“’Tis the end at last, Boyd Bennett!” sang out the clarion voice of the Border King.
The villain knew it. His eyes rolled, his teeth chattered, his mouth was agape as he reentered the fray. Their left hands were locked again, and the knives clashed. Steadily Cody forced his man back, back, back—until a tree-trunk kept him from going farther. From a crouching position the two men gradually stood erect. The pressure of Buffalo Bill’s bowie against that of his antagonist became a force that the latter could not meet. His arm went slowly back until the elbow struck sharply against the tree-trunk.
With an awful scream of rage and deadly fear the fellow’s fingers relaxed upon the handle of his bowie. The blade clattered to the ground. He clutched feebly at Cody’s throat, and then——
It was indeed the knife to the hilt! Boyd Bennett slipped to the ground and lay there, dead!
CHAPTER XLVII.
THE CONQUEROR.
Buffalo Bill turned his eyes from the bleeding corpse of his enemy, staggered to a near-by boulder, and dropped upon it to rest. His own strength was far spent. Besides, the wound he had received in his shoulder, aggravated by his long, cold swim and the violent exertions of the past few minutes, had broken out bleeding afresh. Boyd Bennett would never know how near he came to being victor himself in this awful battle!
As for the consequence, he dropped upon the rock, exhausted and ill. The hardiest and most seasoned veteran comes to the end of his tether at last, and for thirty-six hours Cody had been riding hard, and fighting hard, and swimming hard—and all without bite or sup! There had been no time for the preparation of food when he left his cave in the mountain to follow Boyd Bennett and the White Antelope, and since that time he had neither dared shoot game nor had he seen the time to cook and eat.
And that which fairly quenched his spirit now was the thought that he seemed to have taken all this hard labor upon his shoulders for naught. True, his old-time enemy was finally dead. Boyd Bennett, the outlaw of the Overland Trail, the Death Killer of the Utah Sioux, would never again trouble mortal man—unless his spirit came back to haunt the scenes of his bloody deeds.
But Buffalo Bill had not put forth all this effort merely to best this old-time foe. First of all, he desired to save the White Antelope, but he seemed to have failed in this. Boyd Bennett had plainly carried his threat into execution. He had actually drowned the unfortunate girl. It had been that thought, more than any other, that had nerved Buffalo Bill to drive the steel home into Bennett’s heart!