A few yards beyond where the old woman lay moaning he came upon the cave in which the bandits made their home.  Holding the lantern above his head, Bonner peered eagerly into the cavern.  In the farthest corner crouched a girl, her terror-struck eyes fastened upon the stranger.

“How do you do, Miss Gray,” came the cheery greeting from his lips.  She gasped, swept her hand over her eyes, and tried piteously to speak.  The words would not come.  “The long-prayed-for rescue has come.  You are free—­that is, as soon as we find our way out of this place.  Let me introduce myself as Jack, the Giant Killer—­hello!  Don’t do that!  Oh, the devil!” She had toppled over in a dead faint.

How Wicker Bonner, with his wounded leg, weak from loss of blood, and faint from the reaction, carried her from the cave through the passage and the trap-door and into the tent can only be imagined, not described.  He only knew that it was necessary to remove her from the place, and that his strength would soon be gone.  The sun was tinting the east before she opened her eyes and shuddered.  In the meantime he had stanched the flow of blood in the fleshy part of his leg, binding the limb tightly with a piece of rope.  It was an ugly, glancing cut made by a bullet of large calibre, and it was sure to put him on crutches for some time to come.  Even now he was scarcely able to move the member.  For an hour he had been venting his wrath upon the sluggish Anderson Crow, who should have been on the scene long before this.  Two of his captives, now fully conscious, were glaring at their companions in the tent with hate in their eyes.

Rosalie Gray, wan, dishevelled, but more beautiful than the reports had foretold, could not at first believe herself to be free from the clutches of the bandits.  It took him many minutes—­many painful minutes—­to convince her that it was not a dream, and that in truth he was Wicker Bonner, gentleman.  Sitting with his back against a tent pole, facing the cabin through the flap, with a revolver in his trembling hand, he told her of the night’s adventures, and was repaid tenfold by the gratitude which shone from her eyes and trembled in her voice.  In return she told him of her capture, of the awful experiences in the cave, and of the threats which had driven her almost to the end of endurance.

“Oh, oh, I could love you forever for this!” she cried in the fulness of her joy.  A rapturous smile flew to Bonner’s eyes.

“Forever begins with this instant, Miss Gray,” he said; and without any apparent reason the two shook hands.  Afterward they were to think of this trivial act and vow that it was truly the beginning.  They were young, heart-free, and full of the romance of life.

“And those awful men are really captured—­and the woman?” she cried, after another exciting recital from him.  Sam and Bill fairly snarled.  “Suppose they should get loose?” Her eyes grew wide with the thought of it.