And, aware of his seeming helplessness, the bucks were already yelling in anticipation of his capture.
Their attention attracted by the howls of the savages, the cavalrymen quickly discovered the group of horsemen in the bracken.
Hoarse commands, the sounds of which alone reached the bandits, were spoken and, in a twinkling, those of the troopers who had mounted the level from the ravine, set their horses toward them.
Turning his head, the world-famous desperado looked toward the Indians.
All of half a mile away were they, though each minute lessened the distance.
"Its a chance, but we've got to take it," snapped Jesse, thinking aloud. "Quick, boys! Whirl your ponies. We'll ride back a way then make a dash for the ravine! Come on!"
Even as the words fell from their leader's lips, his men had turned their mounts and, as he gave the word, buried the rowels of their spurs in the flanks of the fleet footed Indian ponies.
Startled by the unwonted pain, the animals leaped away like stones from catapults.
Scarcely a minute had it been from the time the outlaws had caught sight of the cavalrymen till they were in full flight. Yet to them each second their chief had sat inactive had seemed an hour.
In amazement, the savages beheld the men they had been pursuing rush toward them.
"Kaw-Kaw's bewitched them! They've lost their minds! Her curses live to destroy the men who killed her!" shouted Great Bear in his native tongue, transported with joy. "At them! At them! Jesse James is the Navajos' prey. The paleface dogs must not get him first!"
Goaded to frenzy by the words of their chief, the bucks fell to lashing their ponies, riding like fiends in their effort to prevent the troopers from snatching their quarry from their very grasp.
But the cavalrymen viewed the course of the desperately pressed little band with different feelings.
"Jesse's in the bunch, all right. That move shows it," growled one of them, the stars and chevrons on whose uniform proclaimed him a captain. "No one but that murdering daredevil would have chosen to ride back toward that pack of howling savages rather than toward us.
"Curse the luck! Why couldn't we have struck the ravine half a mile farther east? Then we'd been right on top of him and could have shot him down."