Chapter III: Buffalo Bill Decides

The scout put his fingers to his lips and blew a signal.

Instantly there was a cracking of the bushes not far off, and then Mickey Flynn appeared, running with Cudjo right behind him.

Klamath John jumped to his feet, pulling a revolver as he did so.

“Sit down!” said the scout. “One of them is my negro servant, and the other is a friend.”

“You had ’em out there watching?”

“Yes. I didn’t intend to be trapped, you see, without having some one near to come to my help if I needed it.”

Klamath John dropped back to his seat by the poplar.

“Yes, I see,” he said. “That was right and proper. You couldn’t be expected to do anything else. Only, I didn’t think of it.”

He looked curiously at the Irishman and the negro when they came up.

“Mr. John Langstrath,” said the scout, introducing him to Flynn, and then to Cudjo.

“An’ there’s to be no fight at all,” said the Irishman, with a humorous show of regret. “An’ it’s me that’s been gettin’ ready for the fray f’r the last tin minutes. It’s a disapp’intmint I’m rec’avin’, to be shure.”

Flynn was shown the letter exhibited by Klamath John.

“Come up to my hotel, Langstrath,” the scout invited, “and there we’ll talk this thing over at our leisure. I’ll admit that I’m interested.”

“Will you make a try for that gold?” said Klamath John.

“I may, and I may not, but I’d like to get my fingers on Red Reynard. I’ve been wanting to for a good while.”

But Klamath John refused to visit the hotel, though he said he would again meet the scout at any other place outside of the town.

“I’ve good reasons for not wanting to be seen there,” he declared, and he refused to explain further.

Buffalo Bill was permitted to retain the letter which bore the name of “Red Reynard, the Fox.” He re-examined it in his room at the hotel, comparing it again with the undoubtedly genuine one he had in his possession. He submitted it to the tests used by handwriting experts, which included a close scrutiny with a magnifying glass. In the end he was sure it had been written by Red Reynard.

But whether it had really been meant for the eye of Bat Stevens, the man to whom it was addressed, or whether it had been intended to fall into the hands of some one like Klamath John, could not be determined.

And Klamath John himself was proving to be a good deal of an enigma. His manner had evidenced the proof of the things he told, yet there was something strange and suspicious in his refusal to show himself in the town, and the manner in which he had sought to get into communication with Buffalo Bill seemed queer, if nothing else.

Buffalo Bill did not again meet Klamath John for two whole days, nor did he send him any communication. During that time, the scout tried to verify the statements made in Red Reynard’s letter to Bat Stevens.

That Stevens, commonly called “Bat,” was one of Red Reynard’s followers, was a thing he knew. Stevens was an all-round “bad man” of the border. Two years before the scout had tried to lay him by the heels on a charge of murder, but Bat had “faded away” at that time, and the scout had not seen him since. Apparently, he was now in or near Klamath City, a town peculiarly attractive to men of his class.

In his pursuit of information, Buffalo Bill climbed to the tops of the high rocky ridges which overhung the cañon of Lost River, and there, at much peril, he traced the course of that stream until he saw that in one respect, at least, the letter spoke truly—Lost River branched as it neared the frowning walls of the Cup.

On the second day of his exploration, the scout climbed the walls of the Cup, where he had climbed them before, a feat so difficult that he was compelled to use ropes.

From the tops of the walls he scanned the inside of the Cup with his powerful binoculars.

He could discover no signs of occupancy, yet the Cup was of so vast an extent and was so covered in places with trees, that it might have held a whole village in its depths without any one discovering it from the walls.

There was a stream which flowed through the center of the Cup, thus in a measure confirming the statement of the letter, and this stream seemed to issue somewhere under the northern walls, at about the point where the letter said one of the forks of Lost River broke through.

The evening of this second day found Buffalo Bill again at Poplar Bend, talking with Klamath John.

“I have come to this conclusion,” he said: “If you will go with me and my company, we’ll get a canoe and descend the cañon of the river together. If the canoe is wrecked and we go into the river, you’ll go with us. See?”

“Which means that you don’t trust me?”

“As I don’t know anything about you, you can’t expect me to trust you further than that. I’m willing to speak plainly. I can trust you so long as you share with me equally the dangers of that trip. We may never come back alive. But you have made me anxious to get into the Golconda Cup. I want to find Red Reynard, and I’d like to be able to explore that big valley, which report says has never been entered by any human being. We may never get into it, and if we get into it, we may never get out; but I’ve thought the thing over, and I’ll risk it with you.”

“Shake, Cody!” the young man cried, with enthusiasm. “I don’t ask anything else. We’ll get the canoe and we’ll make the trip. I’ve only one thing to say about it, and that is, if there’s the gold in there, which that letter says, I want my share of it. That’s all.”

“We’ll have as much right to it as any one, if gold is there,” the scout declared. “I’ve no objection to that. I think I shall want some of it myself.”

“We’ll be gold hunters,” said Klamath John. “We’ll be gold hunters and explorers in a new region. The gold is there, and we’ll find it, and we’ll have some adventures worth talking about.”

“You speak now like Mike Flynn. He’s been saying that to me all day.”

“Is that Irishman going?”

“Yes.”

“And the negro?”

“I shall take both of them. We’ll get a canoe that will hold the four of us, and we’ll try the cañon of Lost River.”

“When?”

“To-morrow. I’ll get the canoe this afternoon, and have it hauled to the upper end of the cañon.”

“You won’t tell anybody what you want to do with it? Cody, we don’t want any others in this thing. If there’s gold there, we want to have it to ourselves. But if Red Reynard’s got a big gang down in there, we might need a big gang to fight him with. What do you say to that, Cody?”

“We’ll have a party of four, and none others.”

“That suits me, then. I’m ready to start this minute. I’ve been waiting for this thing ever since I found that letter. Cody, we’ll get in there without trouble! I’m dead sure of it.”

“Won’t you go into the town with me now?”

“No. I’ll still camp out here. But I’ll be ready for you when the time comes.”

---------------------------------------------------------