"Lieutenant, you had better straighten out those men."
With one movement, the great bandit had driven his bowies straight into the hearts of the unsuspecting soldiers. In bending over him to raise his body to the litter, they had presented a mark that the veriest novice at man-killing, could not have missed by any chance.
Their blood in crimson stream spurted into the face and eyes of the blood-thirsty desperado, but the only emotion it stirred in him was to arouse him to deepest anger.
Not a bullet of the death-dealing volley had reached Jesse. With that marvelous instinct that had saved his life on so many occasions in the past, the outlaw had sensed the danger that confronted him, he knew that the eyes of enemies were upon him, but whether of white men or redskins, he did not know.
Instantly his quick mind evolved a plan. He knew that death yawned in the shadows there, which one false move would precipitate upon him. With Jesse James, to think was to act.
He dropped at the instant when twenty Winchesters hurled their death missiles at him. But the leaden pellets sped harmlessly over his head.
Instead of leaping to his feet and making a desperate dash for liberty, as a less experienced man in the art of guerilla warfare might have done, the great bandit stiffened out and lay motionless in well-feigned emulation of death.
His ruse was successful.
But now the moment for action had arrived. Yet he did not move a muscle and respiration seemed to have ceased utterly.
One of the ponies moved a step forward, having sighted a fresh bit of tender verdure. Its body was thus projected between the main arm of the troop and the prostrate outlaw, hiding his movements from them.