“You must hold on,” came the reply as a command. “Help is on the way.”
A shout from the shelf gave her courage. “I am here, Myra,” called out Carl Henson tremulously. “I have got ropes, and they’ll be down to you in a minute.” While he was speaking Wild Bill was twisting the reatas. In the cove Buffalo Bill breathed a sigh of deepest relief.
The transition from torturing suspense to ardent hope was scarcely set before Bart Angell screamed: “Look out, she is falling!”
He spoke the awful truth. Myra Wilton, turning to look up at her lover, had broken off the end of projection of rock about which her hands were clasped. If she had had wits about her she might have saved herself from falling, but the accident unnerved her, and she relaxed her hold on the solid, fixed, remaining section of the rock.
Carl Henson saw her fall, and would have leaped after her if Wild Bill had not seized his arm in the nick of time.
The young man was struggling in the grasp of the tall scout, when a joyous shout from the cove caused him to gaze into Wild Bill’s face in utter bewilderment.
“A miracle, I reckon,” said the scout to the young man as they both started for the shelf.
And a miracle, or something closely allied to one, had intervened to save the life of Myra Wilton. Her lover, looking down, saw her safe in the arms of Buffalo Bill.
She had not fallen straight from the projecting rock. There were other projections on the side wall of the cove. She had caught at them as she went down, and once her gown had held her up for a few seconds. When at last she fell, to be received in the arms of the king of scouts, she was not more than ten feet from the ground.
Five minutes later she was clasped to the breast of Carl Henson.