"You've done it! You've got me!" she yelled. "My leg's broke!" Then she shrieked for Davy and Bill and Sam, raining curses upon the law and upon the traitor who had been their undoing.
Bonner, his own leg wobbling and covered with blood, tried to quiet her, but without success. He saw that she was utterly helpless, her leg twisted under her heavy body. Her screams of pain as he turned her over proved conclusively that she was not shamming. Her hip was dislocated. The young man had sense enough left to return to Davy before venturing into the cave where Miss Gray was doubtless in a dead faint. The man was breathing, but still unconscious from the blow on the head. Bonner quickly tied his hands and feet, guarding against emergencies in case of his own incapacitation as the result of the bullet wound in his leg; then he hobbled off with the lantern past the groaning Amazon in quest of Rosalie Gray. It did not occur to him until afterward that single handed he had overcome a most desperate band of criminals, so simply had it all worked out up to the time of the encounter with the woman.
A few yards beyond where the old woman lay moaning he came upon the cave in which the bandits made their home. Holding the lantern above his head, Bonner peered eagerly into the cavern. In the farthest corner crouched a girl, her terror-struck eyes fastened upon the stranger.
"How do you do, Miss Gray," came the cheery greeting from his lips. She gasped, swept her hand over her eyes, and tried piteously to speak. The words would not come. "The long-prayed-for rescue has come. You are free--that is, as soon as we find our way out of this place. Let me introduce myself as Jack, the Giant Killer--hello! Don't do that! Oh, the devil!" She had toppled over in a dead faint.
How Wicker Bonner, with his wounded leg, weak from loss of blood, and faint from the reaction, carried her from the cave through the passage and the trap-door and into the tent can only be imagined, not described. He only knew that it was necessary to remove her from the place, and that his strength would soon be gone. The sun was tinting the east before she opened her eyes and shuddered. In the meantime he had stanched the flow of blood in the fleshy part of his leg, binding the limb tightly with a piece of rope. It was an ugly, glancing cut made by a bullet of large calibre, and it was sure to put him on crutches for some time to come. Even now he was scarcely able to move the member. For an hour he had been venting his wrath upon the sluggish Anderson Crow, who should have been on the scene long before this. Two of his captives, now fully conscious, were glaring at their companions in the tent with hate in their eyes.