But presently another sharp crack of a rifle rang out, a light flashed out upon the prairie, and momentarily a horseman was seen by its glare. Then a dozen voices cried out:
“Buffalo Bill!”
Beneath his aim another bandit had bitten the dust. In angry tones, the robber chief cried:
“Mount, and after him, men! A thousand dollars for his scalp!”
There was mounting in hot haste, and half a hundred horsemen swept out from the dark covert of a timber and spread over the starlit prairie in pursuit of a dark object, dimly visible, flying swiftly from the human bloodhounds upon his track, but so rapidly distancing them by the remarkable speed of his horse that, before long, in despair of ever capturing the daring foe, one by one the bandits returned to camp to talk over, around the replenished camp fires, the daring of the famous scout, and wonder at his marvelous escapes from death.
CHAPTER XLII.
THE RESCUE.
When the horseman who had so boldly approached the bandits’ bivouac, and laid two of their number dead beneath his aim, sped across the prairie with a score of horsemen at his heels, he had urged his horse to a speed which caused him to soon draw out of range of their rifles, for he was mounted upon his famous horse Midnight, a steed that had never found an equal on the plains.
Having kept up his swift flight for a few miles, and observing that his pursuers had given up the chase, Buffalo Bill halted and dismounted to give his horse a short rest. His eye now caught a rosy light upon the eastern horizon, and then, as though rising from the ocean, the moon sailed upward.