Chapter XXXII: The Mystery of the Dagger

Shortly before daybreak Buffalo Bill turned aside again, rode at an easy gait for a couple of miles, and then sought a resting place. He found it in a glade watered by a spring. The glade contained grass, as well as water, for his horse.

Trusting to the same mysterious faculty which had aroused and warned him of danger in the hacienda, Buffalo Bill lay down, wrapped in the Mexican blanket he had found behind the saddle, and gave himself up to deep sleep. Yet deeply as he slept, he would have been aroused by the slightest sound of a suspicious nature, though the movements of the horse did not disturb him in the least.

Many a night when Indian foes hunted for his life, he had thus lain down to get a little needed rest, though knowing that he was literally surrounded; and he had trusted to the security given by that singular faculty which warned him as certainly of danger as the odor of some venomous serpent warned him of its presence. Buffalo Bill never attempted to explain this, but he had found that he could trust to it.

It was broad day when he awoke. The horse was lying down, after having eaten the grass to the end of its tether.

From the edge of the bushes the scout scanned the country in the direction of Porfiero Hacienda, and then, with his field glasses, from the other edge of the little grove he surveyed the mountains that loomed before him. They were an outthrust spur of the Superstition Range, their sides nearest him being palisaded, barren of trees, and almost as steep in places as the walls of a house. They seemed to cut him off from the route he had chosen. He studied them long, searching for a pass that would lead in the direction of the Perditas River and the little town of San Paz.

As he made this search along the base of the mountain, his glasses caught a brief view of a horseman riding there. The man was far off, and before the scout could make him out clearly, he had ridden behind some tall rocks, out of sight.

But the man’s presence there, combined with the pursuit of the night, suggested the possibility that some of the hacienda pursuers had passed and were now ahead of him.

“And that means that I’ve got to be careful as I go on,” was his thought. “It wouldn’t be pleasant, or healthy, to be caught by those rascals in some narrow pass of those mountains.”

As he had no food, the scout ventured to shoot a sage rabbit. He doubted if any one was near enough to hear the report of his revolver. Anyway, as he required food, he was willing to take the risk.

Over a fire of dry sticks he cooked the rabbit he had killed, and from the borders of the grove he watched to see if the smoke attracted attention. It was a light smoke; yet in that clear air it might be seen a long distance.

When Buffalo Bill had satisfied his hunger, he mounted and rode forward again, but he shifted to an indirect course that would screen him and his horse as they approached the precipitous walls of the Superstition Mountains. He saw no one now, the rider beheld from the grove had vanished completely.

Arriving at a point near where he had seen that rider with his glasses, the scout dismounted, and after tying the horse, he set out on foot, to inspect the ground where it seemed the horseman had been. Great was his surprise, as he thus walked on, to come suddenly face to face with Ramon Periguez.

Periguez was at the moment scanning the ground, as if also looking for tracks, and he was taken by surprise quite as much as the scout.

“Strange that we meet here!” was Buffalo Bill’s greeting, when Periguez lifted himself with a start on hearing the scout’s footsteps.

That sickly yellow came into the Spanish Moor’s face; but it passed instantly, giving place to a hot flush of anger. For a moment Periguez did not speak, while his right hand stole stealthily toward his revolver.

“I wouldn’t do that, señor,” said the scout coolly. “The risk is too great.”

“Do what?” Periguez snarled.

“Try to draw that revolver. If you should try it seriously, another revolver might go off, to your hurt.”

“You mean that you would shoot me?”

“I should certainly defend myself, señor. How does it come that you are here?”

“My horse brought me.”

“Very good. I presumed as much. I mean why are you here? The hour is early, and Porfiero Hacienda is some distance off. You were looking for me.”

“I was not. Yet, if I was?”

“You and your rascals tried to assassinate me in my room at the hacienda last night. You slipped in by some secret passage and were in the room before I knew it. But I sleep like the weasel, señor, and I awoke in time, fortunately for me. I was sorry to shoot one of your servants, I thought the fellow was you.”

Periguez’s black eyes burned with anger he had tried vainly to suppress. A sudden reckless defiance flushed his face.

“Yes!” he shouted. “We followed you, and you shall not escape us now! I admit that I was looking here for the tracks of your horse. I thought you had already passed along. But I have men here, and you cannot escape us this time.”

Buffalo Bill folded his arms and looked with a mocking smile at the enraged man.

“You are overconfident, my good major-domo. I really fear you are overconfident! Tell me, why did you seek my life last night, and why have you and your villains chased me to this point?”

“Do I have to answer the questions of an American dog?”

“You may feel the bite of the American dog, señor, unless you choose your words with more care. It isn’t pleasant to be insulted even by a murderous scoundrel.”

“You shall rue this!” Periguez panted, his hand again stealing toward his revolver in spite of the scout’s warning.

“I think I can tell you. You know what has become of Prince Mogador. His disappearance is to benefit you, or your employers. Confess it, my dear Periguez, it will save both of us trouble!”

Ramon’s revolver came out with a quick motion, and he lifted it to fire at the scout, a cry of triumph at the same time rising from his lips. But the cry changed to a groan.

Something bright shot downward and struck him in the breast as he lifted the revolver. The weapon dropped from his hand, and he stumbled backward, with that bright thing protruding from his bosom. It was a gold-handled dagger!

Buffalo Bill had not touched the man who threatened him, but the dagger of gold, dropping from the sky, had struck the villain down in a manner that was bewildering and mysterious.

The astounded scout leaped to the rascal’s assistance as he thus tumbled backward. He bent over him, as he dropped to the ground, and then, kneeling by him, he lifted Periguez’s head.

But the man was already dead, the dagger had been driven to his heart. It was a thing so unexpected and astonishing that Buffalo Bill was bewildered.

As soon as he saw that Periguez was beyond help, Buffalo Bill glanced up at the sky, and at the cliff which rose close by him; but neither in the sky nor on the cliff did he see anything to elucidate this mystery. He looked at the dagger. He had already noticed that its handle was of a dull, golden luster, but now he stared at it in wide-eyed amazement.

“The dagger of gold!” he whispered, as if he could not trust himself to voice a thing so unbelievable. “The dagger that I saw in that room at the hacienda! No, it can’t be! Yet it is. It is the same handle, showing the same figures and scrollwork.”

He looked around again, staring. He searched the face of the cliff, and even the sky.

“Where did the dagger come from?”

He took hold of the handle, and with difficulty drew out the weapon. The keen, double-edged, sharp-pointed blade dripped blood as he held it up. He looked at the bloody blade, and again studied the lines and scrollwork of the handle.

“The identical dagger!” he said. “And it was either hurled from that cliff, or dropped from the sky, and slew Periguez. It sounds like a crazy dream.”

He wiped the dagger on the grass, to remove the blood from the blade.

Periguez was dead. His revolver, with which he had tried to shoot the scout, lay, as it had fallen, on the grass.

The scout looked into the dead man’s face almost with sorrow, though he had been given no reason for loving this man, who in the night had sought to assassinate him, and, having followed him with a band of men on fleet horses, had then tried to shoot him.

The body of Periguez seemed almost grotesque, as it lay thus, sprawled on its back, the yellow face upturned to the sky, the black eyes open and staring. The costume, fantastic in the extreme, with the crimson scarf holding a keen knife, seemed unbecoming on the dead.

Having cleaned the blade, the scout again and again inspected the dagger, reaching each time the conclusion already gained, that it was none other than the gold-handled dagger which he had seen at the hacienda.

How it had come to be in this place, and had dropped apparently out of the sky, to strike Periguez down, was a mystery that promised to baffle solution.

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