Then, when the bar would yield no more, and not a ray of light came from above, Buffalo Bill took his hands from the lever and straightened up.
A swishing roar passed over their heads, and drops of water trickled down on them.
“Saved!” murmured Dell, leaning nervelessly against the side of the shaft.
“Aye,” said the scout, as the baffled waters thrashed and tossed about the ore-dump, “saved in the nick of time, and by a method I had not dreamed of. That bar, Dell, works a rock curtain near the mouth of the shaft. By pulling the bar, the curtain is shoved across the opening, below the platform. When I first saw this mine, I wondered if it was not in danger of being flooded by a cloud-burst. In order to avoid the danger, it must be that Lawless contrived the rock curtain. Was that the way of it, Wah-coo-tah?”
There was no answer from the Indian girl, and the scout looked down, to discover that she had fallen in a limp heap on the shaft bottom.
“We have neglected her wound too long, Dell,” said the scout. “She has fainted, I suppose, as she came so near doing while we were on our way to the shaft. We will get her back to the ‘drift’ and do what we can for her.”
Picking Wah-coo-tah up in his arms, Buffalo Bill carried her back along the level and into the “drift.” There she was laid down on the rocky floor, the scout’s rolled-up coat serving as a pillow for her head.
While Dell bathed the Indian girl’s face with water, and chafed her temples, the scout was examining her wound.
“What do you think, Buffalo Bill?” Dell asked, as the scout straightened up on his knees.
“It’s a bad wound,” he answered, shaking his head. “What the girl needs is a doctor, and there is not much time to lose. And to think,” he added, in a fierce undertone, “that it was her own father’s men who did this! I always knew a squawman was pretty low down, but I never thought him as mean as that.”