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. But _was_ that 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.”