The butte on which the girl stood seemed above its surroundings and alone. Not a wrinkle on the surface about it showed at that distance, but far beyond could be seen the sheen of a river, with bushes and little bunches of timber along its banks. “Mebbe she’s a angel, but I didn’t notice any wings,” mused Nomad, staring in that direction, although with the naked eye he failed to see the picture on the bluff. “Yah, yah! Ah reckons she mus’ hab wings, ter hab flewed so high to roost,” remarked Skibo. “Probably the other side of the butte is scalable,” observed Wild Bill, “but if a maiden is lost or hiding from Indians, we ought to rescue her.” “That is right, Hickok,” said the scout, “but----” He hesitated. Buffalo Bill was thinking of the mirage of the morning. There was the butte of the same contour as the one mirrored in the sky. The crevice did not show, but he believed it would be visible, on nearer approach. “But what, Buffler?” asked Nomad. “I think we have discovered all we shall of this mystery unless we spend a lot of time on it,” quietly answered the scout. “That is just what I was thinking,” said Wild Bill. “Ye don’t think this hyar kentry is _muy malo_, do ye?” queried Nomad. “No, Nomad; I think the country is all right, but I’ll wager that there is some deep mystery in this case of a girl on the apex of a pinnacle in the middle of the wildest country in the Northwest. “We will investigate as far as practicable at this time, and, if we do not reach an explanation readily--as I do expect we shall--we must ride on and attend to our duties first; then if we care to come back here to unravel a mystery, that will be our privilege.” “Righto!” chirped Wild Bill, “but suppose we toddle on the base of the bluff and look around it? That will not occupy much time.” They were obliged to advance more or less cautiously because of the broken nature of the footing, seams and chasms running hither and thither, like rivulets after a shower. At last at the base of the isolated butte, which was much larger and higher than it appeared from the distance, the pards found it to be a precipitous wall of more than one hundred feet from base to top of the main cone, and this was surrounded by a massive foot-piece more than half as high and three times as broad. By difficult climbing and jumping wide and deep crevices, they at last attained the top of the base rock, which was as level as a house floor and formed a plateau of probably two hundred acres. Out of the centre of this arose the shaft first seen, towering scores of feet above them, an apparently solid block of rock, smaller in circumference at the base than at the top, as smooth and as impossible of ascent as the outer surface of Bunker Hill monument. It was on the top of this block, which was perhaps sixteen hundred feet in circumference or five hundred feet in diameter, that they had seen a human being.