But as he closed his eyes to keep out the sight of the hideous, passion-distorted faces before him, a deep-lunged voice uttered some sharp commands.
In a trice, the terrible pressure relaxed and the next moment the outlaw felt himself again raised from his feet and borne rapidly upward.
Ere many minutes he could tell that he was again on a level and instantly his mind sought some scheme by which he could kill time.
For he felt that the world-famous desperado would not leave him to the anything but tender mercies of the savages.
Yet had he known that his beloved chief was even then returning to his pals, having failed to find a way to scale the wall of rock, he would have been sad, indeed.
But he did not know and his ignorance was bliss, in truth.
As Comanche Tony racked his brain for some manner to delay his captors, more commands rang out and the Indians who were carrying him set him down.
The moon had just risen above the peaks of the mountains to the east and, in its light, the bandit saw that he was on a plateau sparsely covered with stunted trees.
To one of these his captors guided him.
As he reached it, a couple of the braves lopped off the lower branches.