“Now, sergeant, send your men back to their posts, and let them know if they go to sleep some of them may wake up in the Indians’ happy hunting grounds. “Then Sergeant Buck go with me to the end of the timber, for I wish a word with you.” The troopers were sent again to their posts of duty, and the sergeant went with Buffalo Bill to a gully, by which he intended to retreat, for it was not guarded as horses could not go that way. “Sergeant, you have done well in your fight, and I appreciate your having come to meet me. It saved me. Tell your men I want each one of them in my band of scouts, so I have my eye upon them. You may have to fight again, but do it to the death as I’ll get help to you as soon as I can. Good night, and luck.” Buffalo Bill grasped the hand of the brave negro, who replied: “We’ll die game, sir, if we have to; but we depend on you, Massa Bill, for you’re the only man who can save us, and you will, sir, I know you will.” The deep voice quivered, and Buffalo Bill turned away, going rapidly down the gully to where he had left his horses. He passed within a dozen feet of an Indian outpost of several braves, heard them talking, and the smoke of their pipes reached him, while he saw a spark of fire. But he went on, reached his horses, mounted and rode off at a sweeping gallop toward the fort. At length he halted and muttered: “It is taking big chances, but I will do it. I can hide my pack horse there and it will cut off a dozen miles, if I do risk the lives of my horse and myself in making the leap, which is all of twenty feet.” He turned off the trail, just as the moon, on the wane, rose to light his way. A roar came to his ears, a roar of falling water, and he soon halted on the banks of a foaming stream. “My pack horse will be safe here,” said Cody, and he quickly unsaddled the animal. Then he stripped his own horse of his heavy Mexican saddle, laid with it his rifle and belt of arms, save one revolver, took off his boots, hunting coat, and broad-brimmed sombrero, and approached the steep banks of the river. It was a cliff, and all of twenty feet down to the water. A quarter of a mile below was a fall over which the stream wildly rushed, and across from him a hundred yards or more lay the other shore, the banks low and sandy. “It will save a dozen miles, Buckskin, and we can make it--we must!” he said, in his decided way, and he quickly made a bridle of his stake of rope, leaped across the bare back of his splendid horse, wheeled suddenly and rode rapidly toward the cliff. “Now, Buckskin, make the leap, and by it save the lives of my black troopers!” cried Buffalo Bill, as he urged his horse directly out upon the mad leap. Buckskin did not hesitate; he seemed to feel, with his master, that only by the leap from the dizzy height could he save the lives of human beings by cutting off a dozen miles in the trail and getting help from the fort to them before they would be wiped out by the Indians.