The man at the window above looked down and chuckled, and then laughed and chuckled again, rubbing his hands together in a sort of delirious glee.
“Ho, ho!” he said. “They think the bomb was hurled by one of the prairie pards. Well, it’s natural that they should! They’d never suspect poor old Silas Deland up here of doing a thing like that. Poor old Silas is too simple-minded and altogether too innocent an old whisky tub to even think of doing a thing like that. Ho, ho! Hear the heathen rage and imagine vain things. It’s fun to the man up the tree.”
A pursuit was begun in hot haste, the members of the mob seizing whatever horses they could lay their hands on. But with the scouts already out of the town, and the darkness heavy beyond the circle of the street lamps, it seemed unlikely that any pursuit could be effectual.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
DENTON AND DELAND.
There was one man in Scarlet Gulch who, if he had had any doubt of the masquerading of Buffalo Bill’s double, had that doubt completely blown to the wind by what he witnessed in the street before the Flash Light Saloon. That man was young Ben Denton, the lover of Ellen West.
He was far from dead; though wounded in the shoulder, and by the shock of the bullet and his heavy fall rendered temporarily unconscious.
On recovering consciousness, he discovered quickly that Ellen West had been induced to leave the town with the man who had shot him, and he knew she was unaware of that shooting, and had gone with the man in full faith of his sincerity and good intentions.
Having crawled to his feet, and then received aid from friendly hands, who bandaged his shoulder and gave him stimulants, the young fellow’s courage gave him strength to get down into the street before the Flash Light Saloon, where, he heard, Buffalo Bill had been captured and was about to be hanged. He heard the scout’s explanation and declarations of what had taken place, and he was sensible enough to see that this man was really the great scout, of whom he had so often heard, but up to that moment had not beheld. He saw how he and the girl, and all their friends, had been fooled by the man who had been so boldly masquerading as Buffalo Bill.
Denton was in that wild throng when Wild Bill made his appearance, and he was still there when Silas Deland hurled the smoke-and-fire bomb into the crowd, with such spectacular effect.
He saw the escape from the mob of the real Buffalo Bill, on the back of Wild Bill’s horse, and accompanied by that redoubtable fighter. Still lingering and weak, he heard the angry shouting and denunciations, and the wordy commands of Slocum and Rainey, and saw the hasty attempt being made to follow the fleeing men.