“Agents!” answered Elmore laconically. “See anything o’ these hyer knotted lines, gents? See that trace over thar thet’s been cut and then tied together; and that back band that has been served the same way? Y’ don’t notice, I reckon, that this hyer harniss is hangin’ tergether with strings. Ef you did, you wouldn’t ask has I been in a hold-up.” Shepard and his backers were immensely interested. “Who was the hold-up gents?” he demanded. Then Elmore was able to turn one of the few jokes of his life. “Buffalo Bill and his crowd!” he yelled. “Wow! Would ye ’a’ thought it?” But after that he explained what he meant, while the men from Blossom Range crowded round the stage and looked at the cut and patched harness and the scratched horses. “So the lady is inside?” said the sheriff. She came to the door, very pale and large-eyed. She corroborated the story of the stage driver, and was able to add details of her own from personal observation. “Cody is follerin’ him, then,” said Shepard. “It’s a game we want to git into. Which way did Benson go?” “Buffler said he’d be mighty certain to rack out fer the Ute village,” Elmore explained. “They’re goin’ thar to git him. Buffler tole me to tell yer.” Shepard consulted a few moments with his followers. “I reckon we’ll save a whole heap of time,” he said, “if we cut right acrost the hills hyer and head straight fer the Ute village. No use in us goin’ on to where Benson got out of the stage, as we couldn’t do nothin’ there; it would be a foolish waste of time.” The men agreed with him. “So we’ll hit it up for the Ute village. If Benson has taken refuge there ag’in we’ll snake him out, and I’ll handcuff old Iron Bow and land him in jail for harboring him.” Hank Elmore drove on toward Blossom Range, having added interesting details and additions to the story he meant to tell there, while the sheriff and his posse set off across the hills by the shortest route, the Ute village their objective point. In spite of the fact that some of them were unmounted they made good progress, not being hampered by the necessity of picking up and following an obscure trail. The time was past noon when the Ute village was approached. Afar off they had heard Indian howling. A quarter of a mile from the village, when they were most unsuspecting, they were struck by a blind charge of warriors, of a kind they had never experienced or heard of, and for which they were totally unprepared. Shepard had expected to walk up to the village, summon Iron Bow, demand Benson, then search the tepees, as he had done before. Instead came this wild charge, the Ute warriors rising out of a nest of rocks and pouring down on the posse without warning. They were led by a small painted and feathered figure and a very giant of a man who seemed more like a wild animal than a man, though he also wore Indian paint and feathers. Iron Bow was there, too, transformed into an Indian maniac.