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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