Buffalo Bill's death message or, In the face of doom
Periguez turned his head to speak to the servant, and, with a quickness
that would have done credit to a professional sleight-of-hand performer,
the scout shifted the glasses of wine, drawing Periguez’s to his side
and pushing his own over in place of it.
The servant saw what Periguez did not, and the napkin resting across his
arm dropped to the floor. He stooped to get it, and said something in a
tongue unknown to the scout. It was like an ejaculation, such as might
be made under the circumstances; but the start which Ramon Periguez gave
told the watchful scout that the servant had informed him of the
shifting of the wine glasses.
When the major-domo turned about, after saying a word or two in the same
unknown tongue to the servant, his dark face had changed to a sickly
yellow.
“I observe that you do not speak Spanish to your man here,” said the
scout. “Is he a Moor?”
“It was the language of the Spanish mountaineers,” said Periguez,
evidently disconcerted and confused. “He is from a little hill town
lying far from any of the recognized routes of travel, and the language
there is difficult for even a Spaniard not well acquainted with it.”
“Very interesting,” Buffalo Bill observed dryly, toying with the glass
he had taken.
“There is much Moorish blood in the mountains of Spain,” said the
major-domo, trying to steady his nerves and get control of himself, for
he realized that his manner was betraying him.
“I have never been in Spain,” said the scout quietly.
“You should travel in Spain. You would find it a very interesting
country.”
“You are Spanish, of course?”
Periguez bowed. “I am from Madrid.” He lifted his wine glass as if to
put it to his lips, but caught the table linen between his fingers as he
did it, and by an apparent accident let the glass fall to the floor,
where it was shivered into atoms. He started up nervously at the crash.
“How awkward of me!” he exclaimed, and, summoning the servant, he
ordered the broken glass to be removed. He had another glass brought and
filled.
“Very excellent wine,” said the scout, sipping his.
“The finest to be procured in Spain,” said Periguez. “It is made by the
monks of San Sebastian, and it has a great reputation in my country. You
were telling me of the Moroccan prince,” he said, smiling with
hypocritical lips. “And I believe you were to tell me your plans for
getting at the real facts in this most interesting mystery?”
The pallor was going out of his face; he had got rid of the drugged wine
which the scout had so cleverly passed back to him, and, therefore, he
felt better. Yet he was doubtless wondering how it came about that the
scout had suspected him.
The scout talked of his journey to the Porfiero Hacienda, of the mystery
which had sent him forth, and of his hopes soon to get some tangible
information concerning the missing man. All the while he watched
Periguez closely.
But, having been caught and foiled once, the latter did not try anything
more; perhaps he was not prepared for anything more.
“I have been making some chemical studies lately,” Buffalo Bill
remarked, quite casually. “And they brought me one bit of queer
information. A sleeping potion has been discovered which so resembles
wine in color, and dissolves so readily, that it can be administered by
the physician or nurse to the patient without the latter even dreaming
that it is being administered. It is used when, in cases where it ought
to be given, the patient objects to taking anything of the kind.”
He touched his wine glass, and watched Periguez’s face, and again he saw
that sickly yellow over-spread it.
“I had not heard of it. You are not a chemist?”
“A mere dabbler in chemistry, that is all. No man can be everything,
though he may be properly interested in many lines of information. I try
to be a good scout, and I find that is quite enough.”
“Very true,” said the major-domo. “And from all I hear you have a
distinguished reputation in your line.”
“Thanks!” said the scout dryly, as he glanced at his watch. “Señor Ruiz
tarries long,” he remarked.
“He had to go some distance,” Periguez explained. “You will at least
stay until he returns?”
The scout dropped the watch back into his pocket.
“I have decided to accept his hospitality and remain overnight at
Porfiero Hacienda.”
“Good!” said Periguez, and there was undoubted satisfaction in his tone.
“It distressed him to think that you could not accept his hospitality
for a short time, at least. We have very few callers here, and enjoy so
much the few visits we get that we would fain have our guests remain
with us much longer than they are ever willing.”
They arose from the table.
“Now you will permit me to show you some of the interesting things of
this queer old house,” said Periguez.
As they strolled from room to room, the scout deftly led him to the
hanging shelves containing the ore specimens and the dagger of gold.
“Ah!” he said, standing before the shelves and looking at the specimens,
lifting one as he spoke, and revealing the dagger hidden beneath it.
“This is a strange weapon, Señor Periguez!”
“It is very old Spanish,” said Periguez. “A magnificent weapon, as you
see!”
“Not Moorish?” said the scout.
“The pattern may be Moorish; I don’t know as to that. Much Moorish
ornamentation is still used by the Spanish sword-makers. That scroll
work may very well be Moorish. Why did you ask, señor?”
“I had no reason, other than curiosity. I simply desired to know.”
Then they strolled on, and the dagger was not spoken of again.
---------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXXI.
AGAIN IN DANGER.
The hour was late, and Buffalo Bill sat alone in the room to which he
had been shown by Ramon Periguez. The door and window were where he
could see them. There was no lock on the door, but he had set a chair
against it, so that the moving of the chair would attract his attention,
if any one tried to get into the room there.
The great scout’s suspicions were keenly alive. A sense of peril in the
air made his nerves tingle. He did not know whence the danger was to
come, yet that it would come he was sure.
The attempt to drug his glass of wine, the strange behavior in other
ways of the major-domo, the singular disappearance of Leon Ruiz, were of
themselves enough to arouse his keenest distrust. To them he added the
fact that Ruiz was a Moor, yet denied it, claiming to be a Spaniard.
“The distance ridden by Leon Ruiz must be long, as he has not yet
returned,” mused the scout. He had put out his candle and sat alone in
the darkness, but now he struck a match and glanced at his watch. “Past
midnight! I think I’ll lie down a while.”
Cody looked at the chair against the door, and inspected the window. It
was narrow and held but a loose sash, with small panes of glass. There
was no way to bar it. He lay down on the bed without removing his
clothes, and near his hand he placed his revolver; his face was turned
toward the window. There was no moon, but the stars were bright and gave
a good deal of light. The room was in heavy shadow.
It was not Buffalo Bill’s intention to fall asleep, but when an hour or
more had passed without any occurrence whatever, he yielded to the
feeling of drowsiness which stole over him.
As he knew afterward, he slept full three hours. Then he awoke. He heard
nothing and saw nothing, yet some subtle sense told him that enemies had
stolen into the room. The chair was where he had placed it by the door,
and the window seemed not to have been disturbed. This made it certain
that if enemies were in the room, they had gained it by some secret way.
Buffalo Bill lay quite still, though his hand stole softly to his
revolver and clutched it.
When he heard nothing, he turned his head slowly to look about.
By the opposite wall he saw a dim form, whose eyes reflected the light
that came in from the window, and so were made visible.
“Ramon Periguez!” was the thought of the scout. “He is in here with
assassins, and they will kill me if they can. They do not intend that I
shall go in search of that missing prince—which proves very conclusively
that they have good reasons for wishing to stop such an investigation as
I intend making. Well, we’ll see who wins or loses, Ramon Periguez,
major-domo of the Porfiero Hacienda, or myself.”
With a quick motion, he threw his arm over and fired at the crouching
figure. The report of the revolver was deafening, but it did not cover
up the sound of the man’s fall. Then, through the thick smoke over the
bed, the scout sprang up and leaped for the window.
As he did so, two revolvers spoke within the room, one of them chipping
the adobe from the wall right over his head, and the other cutting a
hole through the big hat the scout carried in his left hand. He gained
the little window, hearing confused cries, trampling feet, and a deep
groan, and went through it to the outside like a scudding rat. Then he
dropped quickly to the ground.
Whoever the would-be assassins were, he had thwarted them, and wounded
one of their number.
Buffalo Bill was now in the garden. He ran quickly across it, and leaped
the low adobe wall that hedged it in.
Before him were the stable and the horse corral, and to the stable he
hastened. Behind him, in the hacienda, he heard cries and shouts and
sounds of running feet.
Dashing into the stable, where his horse should have been, he saw that
it was not there. Apparently it had not been placed in the stable, or
else it had later been removed from it. Nor were there any other horses
in the stable, and none were in the corral.
“Left afoot!” was his thought. “They have horses, and they think they
can ride me down.”
He darted out of the stable, having no desire to be caught in it and
hemmed in.
As he ran along the wall and on around the wire fence of the corral, he
heard footsteps in the flower garden, and then, in the faint starlight,
he saw two men appear. Their voices reached him, and the voice of one he
recognized as that of Ramon Periguez.
“Some other scoundrel got my bullet, eh? That is bad. I had hoped it was
the major-domo. Bullets are good for a rascal of that stamp.”
Beyond the corral the scout, to his satisfaction, saw a horse hitched to
a post. It bore a saddle and bridle. But a man was running toward it
from the opposite side of the house. Apparently, the horse had been made
ready and left there for this man’s use.
“They provided against contingencies that they hardly expected would
arise,” was the scout’s thought. “They were sure they could kill me in
that room. It had a secret entrance by which they came in. But they
ought to have blocked up that window. A little slip like that sometimes
makes all the difference in the world in one’s plans.”
Cody was running toward the horse, but the man running from the corner
of the house to get to the horse had the advantage in being much nearer
the animal.
The scout’s revolver came out, and he halted for one brief second.
“It’s almost discreditable to win even such a race in this manner!”
The revolver cracked, and the man tumbled to the ground with a broken
leg.
“Fire upon me, and you get the next bullet through your head!” the scout
shouted to him, as he reached the horse and sprang into the saddle.
Bending forward, he severed the rope that held it to the post. Then he
plunged the spurs into its sides, and the horse started off with great
bounds, being headed straight away from the hacienda.
There were more cries and shouts in the darkness behind him, followed by
the barking reports of revolvers, as the men there began to fire at the
figure they beheld faintly flying onward through the gloom.