“Your friends? Why, I should not think a man like you had a single friend,” Pearl declared boldly.
The face of Bad Burke turned livid with rage. His iron muscles seemed to swell up with suppressed emotion, while his evil eyes glittered like a snake’s. But, controlling himself, he forced a laugh, and answered:
“Yes, miss, even a poor devil like me has friends; but here is the paper the captain sent to your father.”
He again held forth his hand. Pearl reached forth to take what she believed to be a small scrap of paper. Her hand was seized in the iron grip of Bad Burke, who instantly drew her toward him.
Before she could offer the slightest resistance or cry out, his hard palm was over her mouth, and she was held as firmly as though in a vise. But suddenly she saw a dark object descending from a ledge of rock fifteen feet above her.
This dark object struck the burly ruffian fairly on the shoulders and knocked him to the ground. The dark object that had descended so suddenly from the rock, and lighted upon the back of Bad Burke, was a man—one who did not lose his equilibrium by his jump, but caught on his feet, and stood ready, with drawn knife and pistol, to face the outlaw lieutenant.
When released from the grasp of the ruffian, Pearl sprang backward, and again seized her rifle, which she turned upon the outlaw lieutenant.
“Hold! Do not shoot him. Let him come on and face me with his knife, for he boasted a moment since that no man dare face him.”
“In Satan’s name, who are you?” cried Bad Burke, his hand upon his knife hilt.
“Buffalo Bill!”