To the others, save the world-famous desperado, the suggestion seemed a good one. But Jesse pointed out that their escapes from capture, narrow as many of them had been, were due to the fact that their knowledge of the country in which they had operated was so intimate that they had been able to give their pursuers the slip, an advantage they would forfeit should they strike into a section with whose highways and byways they were unfamiliar.
"Well, what do you propose instead?" demanded his brother, realizing from long association with him, that his opposition to the suggestion was largely because he had already made his plans.
"I'm not ready to say, just yet. It depends upon what to-morrow brings forth," returned Jesse. "There's a rich bank in Ste. Genevieve. This man, Rozier, and his dandified son stick in my crop and I intend to be quits with him before I do anything else."
"I should think you were already," grinned Frank. "You've saved his daughter, called him down for offering you money and refused the girl's request to let her sweetheart off from the tar and feathering.
"I don't know what more you want.
"If you take my advice, you'll let well enough alone and duck out of here while we have the chance. I've got a hunch that if we stay here we're going to get into trouble!"
With a superstitious respect for his brother's intuitions, the great outlaw puffed at his pipe in silence for several minutes.
"I have no right to insist on your remaining here when it's only a private grudge to be settled," said he at last. "If you boys want to go into Nebraska, Iowa or even farther north, you may. But mind you, you are only going to look over the ground, get acquainted with the lay of the land and find out some likely places to raid. There's to be no work done till I join you.
"If you can find Bill Chadwell, take him along. He knows every hog path in that country."
With their customary desire to be with their idol day and night when possible, Clell and Cole announced their determination to remain with him.