“Might’s well come right out o’ that and save trouble,” he warned. “I has got Cody and his crowd backin’ me now; and if we’re forced to charge ye somebody’s goin’ to git hurt mighty bad. What do ye say? Goin’ to surrender peaceable, er do we have to come fer ye on ther run?” Nomad, obeying a motion from Buffalo Bill, had hitched back, and was now circling round the base of the ridge, to get on the other side. But at a risk, the scout took a shorter cut to knowledge. “Your men may not be in there,” he said to Betts. He stood up quickly, inviting a bullet, and saw the hole made when Gorilla Jake heaved aside the stones. “The nest is empty!” he shouted; and started toward it with drawn revolver. “Iss dot so-o!” howled the baron, tumbling right after him. “Den ve haf peen wit-oudted!” He meant out-witted. The others followed. “Thunder and carry one!” exploded the man from Laramie, as the deserted hole in the rocks was reached and he looked about. Bill Betts was stupefied. “May I be doggone!” he said. “I reckon I’m about forty different kinds of fools, fer not suspectin’ that. But, ye see, I didn’t suppose them rocks could be lifted; fergittin’ that Gorilla Jake is a human steam engine, when it comes to strength.” He began to look about on the other side of the ridge, searching for the tracks of the fugitives there, a work in which he soon had plenty of assistance. CHAPTER XXVI. IN THE UTE VILLAGES. Having made their successful getaway, Tim Benson and Gorilla Jake covered the distance to the whisky cache in record time. The whisky was in flat, pint bottles, and it was vile stuff. Still, Gorilla Jake celebrated the opening of the cache by swallowing the contents of one of the bottles. Only about half the bottles were removed, the others being carefully concealed again. The men divided those taken, distributing them to the best advantage on their persons, after “doctoring” them with Gorilla Jake’s tablets. Before they started on for the Ute village they did their best to obliterate all traces of the cache and of their visit to it. Also, in approaching and leaving it, they blinded their trail with great care. “If Cody finds this trail he’ll be doing good work,” said Benson. “I don’t think he can do it.” Gorilla Jake’s brutish face had flushed under the influence of the liquor swallowed, and his gray eyes were glittering. He still shuffled his steps with half-dragging feet, and swung his long arms clumsily; yet his courage was improved, and he walked more erect. “I reckon it’s a good thing fer you,” he said, growing boastful, “that I met you jest as I did.” “I judge it was a good thing for both of us,” Benson parried.