Don't fire under any conditions except by command." I paused, then added slowly: "You are all intelligent enough to know the danger of our expedition, and the necessity of striking quick and hard.

Our success, our very lives, depend on surprise.

If each one of you does exactly as I order, we've got a chance to come back; if not, then it means a bullet, or a prison, for all of us.

Are you ready ?" I heard the low responses, and counted them--ten, the negro not answering.
"All right, men," then, my voice hardening into a threat: "Now go ahead, Le Gaire, and remember I am next behind, and carry a revolver in my hand.

Make a wrong move, lad, and you'll never make another." I could faintly discern the whites of his eyes, and heard one of the men snicker nervously.
"Lead off! Fall in promptly, men." It was a rocky cleft through the hills, perhaps a hundred yards wide here where it opened on the river, with a little stream in its centre fringed with low trees, but narrowing gradually, and becoming blocked with underbrush as it penetrated deeper into the interior.