Trembling violently, he gazed upon the scout with some shadow of reason struggling to dawn in his expression. It was elusive—fleeting—yet the scout knew that he had touched a chord of memory that shook the man to the foundation of his being.
“Who speaks that name after all these years?” cried the madman again.
“I am Bill Cody—Cody, your old pal. Cody, the man you knew on the Rio Grande!” exclaimed the scout, his own voice shaking, for the discovery he had made passed the bounds of reason.
The strange being shook his head slowly.
“No. You may be whom you say; but the man you spoke of first is dead—dead—a long time dead!”
Buffalo Bill, however, was gaining confidence in his discovery all the time.
“You’re the man! I know you are. Think, man! Send back your memory to those old times. Remember the work we did together. Remember—remember your wife—your child——”
With a shriek like nothing human, with a face that changed in a flash to that of a demoniac, the Mad Hunter hurled himself, bare-handed, at the scout’s throat.
“Fiend! Fiend from the pit!” he yelled. “You have come to torment me and taunt me! Ah! for long have I escaped your taunts; but now you have returned!”
His heartrending cry almost unmanned the scout. He saw that he had touched the wrong chord with the madman. Reminded of the loss of his wife and child, the victim of this awful fate had been thrown into a paroxysm of rage.