“You will let us look for him?” said the scout. Iron Bow declared that the thing would be an outrage, but if the white wanted to look they could do so. As well as they could, Buffalo Bill and his companions searched through the Ute village; but they did not find Benson. “I suppose he suspected we would come here the first thing, and so kept away,” was the scout’s conjecture. “Trust Benson for a long head,” said Shepard. “He’s the slipperiest rascal in the West.” It had been said of Tim Benson more than once. Iron Bow’s warriors became ugly and truculent before the white men left the village, so that it seemed a longer stay might have brought about a collision. “Oh, they needn’t howl so,” said the sheriff, when the village was left behind; “everybody knows that they hide all sorts of jailbirds, if only the said jailbirds can bring along a good supply of whisky and blankets, and amm’nition, an’ the like o’ that. Some o’ these times I’m goin’ to get a line on that work, and lug old Iron Bow down to jail fer it.” “Waugh!” whooped Nomad. “You’ll stir up an Injun uprisin’, ef ye do.” “Vot iss makin’ me mad as hornedts,” declared the baron, “iss dot I ditn’t shoodt Penson vhen he smashed der lamp. Dot vos incriminal carelessness, vor I had a beadt on him.” “If ye had, baron, you would be now deprivin’ yerself o’ much-needed excitement,” Nomad told him. “You couldn’t be huntin’ fer him right now, ef he war dead, could ye?” “And you couldn’t be runnin’ the pleasant resk of him slammin’ a bullet into ye as you go along hyer,” added Shepard. “Dot iss so,” the baron admitted. “I am t’inkin’, too, dot pefore ve gidt him ve vill pe having so mooch excidemendt as neffer vos.” Between the town and the Indian village was a hill, which had some good hiding places in and around it. This they searched, on their way back; though really they had begun to feel that perhaps Benson had hurriedly left the country. Benson was in hiding on this hill, and he had seen them coming. He was armed, and in a desperate frame of mind. “So, they think they’ll surround me, and get me!” he snarled, when he saw Wild Bill and Shepard go in one direction, and the scout, with the others, in another direction. “There will be dead men here, if they crowd me.” He got into a position where he could see the approach of Buffalo Bill and those with him, for he feared the scout most of all. They passed beneath him, in a troughlike depression. He saw them enter the “dip,” and was seized with the thought that he might slay them all, when they gained a certain point. Close by him was a great bowlder. He was familiar with it, and knew that it might be set in motion down the hill if a lever were set under its edge. He found a stick that would do for the lever, which he put in position; then he waited. He could not see them now, but he could hear them. When he judged the right moment had come he threw his weight and strength on the lever, and started the stone.