The villain’s progress had been stopped. There was a wide gap in the rings; too wide to be covered by a leap.
The path Holmes with his burden had been pursuing terminated at a narrow shelf over an almost vertical wall, which formed the back of a small cove cut out of the base of the peak. The floor of the cove was not smooth. Sharp, jagged sections of the rocky ledge upon which the base rested pointed upward.
Rixton Holmes, standing perilously on the shelf, looked down, and he gave a wild laugh as his eyes fell on the king of scouts, Bart Angell, and Carl Henson. “The jig is up,” he shrieked. “Myra Wilton is going into eternity, and I am going to follow her. I lose and you don’t win.”
“I am going to fire,” said Henson in a husky whisper. “I—I can’t stand this.”
“Wait,” sternly commanded Buffalo Bill. “If there is any shooting to be done, it must be done by me.”
As he ceased speaking, Holmes raised the limp form of the girl above his head.
“Down she goes,” he yelled, and, dazed with horror, Carl Henson started back, his rifle held in a nerveless hand.
It was a frightful moment. Buffalo Bill, whose wits had not deserted him, did not fire, though he might have done so. He realized that a shot would not save the life of the girl, for her form was held directly over the precipice, and that she would fall the instant a bullet entered the brain of the fiend who held her.
Therefore, instead of firing, he leaped into the cove, braced himself, and raised his hands.
There came a savage shout from above, and the next instant the villain fell back on the ringing rocks with Wild Bill on top of him.