As he crawled, a foot at a time, he kept his eyes on the man at the foot of the rock.
The fellow seemed completely absorbed in his reflections. He smoked languidly, like one half asleep.
The scout, remembering the brutal treatment accorded Little Cayuse—and the boy had not told him the half of it—would have been only too quick to meet the ruffian in a two-gun game. But he wanted to make a capture, and try persuasion in an attempt to find out something about Annie McGowan.
The girl was certainly hidden away somewhere among the hills. Wherever she was, quite likely Bernritter and Bascomb were, also; and the scout was not losing sight of the fact that he wanted to get hands on Bascomb quite as much as he wanted to rescue Miss McGowan.
Watched by Dell Dauntless, Buffalo Bill succeeded, in due course, in reaching the base of Squaw Rock without attracting the attention of the ruffian.
His task now was to follow the base of the rock around until he came near the spot where the man was sitting. This was almost directly under the chin of the profile, and the scout had to get around one of the shoulders.
Drawing his revolver, the scout immediately began his flanking movement, still on all-fours and pushing the weapon ahead of him.
Just as he was on the point of passing around the edge of the shoulder, and coming out in plain view of the man, if he happened to be looking in the right direction, the scout observed peculiar actions on the part of Dell.
With head and shoulders above the hill-crest, the girl was waving her hands and pointing westward.
The scout could not understand, and the girl, in her excitement, had risen so far above the ridge that the ruffian might catch sight of her at any moment.