Читать книгу Buffalo Bill, the Border King; Or, Redskin and Cowboy онлайн

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“Tell you what, pard!” exclaimed Jack, smitten with a sudden thought.

“Well?”

“We’ll draw lots to see who goes.”

“I’ll beat you at that game, Jack!” cried Cody, with a laugh.

“Don’t yuh crow too loud, old man,” said Texas Jack gaily. “When we git to the creek we’ll see who’s who!”

“I’ll go you, for my luck is good.”

“I’m sure a child of fortune myself,” laughed Jack.

They soon reached the creek, which cut across the cañon at its widest part, spurting from under a ledge on one side, and disappearing with a tinkle of falling water through a crack on the other—one of those underground streams often found in the Rockies, which only by chance ever come to the light of day.

The scouts dismounted, making sure that all pursuit had been abandoned by their mounted foes, at least, and washed and dressed their slight wounds. In each man’s pouch was Indian salve, certain valuable herbs, dried, and bandages rolled for them by the women of Fort Advance. Your old frontiersman was no mean surgeon, and many a man to-day, whose early years were spent on the border, owes his life to some rough but prompt bit of surgery on the part of a pard with powder-stained fingers.