It was dusk when Cayuse reached Medicine Bluff, hitched his borrowed horse in the brush, and went scouting to see what he could find.
His principal discovery was a gully running away from the foot of the Bluff on its western side. The robbers were coming and going at the mouth of the gully, and the boy made up his mind that there was a rendezvous somewhere in the defile.
In order to settle his suspicions, he watched his chance and got into the gully. The place was thickly grown with bushes, and for an Indian to dodge enemies in such a chaparral was an easy matter.
About a hundred yards from the mouth of the gully Cayuse found an overhanging ledge of rock where the outlaws had made their camp.
Three of the outlaws sat in front of the dark opening under the ledge, talking together in low voices. Captain Lawless—that is, the counterfeit Captain Lawless—was not one of the three. What had become of him? Cayuse asked himself; and what had become of the captive white woman who had been taken from the stage?
At first the boy was tempted to think that the supposed Lawless had taken the white captive away somewhere; and then, a little later, he began to think those three robbers might be guarding her, and that she was under the ledge.
He resolved to find out whether the woman was there, and, in order to do this, began a risky advance upon the three white men.
The bushes ran almost to the edge of the overhanging rock, and Cayuse was able to creep through them until he was within a few feet of the nearest of the three men. In order to pass the men, it would be necessary to cross a narrow open space. Could he do it? Capture was probable, and capture, in Cayuse’s case, would mean death. However, that was not the first time the boy had faced death in what he believed to be the line of duty.
Flinging himself at full length on the ground, he undulated his way clear of the bushes, like a crawling snake. The backs of the three men were toward him.
When he was half-way between the edge of the dusky covert and the pitchy blackness of the opening under the ledge, one of the men started and turned around.