The boy’s left hand grasped the barrel of an empty revolver; he had used it as a club at close quarters. The right held his sword-hilt, the blade buried in the body of a painted chief, whose death was probably the last act of the dying leader of the slaughtered troops. About him lay the foe, piled in heaps. Dick Danforth had sold his life at a dear price, indeed. And the fiends had run without scalping him! “Danforth dead!” murmured the scout. “It cannot be possible.” Yet it was true; he saw it plainly before he touched the already stiffening body. Merely by some freak of circumstances the young man had not been scalped. “Devils’ work this!” muttered the scout. He glanced again over the field. There were many points that had at first escaped his attention. For instance, there were shod horses lying dead that had never been ridden by either cavalrymen or Indian! “Aye, Indians did the deed, but there is a paleface hand behind it, and I mean to ferret out the fiend who inspired it,” said Buffalo Bill. He dropped upon his knees again and felt of Danforth’s body. There, in a voice quivering with sorrow and passion, he exclaimed: “Aye! here beside the body of the man whom I loved--who saved me from death--I swear revenge on the instigator of this crime!” In his deep feeling he spoke these words aloud. A sound smote upon his ear. He sprang to his feet with a cry and turned as a harsh voice pealed out behind him: “And _I_ swear, Buffalo Bill, that you shall never keep the oath your lips have just uttered!” CHAPTER XXVII. “THE DEATH KILLER.” Buffalo Bill had believed himself alone with the dead on this field of blood, and the voice fell like a knell upon his ear. For the moment he was half-unmanned. Then he wheeled completely to face the speaker. He knew then that he had an old and deadly foe to deal with. His discovery, however, brought the scout to himself. He recovered his presence of mind, and in a tone that was reckless in its defiance, he cried: “So we meet again, do we, Bennett? And you think you hold the trumps once more?” “I do--and likewise a revolver at your head, Cody!” declared the bandit. “Drop your rifle!” The scout obeyed. The pistol in Bennett’s hand was a well-timed argument. To all appearances the man was an Indian chief, for he was bedecked with feathers, his face was hideously painted, and he wore the full attire of a redskin, from moccasins to war-bonnet. At his back, with rifles and arrows likewise covering the scout, were a score of braves who had, with the stealthy tread of panthers, followed their leader to the spot where Buffalo Bill had mourned over the bodies of the slain white men. Cody knew well that he was at the mercy of a merciless foe. “You know me, do you, Cody?” said the bandit. “Oh, I know you--even if you’ve turned squaw-man,” said Cody bitterly. “I recognize your black heart under the paint and feathers.”