The border king ran to the edge of the cliff and peered over. He saw that there was a sheer   
descent of more than five hundred feet, with no trees or shrubs to break a fall—nothing but a 
 
smooth face of bare rock.
 
Far below, lying upon a heap of fallen bowlders, he could see, through his field glasses, the 
 
body of the Shawnee chief.
 
There could be no doubt that he was dead. Every bone in his body must have been broken by that 
 
fearful fall.
 
Cody promptly returned to his horse and rode back to the scene of the fight, where his companions 
 
were awaiting him. He briefly told them of the fate of Evil Heart and ordered them to mount and 
 
ride back on the trail. He wished to follow the other trail of the larger Indian party without 
 
delay and do what he could to recover the girls.
 
“Wait a moment, Cody,” said Mainwaring, who had distinguished himself in the fight. “I’ve got 
 
a prisoner here, and I want to know what you are going to do with him.”
 
“A prisoner!” exclaimed Buffalo Bill, in amazement. “How did you get a chance to take one in 
 
such a fight as this, where quarter is neither asked nor given?”
 
“Here he is,” said Mainwaring, pointing to a young Shawnee, who was sitting upon the ground, 
 
closely guarded by two Pawnees with tomahawks in their hands. “I guess he was a young brave just 
 
out on his first trail. Anyway, he got scared when I had the drop on him. He threw down his 
 
tomahawk and begged for mercy, and I hadn’t the heart to shoot him then.”
 
“A strange thing for an Indian to do,” remarked Buffalo Bill. “Well, it’s a nuisance. I don’
 
t see what we are going to do with him.”
 
“The Pawnees were keen to kill and scalp him,” said Mainwaring. “I had a good deal of trouble 
 
in preventing them.”
 
“I dare say you had,” commented the border king grimly. “They don’t approve of such mercy.”
 
It was plain from the looks of the two Pawnees who were guarding the brave that they did not. 
 
Their fingers clutched their tomahawks with a nervous grip, as though they yearned to send the 
 
deadly weapons crashing into the skull of the captive.
 
The Shawnee looked up beseechingly into the face of the border king. He was evidently afraid to 
 
die, and he knew that his fate rested in the hands of the renowned Long Hair.
 
“White Feather will tell the great chief about the paleface maidens if he will spare his life,” 
 
he said. “He will tell how they were taken from Evil Heart and who took them.”
 
He spoke in his own tongue, which Buffalo Bill understood.
 
“That’s another matter,” replied the king of the scouts. “Let White Feather speak straight 
 
words and tell me all I want to know, and he shall not only have his life, but he shall go free. 
 
He is not a warrior we need fear.”
 
The Shawnee was too nervous for himself to resent or even notice the last cutting remark. He 
 
plunged into his story eagerly.
 
It appeared that the Shawnees had fled from the wrecked wagon train because one of their scouts 
 
had signaled the approach of a strong war party of Utes, far outnumbering their own. As the Utes, 
 
like the Apaches, had their hands against almost all the other tribes, Evil Heart had feared to 
 
meet them.
 
The Utes had not seen them, apparently, but they had done all they could to hide their trail, 
 
without knowing that the white men were after them.
 
But, nevertheless, quite by accident, the war party of Utes had sighted them later on the prairie 
 
and ridden up to them, compelling them to halt. This explained the mystery of the two converging 
 
trails.
 
The Utes were under the command of a famous chief named Bear Killer, and they were out on the 
 
warpath against the Snake Indians, having traveled far from their own lodges for that purpose.
 
Bear Killer and Evil Heart had held a palaver, the result of which was that the Ute chief had 
 
demanded that the two white maidens should be handed over to him as the price of his letting the 
 
Shawnees go on their way without a fight.
 ............