There were about thirty rooms in the building, some furnished with chairs and bedsteads, but of all else the place had been swept clean.
Selecting the rooms that were to be their quarters, and being glad to see that the place within the walls would readily hold all their horses and cattle in an emergency when the entrance was repaired, Buffalo Bill was passing out through a long and dimly lighted corridor, when he beheld before him what appeared to be two diamonds glittering in the half darkness.
But he was not deceived, he had seen just such balls of fire often before in his eventful life, and he was as quick as a flash in dropping his hand upon a weapon in his belt.
It was his knife, and he had just time to draw it and raise the point, when, with a savage growl there sprang upon him a huge mountain lion.
The weight of the animal hurled Buffalo Bill backward, and he fell against the rough wall with considerable force, bruising his face badly, while he also felt the teeth of the mad animal buried in his arm.
But he had got his knife on guard, and the long, sharp blade had cut into the heart of the lion, the force of the spring driving it to the hilt.
Half dazed by the fall against the wall and the blow of the huge body against him, Buffalo Bill yet recognized that he must cut, and once more he drove his knife deep into the shaggy hide.
But to his joy he recognized that there was no need of his doing more, for the animal upon him was a dead weight, the first knife thrust had entered his heart, and the teeth that had been driven into the scout’s arm had not been closed upon it, for the mountain lion had sprung to a quick and sudden death, the keen blade catching, by an accident, just in the right spot to kill.
Throwing off the weight, Buffalo Bill arose to his feet.
Was it from the concussion that he had received that made strange figures appear before his eyes, or did he really behold a ghostly form, clad in white, at the end of the long, dark corridor, one arm pointing straight outward, the other down at the ground.