And what of Buffalo Bill, in the level of the Forty Thieves?
Something like a sob rushed through the lips of Little Cayuse. He shook one clenched hand behind him, toward a wall of water that filled the cañon from side to side, tossing and churning itself to foam and throwing arms of spray high into the air.
The roar was deafening. Water continued to pour through the break in the cañon wall and to push forward the flood that raced down the defile.
How Navi ever covered those two miles Little Cayuse never knew. He realized, after what seemed like a thousand years of torment but which in reality was less than a thousand seconds, that he was caught by the rushing waters half-way up the slope leading from the cañon’s bed to the mouth of the gully.
With Navi almost swept from his feet, and a greater flood following the first on-rush of water, Cayuse was only saved from being drowned by a riata that dropped over his shoulders just as he was being torn from Navi’s back.
Hanging to the rope with one hand while the noose tightened about his body, and with the other hand clinging to the end of the hackamore, Cayuse and the pinto were brought, wet and floundering, into the mouth of the gully.
Utterly exhausted, the boy straightened out on the rocks, while Navi, with drooping head and lathered hide, puffed and panted beside him.
“Blamed if it ain’t Buffler Bill’s Injun pard!” cried a voice, above the rush and swirl of water.
“How the blazes does he happen ter be hyer? He got out o’ that cloud-burst by the skin o’ his teeth, an’ no more.”
This was from a second speaker, and yet a third chimed in with: