But his warning came too late for Price, whose tottering condition sent him headlong.
As he felt himself going into the black depths below, the former Indian agent and gambler, who had bled more tenderfeet than any other bad man of Bozeman, uttered a wild cry of despair.
But Price’s last hour had not come. After a fall of not more than ten feet he landed in a deep pool of ice-cold water, and went down, down, till his head seemed bursting before he reached the top again.
Gasping and thrashing about, calling wildly for help, and begging Ike to save him, Price raised a pitiful howl that irritated Ike.
“You make more noise than a gang of scared young ones,” said Ike. “If you don’t shut up I won’t bother to pull you out. Buffalo Bill’s gang can hear you all over the mountain.”
Price continued to plead, and, striking a match, Ike was able to see his way down the rocks to where he could reach his struggling companion.
That ended their journey that night, for Price absolutely refused to proceed in the darkness. He was shivering and exhausted, his teeth chattering and his courage ebbing out with his strength.
Ike groped about until he found a gash in the gully they had been pursuing, where a thick growth of stunted spruce and fir had found footing. In a pocket in the rocks he started a fire and Price hovered over it in an attempt to warm his body and dry his clothing.
Ike lay down to sleep, and declared with half-suppressed anger that he didn’t care what happened.
Standing over the fire, until he choked from the smoke of it, and slapping himself to increase the blood flow, Price almost fell over and his knees knocked together from some cause other than cold, when a voice beside him said: