“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. One of them, the scout was sure, was Ricardo himself. More than once as Buffalo Bill lay there listening and watching and trying vainly to make out what was being said, he lifted his ready revolver and pointed it at the indistinctly seen form of the outlaw chief. But caution restrained him. The camp was full of outlaws. He could see numbers of them in the other cabins, and still others were moving about outside of the cabins, for the hour was so early that none of them had retired for the night. “I can shoot Ricardo all right,” was the scout’s thought, “but what good would it do? It would simply stir up the rest of them; and though I might down half a dozen or so, they would either capture me or make it even more difficult than it might be to get that girl out of her prison.” So each time the deadly revolver came down. By and by Ricardo and those with him went back into the cabin. But the sentinel continued to pace his beat, and but a call from his lips would have been sufficient to bring the outlaws out of the house and rally them from the other cabins. “The moon will be up soon,” thought the scout, glancing at the eastern sky, which was already beginning to redden. “I shall have to try some other plan.” Then a great thought, daring as he was himself, came into his mind. Retracing his way by crawling along the cliff wall, he reëntered the side gorge. Here he arose to his feet, and made his way into the gulch, down which he hurried at a rapid pace. He did not halt until he came near the spot where he had left Midnight. Midnight was too well trained to even whinny when his master drew near, but when Buffalo Bill came up to the intelligent animal it showed every sign of delight at his return. “I just want a couple of blankets, Midnight,” he said. Then he took the blankets from the roll behind the saddle, after which he patted the horse lovingly, and hurried away.