Up the valley, over the ridges, through the cañon, up to the base of the hill, whereon stood the hermit’s cabin, rushed the riders. Here the two fugitives sprang from their horses and darted up the steep ascent.
But close behind them was Red Hand and Buffalo Bill. At last the ledge was reached, and upon it the hermit turned at bay, for he saw that Red Hand was close behind him. Like an enraged beast, the hermit chief cried:
“Tracked to my lair at last—at last; but, Vincent Vernon, you shall die!”
With gleaming knife, the old hermit sprang forward, but Red Hand, with a cry of rage, as though he recognized the man before him, and had some bitter injury of the past to avenge, met him with a terrible earnestness—met him to hurl him back from him with a strength that was marvelous, and with one plunge of his blade sent its keen point deep into the broad bosom of his foe.
One stifled cry, and the hermit chief fell back his full length upon the hard rock, just as Kansas King, who had found the door of the cabin barred against him, turned also at bay, to be met by a blow from the pistol butt of Buffalo Bill, which felled him, stunned, to the earth.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
THE MYSTERY SOLVED.
Upon the rocky ledge, in front of the cabin, the moonlight streamed with almost noonday brilliancy, and lighted up a strange scene. Lying upon the rock was the hermit chief, his long gray beard and hair shining like silver in the moonlight, and his broad chest heaving with every hard-drawn breath—for the hermit had received his death wound.