CHAPTER XXVI.THE AWAKENING.

CHAPTER XXVI.THE AWAKENING.

Buffalo Bill shivered, and opened his eyes.

“Dell!” he exclaimed; “Cayuse!”

No answer was returned, and slowly the scout’s faculties began drifting out of a maze of experiences, trying to eliminate false impressions and hold to the true.

First, where was he?

He was sitting on a stone. Before him was a wagon-trail, crawling along an eight-foot shelf.

At the outer edge of the shelf the mountain fell away in a dizzy precipice; the inner edge was a perpendicular wall, with the stone on which he was sitting at its foot.

The last thing he remembered he was in a little valley, close to a spring. The horses were feeding, and he, and Dell, and Cayuse were having a meal off their rations.

Butwasthat the last thing he remembered?

He tried to lift his hands to his face and brush them across his eyes. Only one hand obeyed his will—the left one. The right seemed bound to a weight. Just then he did not investigate the weight, for he could reason but slowly and deal with only one thing at a time.

No, the last thing he remembered was seeing Bear Paw moving backward in a circle at the end of his picket-rope, and Navi and Silver Heels also acting queerly.

Just before that Buffalo Bill recalled that he had been acting queerly himself, and Dell, too, and Cayuse. A flickering memory of his fight to get back his reason came to him; then followed—oblivion.

A moment before, it seemed, they were on the borders of night; now they were at the edge of day, and the sun was rising over the scarred uplifts of a region to him unknown.

He dropped his eyes to his right hand. The wrist was red and swollen. There was a manacle about it, connected by a bit of chain to a smaller and more shapely hand.

Then, for the first time, he realized that Dell was beside him, leaning wearily back against the cliff wall and sleeping soundly.

“Dell!” he called, laying his left hand on the girl’s, which was bound to his right by the handcuff and the length of chain.

The puzzle of it all defied the scout’s reasoning. He needed help to unravel the mystery.

“Dell!” he called again, in a louder tone.

The girl opened her eyes dreamily.

“Time to start for Tonio Pass, Buffalo Bill?” she asked.

Impulsively she started to rise, but felt her hand secured. Settling back on the rock, her troubled eyes wandered from the handcuffs to the scout’s face.

“What has happened?” she asked, bewildered. “What does this mean?”

“I wish I could tell you,” the scout answered. “I have been racking my brain over it for several minutes.”

“Where are we?”

“I don’t know.”

“How do we happen to be here?”

“That’s another poser.”

For a brief space the two stared at each other in amazement.

“Who handcuffed us together?” pursued Dell.

“You’ll have to ask me something easier,” said the scout. “If I believed in witches, I should say that they had been exceedingly busy last night.”

“This—this is awful!” breathed Dell. “Let us think. My brain seems all in a whirl. If we take a little time to think, perhaps we can arrive at some solution of the mystery.”

They took time; and, finally, the scout began to voice the result of his mental labor.

“You remember the spring,” said he, “and the peculiar taste of the water?”

“Yes, yes!” returned the girl eagerly.

“That spring must have been drugged with some peculiar loco-weed. I can remember saying crazy things, and trying to stop myself and talk sense, shortly after we had taken a drink at the pool.”

“I can remember something like that, too.”

“And I can remember the horses acted queerly, and I recall a desperate but unsuccessful attempt which I made to pull myself together and keep my wits. Following that, all is a blank until a little while ago, when I opened my eyes here, on this rock, and found you beside me.”

“Where did the handcuffs come from?”

The scout explained about the Apache scout, and how he had brought the handcuffs from Geronimo.

“First thing,” said he, “we’ll remove the cuffs. Can you slip your hand free?”

Dell tried, but could not, for her small hand seemed swollen terribly.

“There’s a key to the cuffs somewhere,” went on the scout.

He dug into his pockets for the key, but it was gone.

“Here’s an odd situation, and no mistake,” he said, with a rueful laugh. “We’ll have to stay manacled together, Dell—for a while, at least.”

“Do you think the Apaches drugged the pool?” asked Dell.

“Who else could it have been if not the Apaches?”

“But what do they know about drugs?”

“Geronimo, they say, knows many things the white men do not dream of. There are herbs growing in this country which are said to have powerful medicinal properties. Indians, as a rule, are versed in the use of herbs.”

“It is all very dark to me,” said the girl helplessly. “If Geronimo drugged the pool from which we drank, in the valley, why was he not there to make prisoners of us?”

“Some of the Apaches may have put on these manacles as we find them; then, in some manner, we may have eluded the Apaches and got away. It’s all guesswork, Dell, and one guess is as good as another.”

“But Cayuse!” exclaimed Dell, taking sudden thought of the little Piute. “Where canhebe?”

The scout lifted his voice in a loud cry: “Cayuse! Cayuse!”

Echoes alone answered him, booming out across the dizzy chasm that lay under the outer edge of the shelf.

“There’s no telling where he is,” said Dell. “Had we not been manacled together like this, quite likely we should have become separated from each other.”

“True enough. This road, winding around the mountain, appears to be a military road. Perhaps if we follow it, it will lead us to Bowie.”

“But our horses!”

“As for finding our horses, I haven’t the least notionwhich way the valley and that drugged pool lies from this place. I have my six-shooters,” the scout added, looking down at his belt and holsters; “and, while that is surprising, it is certainly anagreeable surprise.”

“I have mine, too,” returned Dell. “We must have retained enough of our wits to carefully guard our revolvers.”

“That may have been less a matter of wits than of mere chance. However, we have them, and——”

“Buffler!”

The scout’s body grew rigid. A voice—the familiar voice of Nick Nomad—had suddenly called the scout’s name.

“Did you hear it, Dell?” Buffalo Bill muttered.

“Yes.”

“I—I thought I might be imagining it; that, perhaps, it might be a part of the mystery we are trying to unravel.”

“No imagination about the voice, Buffalo Bill,” reassured the girl. “It was real enough, and it certainly belonged to Nomad.”

“Buffler!” cried the voice again. “Injuns—’Paches! Take ter ther road, an’ hustle.”

Still in the dark as to where Nomad was, the mention of Apaches brought the peril of the situation clearly before the scout’s mind.

“Come, Dell!” said the scout; “we can’t ignore that warning. Nomad is somewhere, and he is doing his best for us. We’ll go down the trail.”

Together the two arose from the rock. The next moment they made the discovery that they were unsteady on their feet—and this at a time when they needed all their steadiness and strength.

Reeling back and forth, they started down the trail.

“Where are you, Nick?” shouted the scout.

“Go on, Buffler, go on!” roared the voice of the trapper. “I’ll be on hand when ye need me. But keep ter ther trail! Keep ter ther middle o’ ther trail! Steady, thar, steady! Look out fer Dell—look out——”

Dell was on the side nearest the brink of the precipice. As the words of Nomad, seemingly coming from infinite space, throbbed in the scout’s ears, he felt a sudden, terrific pull at his right hand.

A cry came from Dell.

Another instant and the scout was dragged downward across the trail, his right arm doubled over the brink, and a tremendous weight pulling him closer and closer to the chasm. He flung out his left hand, and, by rare fortune, the arm encircled a tree that grew on the edge of the precipice.

He was too dazed for a moment to realize what had happened; and then, presently, the awful truth broke over him.

Dell had slipped from the brink of the cliff, and was suspended in mid-air by the steel cuff and the short length of chain!

On the strength of the cuffs and the chain hung the girl’s life!

Buffalo Bill was a powerful man, fibered with nerves of steel and muscles of iron; and Dell, although she was slender, was compactly built, and of more than the average weight for a girl of her inches.

In considering the perilous situation into which the scout and the girl were thus suddenly plunged, it must be remembered that they had just emerged from anothercondition of baffling mystery which had tried them body and mind.

It was physical unsteadiness which had caused Dell to slip over the brink of the precipice while the scout was staggering across the trail in an attempt to locate the place whence his pard’s voice proceeded.

The truth, when it finally dawned on the scout, broke over him like a thunderclap.

He could not see Dell, for she was swinging below the brink; and he knew that she was swinging there by the awful pull on his right wrist and arm. It seemed to him as though the arm was being gradually drawn from its socket.

All that kept him from going over the edge with Dell and dropping to the depths of the gulch was his hold on the small tree which grew out of the rock crevices.

Buffalo Bill’s faculties were all taken up with the predicament that immediately faced himself and Dell. Suddenly his eyes, close to the ground, turned up the trail. He saw two painted forms creeping down relentlessly upon him and the girl.

Had those redskins, at that moment, stood over the scout with uplifted knives, he could not have made the slightest move in his own defense.

The scout turned his eyes away from the creeping savages with a stifled groan. Not a sound came from the form that hung below the brink. What the girl’s thoughts must have been, providing she retained the full use of her faculties, may readily be imagined.

The terrific strain was as trying to Dauntless Dell as it was to the iron muscles of Buffalo Bill. The Indians were coming; and where was Nomad?

Buffalo Bill had been so wrapped up in his own life-and-deathstruggle at the cliff’s edge that, for a time, he had ceased to think of Nomad. Abruptly, thoughts of the old trapper darted through the scout’s brain.

“Nick!” he shouted, his voice hoarse and muffled by its proximity to the ground.

There was no answer from Nomad. After all, it must have been a dream—the scout’s imagining he had heard his pard’s voice in warning.

“Buffalo Bill!”

It was Dell’s voice, floating upward front the chasm.

“Yes?” the scout gasped.

“This is hard on you. Why not let go and end it all?”

“Never! The last ditch and the last breath always for me.”

“But the Apaches are coming—two of them. I can see them as I swing out and back. Once they looked over at me, and they acted queerly. It can only be a matter of a minute or two, at most. Why not cheat them of their intended prey?”

“No!” said the scout, his voice little more than a whisper.

“If I could release myself,” said Dell, “I would. If I were not hanging here, you could take care of the Indians and save your own life.”

Further response from the scout was impossible. His lips moved, but not a wisp of sound came through them.

He turned his eyes toward the redskins again. He saw, now, that they were coming down the trail on all fours, jumping and springing about on their hands and knees in a most unheard-of manner. Occasionally they would bump into each other, whereupon they would snarl and snap their teeth like wolves.

All at once one of them raised his face upward andyelped like a coyote. The next moment he leaped over the scout’s sprawled-out form and went on down the trail. The second Apache followed.

The scout was too wrought up to think much of this remarkable exhibition at the time. The principal point was, the Indians had spared him; and how much longer could he hold out against the dragging weight?

The two Apaches wabbled and snapped and snarled until they had vanished around a turn in the road; then, all at once, Buffalo Bill became aware of a form kneeling beside him and bending down far over the brink.

“Dell!”

This word, in Nick Nomad’s voice, beat stridently in the scout’s ears.

“Here,” came Dell’s answer. “What is it, Nomad?”

“Reach up with yer right arm an’ see ef ye kin grab holt er my hand. Easy, now. No quick moves, mind, er we’ll hev Buffler rocketin’ out inter space, and ther two o’ ye drappin’ er mile er two straight down on ther rocks. Kin ye reach?”

“Yes—just a second.”

There was a breathless pause.

“Bully fer you, Dell!” said Nomad, and took a grip on the scout’s tree. “Now throw all yer heft in yer right an’ leave ther rest ter me.”

Buffalo Bill felt the weight leave his right arm, and his body buckled under the release like an overstrained girder that has suddenly snapped.

His left arm dropped from the tree, and his right still hung at the brink. Panting like a spent dog, he continued to lie with his face to the rocks.

“Hyar ye come!” said Nomad, and foot by foot he pulled Dell over the edge of the wall. “An’ thet,” he finished,as Dell sank down on the rocks, “is erbout ther closest call Pard Buffler an’ Dauntless Dell hev had in many a day. Waugh! I feel like ther strain on me was as bad as et was on you an’ Buffler. Every minit I thort was shore goin’ ter be ther next with ye. Et took me some time ter git hyar, an’ I was almost skeered ter look when I got whar I could see ye when I struck ther trail. However did et happen, anyways?”

“I—I was unsteady and could not walk straight,” replied Dell. “I felt all right in every other way, only my feet would not go where I wanted them to. Getting too close to the edge, I slipped over, and——”

“I seen thet, Dell. What I means is, how did you an’ Buffler come ter be ironed tergether like thet?”

“Neither of us know.”

Nomad stared incredulously.

“What! Ye don’t know? Howlin’ hyeners, gal, ye don’t mean ter tell me ye an’ Buffler could git manacled tergether without never knowin’ who et was done et?”

“That’s precisely what I do mean to tell you, Nomad,” insisted the girl. “Queer things happened last night. Buffalo Bill and I know that much.”

“Whenwas ye manacled?” pursued the wondering trapper.

“It was some time after sundown, yesterday.”

The scout, lifting himself slowly, took a sitting posture beside the girl. His right wrist was gouged and bleeding, as was also Dell’s.

“Ye had er plumb tough time, Buffler,” commiserated Nomad, his eyes on the two wrists and the red-stained manacles.

“One of the roughest times I ever had, Nick,” returned the scout in a low tone.

“I reckoned yer arm would be pulled off’n yer body.”

“So did I.”

“If I could have released myself,” cried Dell, “I would have done so.”

“And lost your life, pard,” said the scout, “while now it has been saved. We’ll both get over the effects of that experience in due time. I wonder how long it lasted?”

“Et couldn’t hev been more’n five minits,” said Nomad.

“Five minutes! It seemed like five years. Is my hair white, Nick?”

“Nary, Buffler. Et’s ther same color et allers was. Why don’t ye take ’em off?” and the trapper indicated the handcuffs.

“Can’t do it without a file.”

“A key gin’rally op’rates things like them. Who’s got ther key?”

“I did have it in my pockets, along with the cuffs. Go through my clothes carefully, Nick, and see if you can find it. I took a look, a while ago, but I couldn’t do it very well with one hand fastened to Dell’s.”

The trapper looked through his pard’s pockets thoroughly, but without result.

“I reckon,” observed the scout, “that Dell and I are hooked up to stay until we get back to Bonita. Do what you can to take care of that wrist of yours, Dell. See if you can’t get a handkerchief around the wrist, under the cuff.”

Dell groped for her handkerchief, and finally found it in the breast of her blouse. As she jerked it out, a small object flew from it and dropped on the cliff, within an inch of the edge. The scout gazed at the object as though fascinated.

“Thar’s a key now!” cried the trapper.

“Right, old pard,” said Buffalo Bill; “it’s the key to the handcuffs. It was in my pocket last night. Will somebody please explain how it comes to be in Dell’s handkerchief this morning?”

“More mystery,” murmured Dell. “One more incomprehensible thing to be added to the night’s list. Some time and somehow I hope we shall be able to understand all that has happened.”

“Here, too,” added the scout.

“Waal,” put in the trapper, “how ther key happened ter git from Buffler’s pocket inter Dell’s handkercher is er hocus-pocus thet don’t matter much, seein’ as how ther key is ther main thing, an’ we got et.” He stooped and recovered the key from the rocks. “Hyar’s whar I bust this combination an’ git you two separated. Stand up er minit.”

The scout and the girl got to their feet, and Nomad unlocked the old-fashioned iron bracelets. He was about to fling them over the cliff when Buffalo Bill stopped him, took the cuffs and the key, and returned them to his pocket.

“Now,” said the scout, “we’ll hunt up a scrap of shade and try to understand how you got here, Nick, along with a few other details that are easier to comprehend than the mysterious things that happened to Dell and me last night.”

“Jest er minit, pards, afore we dip inter thet,” said the trapper.

Bounding off down the trail, he disappeared from sight behind the turn.

“Where has he gone?” queried Dell.

“To look after those two Apaches who came down on us while we were hung up at the brink,” the scout answered,leading the way to the stone on which he and the girl had found themselves when their senses returned.

“Ah, yes,” mused Dell, seating herself at the scout’s side, “I had forgotten the Apaches. I saw them while I was swinging over the cliff. Did Nomad frighten them away?”

“No. They came down the trail on all fours, acting like a pair of coyotes. When they reached me, they sprang over and went sniffing and snarling down the trail. They acted as though they were locoed.”

Dell started and dropped a hand on the scout’s arm.

“Can it be——” she began, and suddenly stopped.

“That they drank from the same pool that played hob with us?” finished Buffalo Bill. “I shouldn’t wonder, Dell. Nothing else could have caused a pair of murderous reds to pass me by like they did. I was utterly helpless to defend myself. One swift blow would have done the work.”

“But if Geronimo had doctored that little pool of water, wouldn’t he have warned his followers to beware of it?”

“One would naturally think so. We’re only guessing at things now, and, as I said before, one guess is as good as another.”

At that moment Nomad returned.

“Couldn’t find ther pizen whelps,” he announced, dropping down at Buffalo Bill’s side. “I never set eyes on sich crazy varmints. At fust I thort they was creepin’ up on you an’ Dell, but they acted so plumb bughouse, I didn’t know what ter think.”

“Where were you, Nick, when you called to me?” the scout asked.

Nomad lifted his eyes and waved a hand toward the top of the cliff.

“Up thar,” said he. “Up thar, an’ gazin’ down on ye. When I seen Dell go over, I couldn’t drap ter ther trail without mebbyso breakin’ my neck, so I had ter hunt fer er place ter come down. When I found ther place, an’ got down, I was skeered ter look at ther place whar I’d seenyou an’ Dell last. Waugh!” and the old man shook himself. “I was under somethin’ of er strain, too,” he finished.

“Did you just happen to find us sitting on this rock here this morning?”

“Nary, Buffler. I been follerin’ er mighty devious night trail, I kin tell ye. I jest happened ter find ye last night.”

“How?”

“I was skirmishin’ in ther direction o’ Bonita, intendin’ ter arrive thar, somehow, ef I didn’t git double-crossed in my calkerlations. I’d been dodgin’ Apaches ever sence I saved my skelp in thet ambush, appeasin’ my hunger with mesquit-beans an’ sichlike forage, feedin’ like er pizen hoss, an’ glad ter git my fodder at thet.

“When I seen you an’ Dell, I reckoned ye was two more Apaches, kase et was in er dark gully whar I fust seen ye. I ducked inter ther bresh, an’, when ye got by, began movin’ down ther gully. But et was er blind gully, an’, not hevin’ my wings erlong, I couldn’t git out o’ et without comin’ back ther way I went in.

“I passed er cave. Ther mouth o’ et looked like a tollable place fer a fugertive like me ter bunk down fer an hour’s snooze: but, as I was erbout ter start in an’ investigate, I seen a ’Pache on gyard at ther entrance, so I says: ‘Excuse me,’ ter myself, an’ moseyed on.

“T’other end o’ ther blind gully opened inter a gulch. When I hit ther gulch, I seen you an’ Dell ahead o’ me,an’ at fust glance I thort ye was ther same two ’Paches I passed in ther gully; then another look, with ther moonlight shinin’ full on ye, showed me I was mistook. I seen one o’ ye was er gal, an’ t’other er man, but I didn’t suspect one was Dell an’ t’other Buffler Bill till I’d come closter.

“As soon as I found out I was nigh ter my pards, I give er joysome yell an’ jumped arter ye; direckly tharafter, I give another yell thet wasn’t so joysome an’ ducked fer the shelter of er rock. I’m er Piegan, Buffler, ef you an’ Dell didn’t both open on me with yer hardware!

“Was I rattled? Was I dumfoundered? Waal, some. ‘Say, pard,’ I whoops, ‘et’s me, Nick!’ With thet I showed my shoulders over ther rock so’st ye an’ Dell could see me in ther moonlight, an’ know I wasn’t talkin’ with two tongues, even ef ye didn’t reckernize ther meller trill o’ my bazoo.

“Then I was rattled some more, kase ye fanned my face with er lead pill, an’ howled like er Commanche. ‘Don’t ye dare come nigh me!’ sez you, like thet; ‘don’t ye dare come nigh me,’ you says, knockin’ me all of a heap. ‘This hyar’s my sister, an’ I’m takin’ her ter town.’

“I allowed right off, Buffler, thet ye was madder’n a locoed steer, but I didn’t see how Dell could be locoed, too. So I whoops ter Dell: ‘Don’t you reckernize old Nomad, gal?’

“An’ would ye b’leeve et? Dell larfs right out. ‘Go ’way,’ says she; ‘I’m goin’ ter town with my brother, an’ you ain’t got no call ter interfere. I’m ther Queen o’ Sheeby, an’ he’s King Bill, brother Bill. Hands off, er we’ll give ye yer ticket.’

“I knowed by thet thet Dell had been grazin’ on ther same crazy weed that growed on yore range, Buffler. I didn’t dare come up with ye, an’ I didn’t dare let ye git erway from me, seein’ as how ye might run onter ’Paches an’ git inter trouble. So I follered.”

Nomad leaned back against the cliff and drew his sleeve over his wet forehead.

“Tork erbout yer night trails,” he went on, “thet was ther wust thing o’ ther kind I ever went up ag’inst. Think er me, trailin’ two pards through them gullies an’ uplifts, fearin’ any minit ye’ll turn on me an’ do me up with er bullet! An’ all ther time, ye onderstand, I was afraid ye’d plump inter a bunch o’ ’Paches. Ef ye’d done thet, I’d hev had ter run ter yer rescue, an’ mebbyso got peppered by you as well as ther reds. Oh, I dunno! I reckons thar’s times when a feller feels wuss nor he does at others, but ef I ever sees er time I feels wuss nor I did last night, I wants some ’un ter wake me up an’ tell me.”

A slight smile curled about the scout’s lips. There was a humorous side to the situation, and he saw it. Dell, however, saw the other side, and she reached out her hand and laid it on Nomad’s big, hairy paw.

“Nick,” she said gently, “of course you know that Buffalo Bill and I hadn’t the least idea what we were doing.”

Nomad gave the small hand a pat, and grinned a little himself.

“’Course I knows et, Dell,” said he, “but thet didn’t lighten matters none fer yore ole pard last night. I had ter keep arter ye, kase I couldn’t let ye git away. Now an’ ergin ye’d sot down ter rest, wharupon it was me ter hover in ther background, breathin’ on’y when necessary an’ imaginin’ every minit Buffler ’u’d find me out.

“Some time clost ter mornin’ ye give me ther slip.Kain’t onderstand noways how it was done. You two went inter a short ravine. I didn’t see ye come out. Waitin’ fer er spell, I trailed keerful through thet ravine, an’ ye wasn’t thar! No, sir, ye’d vanishedplumb.

“From then on I was huntin’ all ways, up an’ down, for’ard an’ back an’ crossover. Day began ter loom up, ther sun climbed over ther peaks an’ found me on ther top of thet clift, up thar, lookin’ down on this trail an’ ther edge o’ another clift. Then”—Nomad heaved a long breath—“I seen you two a-settin’ on this rock, bound tergether with them bracelets, torkin’ ter each other. I passed my eyes along ther trail tryin’ fer a place ter git down. Somehow, you struck me as hevin’ got yer senses back, an’ I wanted to bust in on ye, an’ say: ‘Buffler, hyar’s me; take er good look, an’ fer Heaven’s sake don’t shoot yer ole pard.’ I didn’t see er way down jest then, but I did see them thar ’Paches a-creepin’ down on ye, as I thort. Then I tuned up, an’ you two looked every way but ther right ’un. Ye got up, staggerin’like, an’ I tuned up ergin. Then I seen Dell tumble off ther clift, an’ I near tumbled off’n thet other clift, up thar, myself. I scrambled eround fer er place ter git down, an’—an’—— Waal, thet’s erbout all. Hyar we aire, big as life, an’ we hev come through things, Buffler, like we never went through afore, an’ like I hopes we’ll never go through ergin.”

Once more Nomad pulled his sleeve across his forehead.

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