“Up behind me, pard!” he said, stooping over so that Buffalo Bill could hear him. “We’ll make a break together, and go down together, fighting. I think I’m good for a half dozen of these wolves before they get me, and you’re good for as many more. There will be something occurring in the graveyard business here to-morrow, anyway.” His eyes flashed fire, and his voice was tense with determination. Buffalo Bill saw that delay only increased the danger. Soon those nooses would be round his own neck and the neck of his friend; and when that happened the end was not far off. “All right!” he cried. Wild Bill swung the horse around as Buffalo Bill sprang for its back. As he did so, his gold-mounted revolver glittered in the light of the Flash Light’s lamps. The time for desperate action on the part of the two pards had come. What the end would be they did not know, but they were prepared to die fighting. CHAPTER XXXVII. THE MAN WHO INTERFERED. In an upper room of the boarding house that occupied the story above the Flash Light Saloon a man sat at an open window, looking down on the exciting scenes described. He had taken that room the day before, had haunted the bar of the Flash Light a good deal since that time, and hinted that he was the wonderful inventor of something that would produce rain. He had not touched much liquor, due doubtless to the fact that his finances were obviously at a low ebb. At least, this was the opinion of Rainey, who sized up the financial ability of every man who came his way. Rainey had paid little attention to this man, who had signed his name on the boarding-house register as Silas Deland. Silas Deland had been sitting by that upper window when Buffalo Bill rode up in front of the Flash Light and had been surrounded by the mob, and he had continued to sit there until after the appearance of Wild Bill. He seemed deeply interested in what was occurring, and leaned now and then from the window. After a while he produced a revolver. Finally he went to the “grip” from which he had taken some cartridges for the revolver, and dug out of it a round object of the size and shape of an egg. With this in his hand, Silas Deland returned to his post by the window, and again looked down on the mob that surrounded the two prairie pards. Once or twice he lifted the hand which held the egg-shaped object, as if he meant to hurl it into the midst of that screaming crowd. But he hesitated, and continued to watch and listen until he saw Wild Bill draw his horse around and Buffalo Bill leap to mount behind him. Then the man’s hand went up again, and the white, egg-shaped object shot through the window.