“How did you deceive her,” asked Buffalo Bill.
“I used your name. A note accompanied the vial that contained the drug. The note was signed with your name, and informed her that you were near by, and that her rescue was certain if she would comply with your wish. She must swallow the contents of the vial. A deep sleep would come, the Indians would look upon her as dead, vigilance would be relaxed, and she could be carried away before daybreak. I did not, of course, enter the tepee, but thrust my hand under the wall of skins and made a slight noise to attract her attention.
“The scheme worked better than I had planned. The rescue was made with you, Mr. Cody, as my ally. The fight in the tepee was right to my hand. Before it was over I was on my pony, with Myra in my arms.
“If I used her roughly after she came to her senses, it was because I was half insane with fear. You were in pursuit, I knew it, and I knew, also, that I was doomed unless I got safely out of the mountains.”
“Did Miss Wilton see me before you left the pony to run to the peak?” asked Buffalo Bill. “She acted as if she did.”
“No, she did not see you, but she made me believe she did. Then I must have gone wholly insane. I determined to kill her and then kill myself.”
The tale was told. In a few minutes Rixton Holmes was dead.
Not many weeks later Myra Wilton and Carl Henson were married in Denver. Wild Bill Hickok left his partner to engage in a hunting expedition on the Continental Divide. Buffalo Bill, however, had much else to attend to. He had scarcely finished his work in the Holmes murder mystery before he had received a telegram from Colonel Hayden, an army officer, requesting the aid of the king of scouts in locating his beautiful daughter, who had been kidnaped by a notorious bandit.
CHAPTER IX.
A MAN HUNT IN ARIZONA.
“He does not look as if he had the intelligence of a rabbit, Cody.”