At first the woman would not listen to the suggestion, protesting that Jesse was but some miserable tool of her husband, sent by him to poison her. And it required the combined efforts of the three to reassure her. So weak was she from lack of nourishment and the ravages of the fever that when she did swallow it the effect was almost instantaneous, however. By the time her mother was wrapped in the first sleep since her abandonment by her husband, Daisy and Jim had completed the list. "Have you thought of everything?" smiled Jesse as he noted the look of fearsome eagerness on her face as she handed him the slip. "That will do for the present," she replied, relieved that the number of the wants had not appalled their benefactor. "But there's not enough to last two days," protested the famous desperado, glancing through the items. "Jim, go to the store--Miss Shaw will direct you how to reach it, and order three times the amount she's put down. Get a barrel of flour and a barrel of sugar, too. Have someone drive the stuff back with you. Now hurry, I'm hungry." As his chum picked up his hat and departed, after receiving the necessary instructions to reach the store. Daisy tried to thank the generous stranger, but with a laugh, Jesse begged her not to mention it and distracted her attention from his largess by suggesting that she bathe her mother in a lotion he took from his medicine case. "She isn't my real mother," confided the girl, "only my mother-in-law. I married Tom in New Orleans. He was a horse jockey at the time. But he got to drinking, lost his job and we drifted up here--and now he's left me." "Good riddance, I should say," snapped Jesse. And by dint of clever questioning, he drew from the girl the whole sad story of deception and disgrace to which she and the sick woman had been brought by the worthless father and son whose disappearance was due to some transgression of the law. His sympathy aroused, the famous desperado asked about the cow, learning that she had been taken for a mortgage which was not due for three days. Having a chance to sell her and believing that the deserted woman could never raise the amount loaned, the hardhearted farmer had driven the animal away. Boiling with indignation at the injustice, Jesse demanded the man's name. "He's Hiram Rozier and he's awful rich," answered Daisy. "I wonder if he is any relation to the Roziers in Ste. Genevieve?" hazarded the bandit-chieftain. "He has a brother who's president of or owns a bank." "Ha! He _is_ one of that tribe, eh?" hissed Jesse. "I'll pay him a visit before I leave this town. You'll either have your cow back or another in its place." Something in the tone in which her "Prince Charming" uttered the promise made Daisy look at him and the expression she saw on his face caused her to shrink from him in terror.