rsemen.

"It didn't take him long to tell his friends," said Payne. "Hig, you
go down to the other side of the boys. My guess is that they'll try to
terrorize our labor. If they drive this bunch off the news will
spread. Negroes won't come to work down here where they hear any white
men are out against them. If they're like the first pup they'll try to
ride the boys down."

"Yep; that's a favorite method."

"Kill the horse under the first man who tries it, if he's down your
way. If he's up here I'll do it. Then stop. Stop absolutely. No
words. I talked too much to that other hound. Just wait for their
next move."

"Well--I've heard they carry guns down here, Payne, and use them well,
too, sometimes," said Higgins questioningly.

"Well," replied Payne dryly, "I don't think I'll try to tell you what
to do in that case."

The three riders were still far away and their approach was a slow,
leisurely canter. They made no apparent effort to hurry their mounts,
nor did they maintain a straight course. At times they were lost from
view hidden behind the islets of palmetto scrub, or in one of the rare
clumps of pine or cypress with which the prairie was dotted.

"Looks like they're getting a little chilled below the ankles," called
Higgins. "Do they think we're such damn fools they can fool us by
coming slow?"

The riders disappeared behind one of the small thick clumps of old
cypress trees draped with great curtains of Spanish moss, which mark
the presence of a water hole on the Florida prairie. When they emerged
their course was altered toward the northward.

"Looks like they're turning back."

"No."

The three horses suddenly broke into a gallop. Payne reached for his
field glasses, but before he could bring them to bear the cavalcade had
disappeared behind a cluster of cabbage palms on a small hammock
probably five hundred yards away.

The negroes stopped work suddenly, eyeing their masters for
instructions, but ready to run the next instant if the instructions
were not forthcoming.

"Lie down! Right where you are." Payne's orders seemed to drop the
blacks in their tracks. Relieved at having a white man think for them
they stretched their great bodies in the grass, their eyes not on the
menace of the hammock, but upon Payne. Payne and Higgins remained
standing, their carbines lying across their left arms.

"If they can hit anything at that distance they've got to be pretty
good shots,