“Then you’ll never leave this cañon alive. Go on with your shooting, boys!”
The last words were a command to the members of the gang, and the crack of weapons again resounded. All the shooting, however, was a waste of good ammunition. The bullets hissed through the air or patted harmlessly against the rocks. So long as the fighters kept themselves hidden there was no danger of casualties.
Changing his position, Buffalo Bill threw himself down at full length, and looked out around the end of the boulder breastwork that shielded him and Wah-coo-tah.
What he saw filled him with consternation. While he had been parleying with Lawless, two of Lawless’ men had left their boulders and stolen up on the ore-dump. Under the protection of the rock pile, the two rascals were making for the platform.
Was it their intention to cut the rope that was hanging in the shaft? the scout asked himself. If it was, and if Nomad or Wild Bill happened at the moment to be climbing upward, cutting the rope would drop them downward, and perhaps cause them to meet the doom that had overtaken the Ponca.
In the hope of keeping the two men from the platform, the scout concentrated his fire upon the ore-dump. The men on the other side of it were carrying out their plans warily, and the scout was given little chance at them.
When they reached the top of the ore-dump, the scoundrels pushed two boulders onto the platform to shield their bodies from the scout’s bullets; then, pushing the stones in front of them, they crawled, snakelike, toward the shaft opening.
The scout’s bullets slapped and hissed against the moving stones, but without doing any damage to the men behind them. All the scoundrels laughed. They seemed to understand the scout’s fears and the laugh was a taunt because they considered that they had baffled him.
Buffalo Bill was just planning a rush back to the ore-dump—a daredevil charge across the open with every outlaw’s weapon firing at him—when something happened which he had not looked for.
The stones on the platform were close to the opening, when, with startling suddenness, old Nomad popped through the hole like a Jack-in-the-box. He took in the situation at a glance, and dropped down on the two desperadoes.