Chapter XXXIV: Facing Death

When Buffalo Bill regained consciousness, he found himself a bound prisoner, with three men, whose dress proclaimed them Mexicans, standing guard over him. One of them held in his hand the dagger of gold, and the scout, looking closely at this man’s face, saw that he was the servant who had waited upon him at the table the evening before at the Porfiero Hacienda.

“Ho! You have come back to life, señor!” said this man, called by his companions Gomez. “We took the liberty of tying you, so that when you awoke you could not harm yourself.”

He sat down on a stone before the scout, and behind him crouched his comrades.

Buffalo Bill saw that they were armed to the teeth, and he knew by the way the lariat felt, as its folds girt his body about, that the work of tying him had been well done. Men of this class were usually as much masters of ropes and knots as seamen.

“Fortunate for you, señor, that my aim was not good; my bullet barely scratched your skull, while I aimed to send it through your head. The distance was great, or I had done better. But the respite gives you a chance to talk, and we will listen to anything you desire to say.”

“I have nothing to say,” was the reply.

“Over there is the body of Ramon Periguez. You can see it if you will but turn your head. You slew him.”

Buffalo Bill did not answer.

“You slew him with this dagger, which you stole last night from the Porfiero Hacienda. Is it not true, señor?”

Gomez held up the dagger.

The scout not only did not reply, but he hardly heard the words. He was trying to consider his situation. He felt sure he could expect no mercy from these men. They had bound him, and sooner or later they would murder him, if not prevented. Gomez admitted he had aimed the rifle with the intention of dealing a death wound.

Buffalo Bill found difficulty in clear thinking. Though he had recovered consciousness, his ideas were strangely confused. One does not get over a knock-down blow like that which the bullet delivered, in a few minutes, and without difficulty, pain or trouble, or haziness of ideas.

One thing was clear: While these men watched him he could not escape from his bonds, and he might not be able to escape, even if they should leave him to himself.

“I must try to fight for time,” was his conclusion. “Time means everything. I must be subservient, and not anger them. They may want to take me before some leader, and that will mean delay. If they decide to finish me here, I have no chance.”

Gomez spoke the second time, holding up the dagger, before Buffalo Bill really heard and comprehended his question.

“I did not kill him!” the scout now declared.

The denial was greeted with cries of disbelief.

“The señor has the tongue of a serpent, as the Indians say,” Gomez observed. “But it will do him no good to deny that he killed Ramon Periguez. We found him here, bending over the body, with this dagger in one hand and his other hand thrust into the pocket of the dead man’s jacket. It angered us, for even at a distance we recognized the clothing worn by Periguez. It was then that I fired my bullet.”

“I did not expect you to believe me.”

“That is because the señor is not a fool. It is a lie so palpable that he could not expect us to think it the truth. We saw you bending over the body, and in your hand this dagger; it was in your hand still when we reached you. And Periguez had been dead so short a while that his body was warm and limp. The señor does not deny that?”

“That is true enough, but I did not kill him.”

“He died of heart failure, eh? After you struck him with the dagger!”

The rascals laughed at this.

“You will not believe me, if I tell just how it came about.”

“We are listening for the señor’s confession.”

“The dagger dropped down from the sky and slew him.”

Then they laughed uproariously.

“The señor is merry in the face of death!” said Gomez. “I presume he will tell us that the horse he stole from the hacienda stable and rode to this point brought him through the air without ever touching hoof to the ground? Mahomet had a wondrous horse called Alborak that carried him in such fashion. The American scout is no doubt greater than Mahomet!”

The villains laughed again at what they conceived the wit of Gomez.

“I knew you would not believe it,” said the scout.

“The señor denies that he killed Ramon Periguez, and that he stole the dagger from the hacienda?”

“Yes.”

“Then it is useless to talk with him.”

“Why did you and Periguez follow me?” the scout asked.

“We wished to look in your kind face again,” said Gomez.

“Periguez tried to poison my wine at the supper table, and he smuggled himself and some assassins into my room to slay me, after the poisoning attempt had failed. I escaped by the window, and was pursued and shot at, and you and he followed me even to this place. Why?”

“Had the señor forgotten the Moroccan prince?” said Gomez, with an uplifting of his black eyebrows and a shrugging of his shoulders. “That is the answer. The señor may ponder over it in the few minutes that are yet left to him.”

“You mean to kill me?”

“Horse thieves and murderers are hanged in this country. It is the unwritten law of the land. We shall but deal out justice to the señor. His head was too hard for any bullet; but I doubt if his neck is too strong to break under the jerk of the rope. As to that, we shall see. The señor may console himself by reflecting that the method is quick and must be well-nigh painless. I have even been told that men who have been hanged, yet who were not killed by the hanging, have declared that they saw enchanting visions while they danced on nothing at the lariat’s end. May the señor’s dying visions be filled with ravishing delights.”

Gomez, as well as the rascals who heard him, must have fancied himself a clever wit.

One of the horses was brought up, and to its back the scout was lifted. There he was lashed to the saddle with another lariat, in a most uncomfortable position. When the horse was led forward the motion gave him excruciating pain.

Yet no lamenting moan, no word of complaint, came from the lips of the heroic scout. And dark as was his outlook, he did not permit himself to despair; not because he believed there was a chance of escape, but only for the reason that throughout his life of marvelous adventure he had always acted on that principle. Hope was a quality so buoyant that he could not afford to let it slip out of his heart even though death stared him in the face.

The scout’s horse, which Gomez and his villains had seen before the scout was fired upon, was now secured. Then the scout was conducted down by the high cliff wall, to where a tree offered its wide-spreading branches for the rope’s end. Under the tree the scout was lifted from the back of the horse and a lariat was prepared quickly as a hangman’s noose.

“If the señor has any messages to send to his friends we will hear them,” said Gomez, standing before him with a mocking smile. “We can communicate them to his wonderfully winged horse and instruct that sagacious and marvelous beast to fly straight to his friends with them. Now is the señor’s time to speak. In another minute he will be beyond speaking, or the need of it.”

The end of the long lariat was thrown over the low limb of the tree, and two of the rascals pulled it down, fastening it temporarily to the tree trunk.

Then Buffalo Bill, still bound and as helpless as a log, was lifted to his feet and placed beneath the tree, the noose of the rope being drawn around his neck and pulled tight.

Seizing the other end of the rope and removing it from around the body of the tree, the three rascals began to haul upon it.

The noose clutched round the scout’s neck with a jerk, and he was dragged from his feet.

“We have friends in Satan’s kingdom, señor!” Gomez shouted. “When you meet them give them our kind regards.”

They swung down on the rope again, and the scout’s body was hoisted between the earth and the sky.

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