His gameness amazed his captors, though it only made them crush him against the rocks the more furiously. But as he closed his eyes to keep out the sight of the hideous, passion-distorted faces before him, a deep-lunged voice uttered some sharp commands. In a trice, the terrible pressure relaxed and the next moment the outlaw felt himself again raised from his feet and borne rapidly upward. Ere many minutes he could tell that he was again on a level and instantly his mind sought some scheme by which he could kill time. For he felt that the world-famous desperado would not leave him to the anything but tender mercies of the savages. Yet had he known that his beloved chief was even then returning to his pals, having failed to find a way to scale the wall of rock, he would have been sad, indeed. But he did not know and his ignorance was bliss, in truth. As Comanche Tony racked his brain for some manner to delay his captors, more commands rang out and the Indians who were carrying him set him down. The moon had just risen above the peaks of the mountains to the east and, in its light, the bandit saw that he was on a plateau sparsely covered with stunted trees. To one of these his captors guided him. As he reached it, a couple of the braves lopped off the lower branches. Whirling him roughly, his guards backed him against the tree trunk and while they held him, others deftly bound him to the improvised stake with lariats they had brought with them from the bottom of the canyon. Grave, indeed, was his situation. And it needed no one to tell the captive bandit that the redmen proposed to burn him at the stake when they should tire of their preliminary tortures. But as his plight became more desperate, Comanche Tony became the more determined to gain time. Only one expedient was there of which he could think that was adequate in his dire extremity. He must scare the painted bucks. And while he was considering whether he could do this the most readily by threatening them with vengeance at the hands of the world-famous desperado, or by telling them a squad of United States cavalry were on their trail, the Indians made what was, to them, a fatal move. They kindled a fire about two rods from where Comanche Tony stood tied to the stake. As the tongues of flame leaped in the air, their reflection was seen by Jesse James and his men in the canyon. "By thunder! Do you suppose that's from the Injuns or the sojers?" asked Wild Bill, as his chief sprang to his feet. "I don't know. _But I'm going to find out!_ "There's no need of waiting till morning. "Come on, everybody. We'll go down to where the first fires were." Quickly the desperadoes started, for they had ill liked the thought of leaving their pal to his fate. With Texas Jack and Wild Bill at his side, the bandit chieftain advanced till he reached the heaps of broken boulders that had come so near to being their death a short time before.