Wincing as though she had been struck with a lash, the beauty drew back. "I beg pardon," hastily continued Jesse. "I didn't mean to add to your anguish. I fancy I understand about them." And the relief that his words brought to the blue eyes was ample reward to the bandit-chieftain and he continued: "How would it be if we should buy some food at the village, would you cook it for us? We'll pay you for your trouble." Scarce believing her ears, the girl looked at the outlaws as though they were genii sprung from the earth, then exclaimed: "I'll ask Ma. Won't you come in? You'll have to excuse the looks of the house but I haven't felt much like tidying up." Accepting the invitation eagerly, in the hope that he might get a glimpse of the fever-stricken woman and the infant, Jesse entered. But the sight that greeted his eyes made the yard seem clean and well-kept, in comparison. On one side of the room, which served as kitchen and bed-chamber, stretched on a pallet of straw, lay a grey-haired woman, her thin face and flushed cheeks evidencing all too clearly the ravages of the malady with which she was afflicted. And resting in the crook of an emaciated arm lay a baby, fussing and whimpering, now and then crying: "Mik. I wan' my mik." In his interest in the twain on the sorry bed, the world-famous desperado was oblivious to the rags, dishes, broken chairs and battered stove that formed the rest of the furnishings. "These men want to know if I'll cook 'em something to eat if they'll buy it," announced the girl, dropping to her knees that she might speak in the woman's ear. "Law, child, I don' believe the stove'll draw," replied her mother, when she understood the reason for the strangers' presence. "Then we'll get food that won't need cooking," returned Jesse. "You'll have to speak louder, Ma's deaf," declared her daughter. "Well, you kin do as you please," rejoined the sick creature. "It may draw and it may not." "We'll take the chance," asserted the bandit-chieftain. "Jim, you and Miss--" "Shaw, Daisy Shaw," supplied the girl. "You and Miss Shaw make out a list of what she needs at the store while I see if I can't make her mother a bit easier." And kneeling beside the bed of straw, he took out his medicine case with its wonderful salves and lotions. In reply to his questions, the bandit-chieftain learned that the woman had been tossing with the fever for more than a week, though not till the desertion of her husband and son, two days before, had it become virulent. The mention of the faithless scoundrel who had left her in want and misery threw her into wild ravings. "Does she have these spells often?" asked the great outlaw as he hastily produced an opiate from his case. "Most of the time. Oh, she takes on awful!" returned the girl whose status as wife of the runaway son or sister, the bandits had not yet ascertained. But it was one thing to prepare the narcotic and another to administer it.