"I'll take that job for mine. The rest of you line up about me. As soon as I've knifed the first, some of you pull him out of the way and the others be ready for the next.
"If we can kill 'em without an outcry, we may be able to get em all."
The fiendish plan of slaying one man after another as fast as they appeared showed clearly how desperate Jesse believed their position to be.
It proved that in order to save his own life he had no hesitancy in killing any number of men.
And, as they heard the shocking proposition, even his pals, steeped in the gore of innocent men as their hands were, recoiled at the task imposed on them.
Yet they dared not disobey and silently took their places, kneeling, at the entrance to the cave, opposite their inhuman chief who waited, with bowie-knife upraised to plunge it into the heart of the first soldier that appeared.
But before the awful scheme could be put to the test, the old witch herself took a hand in the proceedings.
As the bandits kneeled, the beats of their hearts alone breaking the silence of the den in which they were, their ears strained for the first sound that should announce the discovery of the hole, they suddenly heard a shrill snarl in good English:
"Dogs of palefaces! What are you doing in my cave? How dare you profane the temple of a Navajo medicine? Curses on your palefaced heads! May you perish on the plains, riddled with wounds, mad for water! May the coyotes feed on your carcasses! May no grave hold your bones and may they be scattered to the winds! Curse you! Curse you! Curse you!"
So furious, so terrible was the wrath of the aged sorceress that the troopers stopped in their search, staring at the wizened, bent figure, abashed.