"No. That's what the redskins are going to do. At the first touch of dawn the whole pack and parcel of them will be up on the edge of the cliff there peering down. We've got to act now and quickly for it's near morning." "Yes, the dawn breaks all of a sudden up here," added Wild Bill. But how to reach the tree was another matter. A wall of smooth perpendicular rock lay between them and the tree whose outlines they could only faintly make out in the darkness. "A fly couldn't walk that," averred Harry with his usual facetiousness. "No, we must find another way," agreed Frank. "Anybody got any suggestions to make?" "Not bein' a bird I don't know how I'd git over there," replied Harry. "We might cast a lariat and the lightest of us go over," suggested Texas. "No, it is too far, and besides no lariat would hold us that way. You've got to think of something better. Perhaps we can--" "I say, I've got an idee," interrupted Wild Bill. "I remember that when we first came out, it being lighter, I seen a shelf of rock right above that tree. It was twenty feet wide I opine. Now if we can manage to git up on the rock we can turn the trick." "Now you are talking," commented their leader. "Bill supposing you make the try for it. Be careful, and don't send any rocks rolling down or you'll have the Indians back on us. Give the owl call if you make it and then we'll try to follow you. Or better still, come back here and show us the way. It will be safer." Anxious to be off, Bill threw off his coat, tightened his belt and disappeared in the shadows silently. With cat-like movements he scaled the jagged side of the mountain without a sound or so much as disturbing a particle of shale from the rocks over which he was creeping. To the waiting bandits down below him it seemed an age, as they stood with strained ears to catch the signal agreed upon. Suddenly Wild Bill appeared before them. So quietly had he approached that not a man of them had heard or seen him. They clutched their guns instinctively. "It goes," was Bill's succinct summing up of the result of his trip. "You've got to crawl. A snake couldn't get over that trail without falling off," he concluded. "Could you make out anything in the tree?" demanded Frank impatiently. "Nary a thing. Blacker'n an Alabamy coon down there. And about as slippery along the trail," he added. "How we going to work it, Cap'n?" asked Comanche as the outlaws, with Wild Bill in the lead, began their perilous climb over the side of the mountain, a single misstep in which would precipitate them to the rocks more than a hundred feet below. "We will see when we get there. Be careful there Harry. Do you want to pull the whole bunch of us down? Your feet are as clumsy as an elephant's."