Thwarted the night before when he sought the life of Captain Keyes, the Mad Hunter was trying to compass a worse crime. The moving form Buffalo Bill knew to be the maniac, and he saw that he was gathering huge rocks into a pile, which he proposed to push over upon the soldiers as they passed below the bluff! It was a fiendish plan, and well worthy of the man’s insane cunning. Buffalo Bill spurred on, and came to a place not many yards behind the Mad Hunter without the latter’s being aware of his presence, so intent was he in the work. Leaving his horse and rifle, the scout, with soft tread and every sense alert, crept up behind the busy lunatic. He saw that the Mad Hunter had put aside his own arms, the better to toil at his horrid trap. With a single shot from his revolver the scout might have dropped the maniac dead, and so relieved the world of a dangerous creature--a being neither man nor brute. But the scout did not wish to hurt the giant. Finally, without being discovered, the scout stood within twenty feet of the Mad Hunter. His eyes were as fierce as a wolf’s, his hands opened and shut with nervous clutches, and his lips moved continuously as he whispered to himself. Yet something familiar in the contour of the poor creature’s face held Cody spellbound. He was moved as he had been the night before when he had first looked upon the features of the wild man. Nearer and nearer drew the column of soldiers, for through a gap in the edge of the bluff Cody could mark their progress. Captain Keyes and his officers, and Texas Jack, rode ahead. The madman prepared to tip his monument of rocks over upon their devoted heads! Suddenly the Mad Hunter picked up a great stone--one that the scout was sure no two ordinary men could lift--and, picking his victim on the plain below, was about to fling it down. Cody quickly dashed across the intervening space, and, revolver in hand, tapped the madman on the shoulder. With a sudden inspiration the scout shouted into the man’s ear a name he had not spoken himself for a dozen years--the name of a man who, until the night before, he had believed long since dead. The Mad Hunter turned in a flash. He dropped the rock. He stared at the scout with wondering gaze. His eyes grew somber as the light of insane rage died out of them. He whispered at last: “Who--who calls me by that name? Speak!” Trembling violently, he gazed upon the scout with some shadow of reason struggling to dawn in his expression. It was elusive--fleeting--yet the scout knew that he had touched a chord of memory that shook the man to the foundation of his being. “Who speaks that name after all these years?” cried the madman again. “I am Bill Cody--Cody, your old pal. Cody, the man you knew on the Rio Grande!” exclaimed the scout, his own voice shaking, for the discovery he had made passed the bounds of reason. The strange being shook his head slowly.