A cry came from Dell.
Another instant and the scout was dragged downward across the trail, his right arm doubled over the brink, and a tremendous weight pulling him closer and closer to the chasm. He flung out his left hand, and, by rare fortune, the arm encircled a tree that grew on the edge of the precipice.
He was too dazed for a moment to realize what had happened; and then, presently, the awful truth broke over him.
Dell had slipped from the brink of the cliff, and was suspended in mid-air by the steel cuff and the short length of chain!
On the strength of the cuffs and the chain hung the girl’s life!
Buffalo Bill was a powerful man, fibered with nerves of steel and muscles of iron; and Dell, although she was slender, was compactly built, and of more than the average weight for a girl of her inches.
In considering the perilous situation into which the scout and the girl were thus suddenly plunged, it must be remembered that they had just emerged from another condition of baffling mystery which had tried them body and mind.
It was physical unsteadiness which had caused Dell to slip over the brink of the precipice while the scout was staggering across the trail in an attempt to locate the place whence his pard’s voice proceeded.
The truth, when it finally dawned on the scout, broke over him like a thunderclap.
He could not see Dell, for she was swinging below the brink; and he knew that she was swinging there by the awful pull on his right wrist and arm. It seemed to him as though the arm was being gradually drawn from its socket.