The noose had slipped part way down his body before it tightened, and when it closed on him it pinned his arms to his sides and rendered him helpless.
He struggled to the best of his ability, but a swarm of redskins dropped down on him and fairly smothered him by force of numbers.
Among the red faces bending over him he saw a white one. While the Apaches held him, the white man laid a handkerchief over the scout’s face.
The handkerchief was saturated with chloroform, and it was impossible for the scout to get away from the sense-destroying fumes of the drug.
Unconsciousness followed; and when the period of lethargy was finally broken, the scout sat up and stared about him into pitch-black night.
The drug, in clearing out of his faculties, had left a nausea in his stomach. From somewhere in the darkness the baron was groaning in the depths of a similar misery.
“Puffalo Pill!” gulped the baron. “Gootness me! I t’ought meppy you vas deadt. I peen pooty near deadt meinseluf. Ach, vat a trouple in mein inside. Ach! I hope dot I don’d haf to live mooch longer und suffer like vat I am.”
“Nonsense, baron! You were drugged, just as I was. You’ll feel better when you get over the effects.”
“Vell, meppy. I vish Frieda vas here to do somet’ing for me.”
“Don’t waste any time thinking of Frieda. We have other things to command our attention. Are you tied?”
“Neither am I: That’s something, at all events. Strange those scoundrels left us the use of our hands. I can’t understand what they mean by making such a play as this.”
“Sudden! It came like lightning out of a clear sky.”
“Apaches; but there was one white man among them.”
“Give it up,” answered the scout. “It must be that this has something to do with those bullion robberies at the Three-ply.”
“Vell, meppy. I can’t undershtand nodding aboudt id, only I haf sooch a sickness. Ach, ach! Oof I don’d ged vell, id vill be some hardt plows for Frieda, I bed you.”
Rising dizzily to his feet, the scout began groping about him. He touched a steep, jagged wall on every side save one. He looked up and saw a circular patch of sky, glimmering with stars; then the truth dawned upon him.
“We’re in an old mine, baron,” he announced.
The scout’s distress was rapidly passing. With every minute he was getting better, and feeling more like himself.