"Right, sir; but I should like to know how he played that scurvy trick on us?" demanded the Lieutenant. "I can't get it through my head how our men ever missed him."
"That is elemental. He lay down before the volley was fired!"
"That's all right, Captain, but I still don't understand how he knew we were going to shoot," persisted the Lieutenant.
"Because he was Jesse James. That's the only answer I can give you. I made my mistake when I failed to order a volley fired into him after he was down. That's the trouble when troops are opposed to savages and outlaws. We fight according to the rules of civilized warfare while they—well, they are just common murderers. Warfare to them is only assassination.
"Have the recall sounded, then start for the gulch. Jesse James is dead for the last time."
But once more the army officer had been tricked.
In a pure game of wits, he with all his military training and his experience in fighting savages, had been outwitted. When it came to pitting one man in a battle of wits against another, Jesse James had no known peer. He never seemed to come to the end of his resources, and the most desperate situations, the moments of the gravest peril, gave him not the slightest apprehension as to the ultimate outcome. He was able to cope with them all, come when and how they might.
As he lay, back down, on the rocks, after the first volley had been fired by the troops, the great desperado formed his plans concisely and definitely, and these plans, as it proved, he followed without the slightest deviation.
Jesse had heard the command of the Captain to prepare a litter and it brought a sardonic grin to his hardy face.
"They sure will need that litter themselves before I get through with them," he muttered.