“Not just now. I’ve got business to attend to in Eldorado. I may meet you later, if good luck or adventure brings us together.” The two friends parted, soon after this, and went on their several ways. Buffalo Bill rode slowly and cautiously across the plains, in the direction of Scarlet Gulch, thinking over the points which his friend had given him, and wondering how he should proceed against the gang of ruffians who were in league against him, under the leadership of a man known as “Panther Pete.” “The first one to tackle is that fellow Slocum,” he thought. “I suspect he has schemes of his own, though he appears to be the tool of the others. I’ll get him first, and I reckon I’ll find him in the Flash Light Saloon.” As it happened, this guess was correct. Even then, while Buffalo Bill was on his track, “Bug-eye” Slocum was standing in front of Rainey’s saloon in Scarlet Gulch, talking in a loud voice. Bug-eye was shabby and disreputable, but he had a sonorous voice and a way of “slinging words” that was calculated to make the average citizen of Scarlet Gulch sit up and take notice. “Feller citerzens, it’s this here way,” said Bug-eye, with an oratorical wave of his hand, the other hand being tucked under and engaged in waving his coat tails, “when a man who’s been honored as Buffalo Bill has been honored; when a man who traveled to the ends o’ the earth and showed benighted lands what the reel and ginoowine wild West, which we have here, looks like; when sich a man, I say, stoops so low as to dishonor hisself by becomin’ an ordinary holdup thief, a-leadin’ holdup gangs, and so dishonors the glorious Stars and Stripes that he lives under, and which gives him perfection--then I say that it’s time fer us, feller citerzens, to put him where the wicked cease frum troubling and the weary aire at rest.” Applause greeted Bug-eye’s oratorical effort. “He’s a-raidin’ ’round through this country,” Bug-eye went on, tiptoeing to make himself look taller, and flirting his coat tails until the dust fairly flew from them, “pertendin’ to be here ter pertect us, and then, in a sneakin’ way, holdin’ up stagecoaches and lone and wanderin’ wayfarers, work which he tries ter make people think is done by the reg’lar road agents. Feller citerzens, the time is ripe ter put an end to his masqueradin’, and night roamin’ with a handkerchief over his face, and elevate him by a rope to a handy tree limb, and there let him do a dance on nothin’.” The roaring cheers broke out again. “And so now I nomernate fer judge of a Judge Lynch court, that shell do unto Buffalo Bill as he’d ought to be done to, our esteemed feller citerzen, Nate Rainey, the keeper of the Flash Light Saloon here--a man what sets out the best redeye that’s set out over any bar in the whole area of this broad and magnificent country; feller citerzens, I nominates Nate Rainey, ther man what all of us delights to honor.”