The men began creeping out, Willie Jones in the lead.

“Now!” whispered Tad.  “Follow me!  Look out for squalls!  Things will happen rapidly when they begin.”

The boys crept out, following the outlaws as closely as they dared.  Once outside the bandits quickly skulked off to one side or the other.

“Get down quick!” whispered Tad.

“Bang, bang, bang!”

Tad Butler fired three shots from his revolver, then threw himself on the ground.  Almost with the first shot he heard the voice of the Ranger captain.  McKay, ever on the alert, was not caught napping.

“Throw torches away!  Down!” he roared.

A thundering volley crashed from the rifles of the outlaws, answered by a rattling fire from the revolvers of the Rangers.  Tad heard an outlaw utter an exclamation of pain and knew that one at least of the bad men had been raked by a bullet.

“Back!” came the command from the leader of the bandits.  The word was not spoken loud enough to be heard far away, but every man there heard it, and back they rushed into the cave.  A shower of dirt fell over the two Pony Rider Boys, who were by this time crawling on all fours to get away from the tree that they knew would come down with a bump.

It did.  The Rangers were still shooting.  Tad and Stacy were in a dangerous position.  The Rangers were firing right over them.  The instant the boys heard the base of the tree fall into place, Tad uttered the owl call.

“Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!” howled Chunky.

“It’s the boys!  Stand fast.  Lie low!” commanded the Ranger captain.  “Something is going on here that we don’t know about.”

A moment later Tad and Chunky came staggering into the arms of their friends.

“Surround the base of the tree.  They’re in the cave,” cried Tad.

“Wait, wait!” commanded the Ranger.

In the cave the outlaws were beginning to think.  Tad’s shots had been laid to the carelessness of one of the men.  Each one denied that he had fired them.

“That was a signal.  Somebody here is a traitor!” cried the leader.

Out there in front of the cave Tad was rapidly whispering to the Ranger captain what had occurred.  He told him the bandits were all in the cave and that he believed the only exit was there behind the roots of the big tree.

“Boys, we’ve got ’em!” cried Billy.  “We’ve got ’em in a trap.  Hurrah!  Tad, you’ve saved the lives of some of us.  That was as brave a thing as ever a Ranger did and I’ll tell you what I think about it after we have smoked those ruffians out.”

The smoking-out process was a matter of some time.  At the captain’s direction, a row of fires was built in front of the cave so that none of the outlaws could escape.  On each side of the row of bonfires McKay placed flanking parties who stood with rifles ready to train on the opening should the bandits seek to escape.