His two Indian guards lay directly in his path. Jesse with some misgivings and a greater effort, rolled over them as the quickest way to get on.
The Indians grunted but did not wake up, which he was positive would be the case in their condition. But the feel of their bodies against his had stirred the blood lust within him and suggested a new idea to the great desperado.
"If my hands only were free," he growled. "Ah, I have it. I'll try it," he gritted, with blazing eyes.
Quickly the outlaw rolled back to them. Now he was bent on a terrible revenge. And he forgot for the moment his own deadly peril in his ferocious desire to be revenged on Great Bear.
With as much speed as his manacled condition would permit, the great outlaw worked his head along the body of the Indian nearest to him. Not finding what he sought at first, he braced his feet with great difficulty and putting forth an almost superhuman effort, pushed and pushed against the redskin with his head, until the savage had been rolled over. The deed, however, had required a supreme effort.
The Indian squirmed and muttered surlily, but to the desperado's intense relief, did not awake.
Jesse searched at the side he had just turned up, and with a savage exclamation of delight, bit hard at the Indian's waist.
The desperado's face came away with the redskin's bowie between his teeth.
The outlaw could have shouted, so great was his joy. After laborious effort he succeeded in setting the keen-edged blade more firmly between his teeth, so that only the hilt was held by them.
Cautiously he squirmed and wriggled until his head and shoulders were over the body of the redskin whom he had again rolled over on his back.
The great desperado, still holding the knife in a vice-like grip between his teeth, twisted his head at right angles to his body and set the needle-like point of the blade, on the Indian's abdomen.
The cruel blood-thirstiness of what he was about to do made no impression on him, for Jesse was bent on a terrible vengeance. And it was a moment of supreme ecstasy for the bandit-chieftain, bound and manacled and helpless as he was.
Suddenly throwing the weight of his body on his toes and neck, the deadly bowie, by the sheer force of the outlaw's own weight, was driven into the Indian's bowels while the blood in a sudden red sheet, spurted into his mouth and eyes.