The robber appeared to be satisfied, and he called out to Lize to get him a bite to eat to keep that “forty-rod” whisky from going to his head. The woman cut him off a huge slice of venison from a roasted haunch and was in the act of handing it to him when her eyes, looking back into the gloom, flashed like those of an angered tigress, and she screamed: “Bill, ye’re betrayed! Look--the soldiers!” “Kill them gals!” shouted Harkness, as he sprang to his feet, leveling his pistol at Mainwaring, who, with his revolver out, was on his feet just as quickly. Mainwaring, hearing the cry, “Kill the girls!” had sprung between them and the woman, and Bill Harkness, following his body with his pistol, fired just as the woman turned, and his ball, instead of hitting Mainwaring, pierced her body. In a second, with a terrible cry, Buffalo Bill sprang forward. As the woman fell, Harkness, turning to meet the onset, received a blow from the knife of the daring scout, which sent him reeling to the earth, while the cavern, filled with soldiers, Pawnee Indians, and scouts, rang with rapid shots as the robbers came rushing out to defend their stronghold. “Up above--up above, and wipe ’em all out, now your hand is in!” cried Steve Hathaway, who knew the route to the top of the cliff. “Traitor, your place is below!” cried Bill Harkness, raising up, with a dying effort, and firing his last shot. As he saw Steve Hathaway fall he dropped back, with a gurgling death rattle in his throat. “He wasn’t the traitor!” yelled the woman Lize, who had crept up to Bill in her dying agony. “There he stands!” And she wrenched the revolver from the hands of the dead man and fired at Dolph Lowell just as he, seeing his danger, leveled his gun at her and fired. Both shots were sure, and while Mainwaring rushed to the girls, to see that they were unharmed, he saw the man fall who would have held a seventy-five-thousand-dollar claim on him. But it was wiped out now. Yet the fight was not all over. The men who were above, hearing the shots below, rushed down in a body, thinking to take the soldiers from the rear, while they supposed Bill Harkness and the others held them in front. But they reckoned beyond their knowledge. They were received as brave Captain Meinhold wanted to receive them, and hand to hand, with saber and revolver, while the Pawnee “friendlies,” Buffalo Bill, and Wild Bill, with battle shout and whoop and yell, went through them as fire goes through dry grass. The robbers, asking no quarter, fought, but they fought without heart and were completely wiped out. When the light of another day dawned men were busy clearing out the narrow road that led from the cavern. Mainwaring was now happy. He could talk to his rescued love, May, all that he wanted to. Ben, too, was in what he termed “de sebenth hebben.” His young mistresses were free; he had heard that his old master was alive and getting well, and he was out of the hands of the bad men.