The desperado's face came away with the redskin's bowie between his teeth.
The outlaw could have shouted, so great was his joy. After laborious effort he succeeded in setting the keen-edged blade more firmly between his teeth, so that only the hilt was held by them.
Cautiously he squirmed and wriggled until his head and shoulders were over the body of the redskin whom he had again rolled over on his back.
The great desperado, still holding the knife in a vice-like grip between his teeth, twisted his head at right angles to his body and set the needle-like point of the blade, on the Indian's abdomen.
The cruel blood-thirstiness of what he was about to do made no impression on him, for Jesse was bent on a terrible vengeance. And it was a moment of supreme ecstasy for the bandit-chieftain, bound and manacled and helpless as he was.
Suddenly throwing the weight of his body on his toes and neck, the deadly bowie, by the sheer force of the outlaw's own weight, was driven into the Indian's bowels while the blood in a sudden red sheet, spurted into his mouth and eyes.
The redskin sprang almost clear of the ground, then settled back with a heavy groan, his stupor too heavy to resist the work of the vengeful blade.
With a fiendish light in his eyes the desperado gloated over the death throes of the unconscious savage, whose writhings, whose agonized twistings and muscular contractions, sent the outlaw into an ecstasy of delirious joy.
After a little, the Indian stiffened out and lay still.
"One!" snarled the desperado.