ through thet hole in the floor?” said Nomad. “Waal, thet war cur’us, and no mistake. I run into the room, and the floor jes’ yawned fer me, and I went through. I fell so durn hard, landin’ on the sharp p’int of my spine, that I didn’t know anything fer about a day, seemed ter me. “When I come to myself better it war dark in there--darker’n a stack o’ black cats. I crawled along, and crawled along, and by and by I tumbled out of the hole kerplunk into ther river. I come nigh about bein’ drownded then. When I went under I swallered enough water, I reckon, ter float a boat, and I come near going down and stayin’ thar. “The river is purty swift, as mebbe ye know, and it kerried me down considerable. When I got out, I didn’t know where I war, fer a fac’. But I sized up the sitervation as well as I could, and tried ter make back tracks. Waal, I run inter the Injuns while doin’ that, and they took me in. And hyar I am, and I don’t like ther looks of it.” “If you wouldn’t talk so much, Nicholas, you’d git fatter!” Pizen Kate snapped. That irresistible chuckle of old Nomad’s sounded. “Katie, I don’t want ter git any fatter. A fat man can’t run; and I reely feel ther need of runnin’, so long as you persist in pursuin’ after me.” “We’ll all quit runnin’, seems to me, now! Seems to me we’re in fer it. I don’t see nothin’ to laugh about, I don’t. Yit there you set and grin like a monkey! I keep wonderin’ what I ever married you fer, anyhow.”