didn't give them just to hear myself give orders. There
was a reason, and a good one.

"Suppose we let each man take what gold he could find. What would
happen? The lucky ones would be wealthy, and the unlucky would still be
poor. And then some of the lucky ones would wake up some morning without
the gold they'd taken because someone else had relieved them of it while
they slept.

"And others wouldn't wake up at all, because they'd be found with their
throats cut.

"I told you to bring every bit of the metal to me. When this thing is
over, every one of you will get his share. If a man dies, his share will
be split among the rest, instead of being stolen by someone else or lost
because it was hidden too well."

He looked at the earring in his hand, then, with a convulsive sweep of
his arm, he tossed it out into the middle of the square.

"There! Seven ounces of gold! Which of you wants it?"

Some of the men eyed the circle of metal that gleamed brightly on the
sunlit ground, but none of them made any motion to pick it up.

"So." The commander's voice was almost gentle. He turned his eyes back
toward the accused. "You know the orders. You knew them when you hid
this." He gestured negligently toward the small heap of native-wrought
metal. "Suppose you'd gotten away with it. You'd have ended up with your
own share, _plus_ this, thereby cheating the others out of--" He glanced
at the pile. "Hm-m-m--say, twenty-five each. And that's only a little
compared with what we'll get from now on."

He looked back at the others. "Unless the shares are taken care of _my_
way, the largest shares will go to the dishonest, the most powerful, and
the luckiest. Unless the division is made as we originally agreed, we'll
end up trying to cut each other's heart out."

There was hardness in his voice when he spoke to the accused, but there
was compassion there, too.

"First: You have forfeited your share in this expedition. All that you
have now, and all that you might have expected will be divided among the
others according to our original agreement.

"Second: I do not expect any man to work for nothing. Since you will not
receive anything from this expedition, there is no point in your
assisting the rest of us or working with us in any way whatsoever.

"Third: We can't have anyone with us who does not carry his own weight."

He glanced at the guards. "Hang him." He paused. "Now."

As he was led away, the commander watched the