"Not bein' a bird I don't know how I'd git over there," replied Harry.
"We might cast a lariat and the lightest of us go over," suggested Texas.
"No, it is too far, and besides no lariat would hold us that way. You've got to think of something better. Perhaps we can—"
"I say, I've got an idee," interrupted Wild Bill. "I remember that when we first came out, it being lighter, I seen a shelf of rock right above that tree. It was twenty feet wide I opine. Now if we can manage to git up on the rock we can turn the trick."
"Now you are talking," commented their leader. "Bill supposing you make the try for it. Be careful, and don't send any rocks rolling down or you'll have the Indians back on us. Give the owl call if you make it and then we'll try to follow you. Or better still, come back here and show us the way. It will be safer."
Anxious to be off, Bill threw off his coat, tightened his belt and disappeared in the shadows silently. With cat-like movements he scaled the jagged side of the mountain without a sound or so much as disturbing a particle of shale from the rocks over which he was creeping.
To the waiting bandits down below him it seemed an age, as they stood with strained ears to catch the signal agreed upon.
Suddenly Wild Bill appeared before them. So quietly had he approached that not a man of them had heard or seen him. They clutched their guns instinctively.
"It goes," was Bill's succinct summing up of the result of his trip. "You've got to crawl. A snake couldn't get over that trail without falling off," he concluded.
"Could you make out anything in the tree?" demanded Frank impatiently.