CHAPTER XXXIII. TRACKING THE MAD HUNTER.

After a night of uneasy repose, in which the thoughts engendered by his first sight of the Mad Hunter’s face had ridden him like a nightmare, Buffalo Bill was determined to make a thorough search for the maniac. Had he not believed the evening before that the man was likely to remain unconscious until roused by the efforts of the surgeon, he would have begged Captain Keyes to let him stay by the maniac until help could come. He was deeply disappointed when he and Jack Omohondreau could not find the giant.

In the morning he had searched patiently, struck the trail of the madman, and, as the sergeant reported, had started at once to follow and run the maniac down. He had brought his horse, and having left the soldiers, he mounted Chief and followed the big footprints of the wild man at a round trot for some distance.

How seriously the man was wounded, Cody did not know; but his quarry did not seem to try to hide his trail. Straight along the ridge it led, then down into the little valley the scout had ridden across the night before, and so up the range of hills on the other side. Something about the walking of the big man puzzled the scout greatly, and suddenly Buffalo Bill spurred his horse to the summit of a high hill, that he might take a survey of the country over which it seemed the madman might pass.

The soldiers were under way now, and, first of all, Cody saw them traversing a defile at one side, up which they had come from the bivouac of the past night. A steep bluff towered beside them where they were then marching as Buffalo Bill came out upon the back-bone of the range.

The course he had taken in following the madman’s trail had brought the scout out ahead of the marching column. But it was not upon them that his gaze became fastened. Instead, a single moving object upon the summit of the bluff in the shadow of which the soldiers marched held his attention. This object was more than a mile ahead of the soldiery, and would never be noticed from the valley below.

In an instant Buffalo Bill divined the identity of the moving object, and the nature of the work which engaged its attention. The ridge of land on which he stood was unbroken to the bluff itself. He set spurs to Chief and raced along the highlands, knowing that he would not likely be seen by the soldiers, and therefore must do alone what he could to avert the catastrophe which he saw imminent.

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.

“No. You may be whom you say; but the man you spoke of first is dead--dead--a long time dead!”

Buffalo Bill, however, was gaining confidence in his discovery all the time.

“You’re the man! I know you are. Think, man! Send back your memory to those old times. Remember the work we did together. Remember--remember your wife--your child----”

With a shriek like nothing human, with a face that changed in a flash to that of a demoniac, the Mad Hunter hurled himself, bare-handed, at the scout’s throat.

“Fiend! Fiend from the pit!” he yelled. “You have come to torment me and taunt me! Ah! for long have I escaped your taunts; but now you have returned!”

His heartrending cry almost unmanned the scout. He saw that he had touched the wrong chord with the madman. Reminded of the loss of his wife and child, the victim of this awful fate had been thrown into a paroxysm of rage.

For an instant Buffalo Bill hesitated. That hesitation came near to costing him his life. The maniac was upon him and seized his pistol-hand before he could make up his mind to fire at his old friend. The madman’s other hand tightened on the scout’s throat. They swayed upon the edge of the precipice.

Seconds dragged like hours in that struggle. Buffalo Bill had met more than his match in this wild being. Suddenly he heard a cry below:

“Hold, Cody! for God’s sake, hold!”

It was Captain Keyes’ voice. It inspired the sinking scout to make one final and desperate effort. He half-tore him self free of the giant’s clutch.

“Steady! Texas Jack has got the drop on him!” yelled the voice of Keyes again.

Instantly there came the sharp crack of a rifle. The maniac jumped slightly, and his awful grip loosened. The scout tore himself completely away, spattered by the maniac’s blood.

The latter whirled about, back to the brink of the bluff, clutched helplessly at the air with his great hands, and pitched down the declivity. He was dead before he struck the bottom--a heap of broken bones and bruised flesh!

Texas Jack mounted the cliff to see if the scout was all right. He found Cody wiping the blood from his face, and very grave of look.

“Had to shoot him, old man. ’Twas you or him, yuh know,” said the brother scout.

“I know it, Jack. I can only thank you. But I am sorry--bitterly sorry. I knew that man when he was a right good fellow. Ask Captain Keyes to give him decent burial, and to mark the grave--mark it with the letter ‘D.’”

With these words Cody shook hands with his pard and hastened away to where Chief was quietly feeding. In a moment he was riding hard away from the spot where the terrible tragedy had taken place.

Captain Keyes complied with Cody’s request, but was sorry that the scout had evidently gone on his mission of death--for the officer could look at the visit to the Indian encampment in no other light.

He had divided his force, as he said he should, and the vanguard went on to the coulée and buried the dead. All the redskins had been removed, and the place was deserted of the living. But when they came to search for Dick Danforth’s body, intending to remove it to the fort with them, it was not to be found. The brave lieutenant, for whose scalp Buffalo Bill had pleaded with White Antelope, had disappeared from the field of battle.