"And they'll lower our supply of food," interposed the girl.
"It looks as though old 'turkey gobler' would starve his own men and not us," chuckled the outlaw. "Still, there's no hurry about deciding what to do with them. They can't do any damage, that's certain. After I take a look round to-morrow and see how the land lays, we can attend to them."
Preys to all sorts of hopes and fears, Jennings and Scotty had passed through an ordeal during the last hour such as seldom falls to the lot of any human. The sight of their comrades beating the mountainside for their captors had inspired them with hope for their own rescue. When Rogers had decided to take them with him, they still clung to this hope. But as the pursuit grew closer, they were in terror lest the outlaw put a bullet into each of them and thus rid himself of the handicap they were to his escape. With the realization that they would probably be kept to serve the purpose of their captor, after they heard from his lips that there was a different place to enter the Cave than the one the troopers were besieging, they lost heart, however. And as their hunger increased with the savory odors coming from the food that Rose was preparing, they wished that the notorious outlaw had, indeed, ended their suffering.
But they were to find that Rogers was not utterly without feeling.
As Rose announced that their meal was ready, the desperado walked over to where the scouts lay.
"I reckon you fellows are a bit hungry," he chuckled. "Now, I tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to take the gags out of your mouths and give you something to eat. I'll also remove the bandages from your eyes. It won't do you any good to yell or cry out, because we've got enough shells and bullets in this Cave to hold it against a regiment. Besides, if any of your friends up above tried to get in here, unless they struck one particular place, they'd fall way down, clean to hell, I guess. So you see, it won't do you any good to try to start something."
"But they might let 'em know' there was another way to get into the place," interposed Pedro.
"Little good it would do 'em," returned his chief. "They could search a month of Sundays and never find it."
"Still, they might get word to the Fort and then old 'turkey gobler' would order the men out again, which would interfere with our going where we pleased," objected Rose.
"Reckon you're right, girl. It will be a big sight easier for me to carry out my plans if I don't have a bunch of manhunters to dodge for a while.