“His first thought was that perhaps there were many more, and he made a thorough search. I’m afraid that in that search he got the fever that killed him. The place was horridly damp, as I afterward found; for, after his death, I myself made a thorough exploration of the cave, and discovered that fact, though nothing else. The only gems were round the neck of the idol, I am sure.” She heard him with heartbreaking interest. “I must think about it,” she said; “I must have time to adjust myself to it. It seems unbelievable. Oh, my poor uncle!” She seemed almost to have forgotten her strange position on that ledge, the rescue of the scout, and the roaring of the fire above. For a long time she sat crouching, regaining her strength, while she thought over the sad thing which had thus been brought to her knowledge, and went back in memory to the past. For two years she had lived in the mining cabin not far from this cañon with her father. In many ways those two years had been hard ones for both her and her father. They had been lonely years to her, for he had been away from home a good deal, and his brother, now dead also, had visited them very seldom. But the loneliness had recently been broken by the visits of the young man, to whom she had almost from the first given her heart. Clayton was at Crystal Spring, where he intended to make a home for her, and he was to have met her and accompanied her on her way back to the fort, but she had missed him, and so had come alone. The morning after her return she had seen the fire, and then had discovered that Buffalo Bill, the friend of her lover, was in peril on the high precipice. As she sat in silence on the ledge, grieving over the death of her uncle, she paid scant attention to the beautiful emeralds lying in her lap; but finally she looked down at them, slowly placed them in the buckskin bag, and then gave it to the scout. “Keep them for me a while, until we get out of this danger,” she requested. “I wonder how we are to get out, too?” She looked up at the smoke floating over them in a thick cloud. “Have you thought of any way?” Buffalo Bill, while watching the changing face of the girl, had also been looking at the rope at intervals, fearing the noose would be burned away above. That had not yet happened, and the fire was dying down. There was a great deal of smoke, yet little fire. He took the buckskin bag of emeralds and restored it to his pocket. “I think I’d like to see how that fire is doing,” he said, rising to his feet. He began to climb the rope, and was soon at the top. There was still a good deal of fire in the woods beyond, where some trees were burning, but close by the rocky point there was hardly any blaze now, and the noose of the rope had been untouched. He leaned over and looked down at the girl. “It’s cool enough for one to stand it up here now,” he called to her. “If you’d like to come up, make a noose and put it under your arms.”