"Throw out pickets!" ordered the commander. "We are in a dangerous strategical position here."
"But what about the rest of the gang--do we go after them?" asked the Lieutenant after executing his superior officer's commands.
"Yes, we might as well clean house thoroughly while we are about it. Let two men ride in with the body. They should reach the fort by daybreak. We will remain here with the rest of the troop and finish up the job. It should be easy to at least disperse the gang, now that their leader has turned up his toes for the last time. It has been a good job, Lieutenant, eh?"
The young officer nodded and smiled, for his share in the great achievement had been no small one and in all probability would bring him much nearer to having a command of his own at no distant day.
With the others, the army officer's words were accepted as final. Meantime the troopers had constructed a litter and were now engaged in dragging it to the spot where Jesse lay face up on the rocks, the moonbeams lighting up his face with a ghastly pallor, to the strained imagination of the soldiers.
At a motion from the Lieutenant, the two mounted men rode their ponies to the scene and sprang from their saddles to lift the inanimate form of the fallen desperado to the litter to be conveyed to the fort some thirty miles away.
The men's Winchesters reposed safely in their saddle holsters, and the ponies, unmindful of the tragic scene before them, calmly began browsing on the tender underbrush.
The two troopers bent over to lift the body to the litter that the others were bringing up.
At that instant a strange and unexpected thing happened.
Both arms shot out and the moon beams caught and reflected a steely glint in each hand.
With lightning-like quickness the bandit's hands shot into the shadows formed by the bodies of the two troopers. The movement was so slight as to have been almost indistinguishable two paces away.
The soldiers with a groan settled down in a heap.
Yet nothing of the tragedy being enacted before their very eyes, conveyed itself to the troopers just beyond, and the Captain was calling out some order to the men that the bandit had laid low. They did not know that two of their companions lay dying there, their life blood staining the virgin rocks.