He was about to strip off his coat, when a shout reached him. It came so suddenly and unexpectedly that it made his heart jump. “Yes?” he yelled, springing to the edge of the chasm and looking about. He did not see any one. “Where are you?” he called, his heart jumping with excitement and new hope. “Here!” The voice had a singular sound, shrill and feminine. He ran along the edge of the chasm, looking down, for it seemed to come from below; and again he shouted an inquiry. Then he saw the figure of a young woman, who was on one of the ledges below him, and was trying to ascend the steep side of the chasm. She had a rope, which she had flung up, with its noose hooked over a projection. “I’m coming!” she cried confidently, and began to climb the rope. Her slight body swung and swayed over the dizzy chasm as she began to climb. Slowly ascending, sometimes she slipped back, with a motion that made him think she was falling and brought his heart into his mouth. He did not clearly see her face now, and he had not secured a very good view of it, but he felt sure he knew who the young woman was. With much difficulty, the girl climbed the rope and drew herself upon the ledge to which the noose held. She looked up, and then he saw her face clearly--the face of Lena Forest. Yet it seemed impossible she could be there, as he had believed she was safe at the fort. While the plucky girl was thus climbing the face of the dizzy precipice, the fire was raging with wild fury, as if it knew that help was coming to the scout and it was determined to overwhelm him before that help could arrive. The increasing heat almost blistered his face and hands now, and it drove him to the very edge of the precipice, over which he soon was hanging, to escape it. With a heroism that was beyond praise, Lena continued to mount, from ledge to ledge, throwing up the rope and catching it on projections, and then climbing up to the projections. At length she gained the ledge below the scout. When she looked up now he saw that she was on the point of exhaustion. Her face was pale, and her eyes were big and bright. Her breath came in gasps, as she stood up for the last cast of the rope. “Catch it!” she said, then the rope shot from her hand, and the noose was caught by the scout. With a turn, he looped the noose over a point of the rock by him, and the next instant he was sliding down the rope. It was like a rescue from the very jaws of death. When Buffalo Bill gained the ledge, he found Lena Forest lying there, almost in a faint, from sheer exhaustion and intense excitement. “Thank Heaven, I was in time!” she said, in a tremulous voice, when she saw he had reached the ledge. “Yes!” he echoed. “I can never thank you enough for that. It saved me from an awful fate, though we’re not entirely secure here.” “No, but you’re safe from the fire.” “Yes, I think so.”