"Come Dew Drop. Dew Drop show um place hide."
As she uttered the last words, the amazed desperadoes saw a slender creature, clad in what seemed an old wrapper, part the branches of the tree near which they stood.
An instant the world-famous desperado hesitated.
"If the bucks see the corpses and don't find us in the woods won't they search the place you're going to take us?" he asked, anxiously.
"No. Dew Drop take um cave Kaw-Kaw, Injun witch. Injun fraid go in Kaw-Kaw cave."
"Well, we won't be any worse off than we will here, that's sure. But why you want to help us I don't see. However, we'll take the chance. Come on, boys."
And, following the Indian maiden, the outlaws wound in and out among the evergreens till they reached a black hole, like a cavernous maw, in the cliff from which was exhaled a curiously intoxicating aroma.
"Paleface no make noise. Kaw-Kaw deaf, no hear. Lie down, no see. Dew Drop lie nex' Jess Jame so can talk."
Wondering what adventure was in store for them, the bandits quickly did as the Indian maiden told them, their chief choosing a place near the mouth of the cave with his chum at his side.
Scarcely had the world-famous desperado squatted down, with Dew Drop on his left and Comanche Tony on his right, than howls and yells of exultation reached them, telling them that the savages had discovered the three dead bodies at the foot of the cliff.
"By my scalp! we didn't git hyar any too soon, I reckon, jedgin' by them whoops," whispered the old Indian fighter.
The action of the red-hued maiden in coming to him when he was in such sore need puzzled him, and he was racking his brain to remember whether or not he had ever seen her before.
Unable to place her, his mind once more reverted to the thought that her opportune appearance might have been but a part of a plot conceived by Great Bear to lure him and his men to the cave of the witch that they might be slaughtered without chance of escape.
If such were, in truth, the case, he and his companions were wasting precious moments.
Determined to end his suspense, Jesse clutched the maiden in a vice-like grip with his left hand, raising his bowie knife in his right, ready to plunge it into her heart, as he whispered in a tense, hoarse voice: