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 another condition 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-death struggle 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.