Buffalo Bill brought down one of the pursuing wolves, and Pizen Jane another.
Though the living ones stopped to rend the dead and dying, the delay was brief enough.
Yet it enabled the sorely pressed horse to gain on its fiendish foes.
“The ford’s jist ahead of ye now!” Pizen Jane screamed in the ear of Buffalo Bill.
In another minute he saw before him the darkly flowing waters of the river, which had emerged from its cañon bed and here flowed through a quiet landscape.
Buffalo Bill spurred the frantic and terrified horse into the river until the water came up over the girth.
“Draw up your feet,” he said to Pizen Jane.
“I ain’t neither sugar ner salt, to be melted away by a little water,” she declared; “and I dunno but I could swim if I was driv’ to it; so don’t worry about me. Jist so we git out o’ reach o’ them screechin’ varmints, is all I ask.”
The pursuing and infuriated wolves dashed up to the edge of the water.
Buffalo Bill turned in the saddle and dropped one of them by a well-directed shot, and then wounded another.