Danforth turned to see one of the guards advancing toward the fire with an armful of fuel. The lieutenant ordered him to desist and instructed his subordinate to let the fire die down. Then he and Cody rolled up in their blankets for an hour’s sleep. CHAPTER XXIII. MORE THAN THEY BARGAINED FOR. When the lieutenant and scout were awakened, according to order, the camp became at once an exceedingly lively though quiet place. The men had their instructions in a low tone from Danforth. They led the horses into the cave from the rear, and, the fire being now merely a bed of glowing coals, the shadows of neither man nor beast were pricked out by the light from the fire. Cody had slipped out and beaten the rocks and brush on the hillside before the mouth of the cavern. He found no lurking spy, but he went far enough to hear Boyd Bennett’s horse stamping in the valley. The outlaw was still there awaiting the coming of his men and of his redskin allies. The scout hurried back and led the way with Chief, warning the troopers to smother any desire on their mounts’ part to whinny if they smelt the strange horse in the valley. The scout had picked out a path around the swell of the mountain, between the rocks and ledges, and, although it was a roundabout way, it was sod-covered for most of the distance, and they were enabled to lead their mounts away without an appreciable sound. Like a file of shadows they passed around the mountain and down into the lowlands. There the horses were tethered and left in the care of a single soldier. The others hurried back to positions near the mouth of the cave, to await the expected attack of the outlaws. Divided as their forces had been, by sending the stage and treasure on to Fort Advance, Danforth’s squad now numbered less than the gang of outlaws. And, in addition, Boyd Bennett would have at his back a party of bloodthirsty savages. It was a ticklish position, and none understood that better than the Border King, Buffalo Bill. Strategy was the scout’s best card under these circumstances. He knew the quality of the gang whom Boyd Bennett had gathered about him. They were ignorant, superstitious scoundrels, and, therefore, he ventured to play upon their fears as well as to lay a close ambush for them. To approach the mouth of the cave in which the fire now burned brightly necessitated the foe advancing up a sidehill into the mouth of the gulch under the shelter merely of low brush and boulders, with here and there a stunted tree, the roots of which had found fixture between the rocks. Higher up the mountain, and upon both sides of the gulch, were thicker forest.