Bloody Ike crept over the rocks and around the pitfalls of the broken buttes, and slowly made the descent toward the flickering camp fire. He wondered how horses ever had been landed where he could see them beyond the fire. In his opinion such horses must have wings. Ike, himself, had no flying machine, and he was minus much cuticle from his head to his heels.
The ex-miner was weary and half famished, and with the slipping and sliding among the jagged corners he would have looked, in daylight, like a candidate for a hospital. He was “Bloody” Ike, indeed.
But he was bent on mischief, and determined to accomplish it. He cared naught who these men were, or what they represented—it was their food he was after, their horses, if possible, and last, but not least, their powder, if they had any.
He crept close to the peaceful camp where ten men sat around a cheerful blaze, smoking their pipes and relating stories of the trail and the mines. The party was made up of Buffalo Bill and his pards, Avery and the boy, and three miners with whom the scout had connected in the foothills. The miners were glad to meet English-speaking men, after several months in the wilds, where the only human beings they had seen were Indians.
Buffalo Bill was glad to avail himself of the knowledge these men had of this part of the country.
The rock-bound fastness of the camping place recommended itself to him as a headquarters while in that part of the world, and combined good water supply and grazing for the horses, where they could not be stampeded. The miners had six mounts, and had improvised a trap at the only entrance to the high-walled “dip,” where a horse could enter or depart.
A man could scale the cliffs, if he had his nerve with him, but no animal with hoofs, unless it be a mountain goat, could expect to enter or leave by any other source.
In other ages great clefts of rock had dropped from the cliffs above and formed dark caverns and numerous hiding places, where one familiar with them might defy an army to dislodge him. Here the miners had arranged their lodges and had little fear of attack by Indians.
As Bloody Ike stole nearer and nearer, he gasped with surprise. He recognized Buffalo Bill and some of his pards. Several times in the past he had made use of the most devilish means he could devise to put them out of the way, and he had yearned for one more opportunity.
“Oh! for his powder and fuse!”