The baron made his nicest bow to Mrs. Dunbar--he had always an eye for the fair--and the lady favored him with a smile in return. “What have you done, baron?” she asked. “Puffalo Pill vill show you dot. He knows aboudt it.” Again the riders dismounted, and left their animals with Cayuse; then they followed Wild Bill, Buffalo Bill, and the baron behind the screen of bushes to a slope leading down to the water’s edge. The slope itself was clear of bushes and trees, but at the top of it were two large sycamores, growing quite close together. Tightly wedged between the trees was a broken and twisted object which had once been saddle. To the saddle a pair of saddlebags were attached. The bags were buckled tightly, and seemed not to have suffered very materially. But it was not the saddle nor the bags that aroused wonder in the minds of the spectators over the mysterious ways of fate. A stout rope was attached to the saddle, while a second rope was writhed around one of the sycamores, one coil wedged over the loose end in such a manner as to make the rope fast. Both ropes--the one from the tree and the one from the saddle--passed between the two trees and down the slope. They ended at the carcass of a steer. At the end of each rope was a tightly drawn noose--a noose that encircled the steer’s head at the root of the wide-branching horns. The steer’s head was drawn grewsomely backward, so that both ropes were taut as fiddle strings between the trees and the horns. It was a most amazing situation--one to be understood only by a sorting of the details. “Great guns!” exclaimed Lige Benner. “Why, that’s Red Thunderbolt.” “The same,” said Wild Bill. “Red Thunderbolt, the man-killing maverick. He has Dusenberry’s life and Red Steve’s charged up against him.” “Who killed Red Thunderbolt?” queried Perry. “Was it you, Wild Bill, or the baron?” “Neither of us,” answered Hickok. “Red Thunderbolt wasn’t made to bite the dust by means of a bullet. Can’t you see what happened? He rushed through between those trees, trailing two ropes, one with a saddle attached; the saddle wedged against the tree trunks, and the other rope twisted around one of the sycamores. Red Thunderbolt charged down the slope. He was brought up short and thrown, with the result that he broke his neck.” Exclamations of wonder came from those who had just reached the scene. Even Bloom had something to say about the queerness of it all. “It don’t seem possible, not at all possible,” said the doctor, “and yet, friends, we have the proof plainly before our eyes. Truth, they say, is stranger than fiction. I’m beginning to believe it.”