“Hang ’em both!” was roared. The crowd surged forward. The rope was flourished by the ruffian who parried it, and from some other point a cowboy’s lasso was hurled forward, for the second noose intended for the neck of Wild Bill.
The dead shot crowded his horse close against the scout, who, since the death of his own animal, was afoot.
“Up behind me, pard!” he said, stooping over so that Buffalo Bill could hear him. “We’ll make a break together, and go down together, fighting. I think I’m good for a half dozen of these wolves before they get me, and you’re good for as many more. There will be something occurring in the graveyard business here to-morrow, anyway.”
His eyes flashed fire, and his voice was tense with determination.
Buffalo Bill saw that delay only increased the danger. Soon those nooses would be round his own neck and the neck of his friend; and when that happened the end was not far off.
“All right!” he cried.
Wild Bill swung the horse around as Buffalo Bill sprang for its back. As he did so, his gold-mounted revolver glittered in the light of the Flash Light’s lamps.
The time for desperate action on the part of the two pards had come. What the end would be they did not know, but they were prepared to die fighting.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE MAN WHO INTERFERED.
In an upper room of the boarding house that occupied the story above the Flash Light Saloon a man sat at an open window, looking down on the exciting scenes described.