CHAPTER LII.
BUFFALO BILL’S DARING.
In front of the cabin which he knew to be Ricardo’s, and where the sentinel had said Rose Carter was held a prisoner, another sentinel paced slowly up and down, with military tread, bearing a rifle on his shoulder.
He seemed to be more alert than the sentinel whom Buffalo Bill had captured.
“Not a good outlook,” thought the scout, as he lay at one side of the gorge trail and made this discovery. “But I’ve attempted more difficult things.”
So, undaunted, he crawled on. The gorge ended a hundred yards or so from the nearest cabin, leaving the way absolutely open before him.
The camp of the outlaws had been well chosen. Apparently the only approach was through that narrow gorge, which a dozen men could have held easily against a regiment. The cabins occupied a bowllike area, that was level and of considerable extent. Behind the cabins some horses were grazing. All around tall mountain cliffs shut in the place.
“There’s a way out of here—some sort of backdoor passage, is my guess; Ricardo is too shrewd a rascal to coop himself in a spot that has only one exit. It seems he ought to be safe enough here. But if I had a dozen good fighting men at my back right now I’d guarantee to take the whole camp. If Ricardo was as smart as he appears to be he would have more sentries on duty, and would have every one of them reliable men. But the fox gets into the habit of sleeping, when he thinks the hounds are far away, and can’t by any possibility reach him.”
The scout was crawling on. At the end of the gorge he crept along the right wall of the cliff, for the shadows were blackest there. But when he had reached a point opposite Ricardo’s cabin he saw how difficult it would be to pass across that open space without discovery.
Just then, as if to thwart and discomfit him, some men came out of the cabin and stood talking with the sentinel.