ere blank with astonishment.

"Hands up!" he repeated.

The officer, first to recover, made a quick reach for his pistol, and
Jeb dropped him in his tracks. This shot, and its effect, broke the
spell. Spades and picks were thrown aside, the stone fell with a crash,
and the men, thoroughly cowered, raised their hands, calling: "Kamerad!
Kamerad!"--the same old cry that has rung from Verdun to the sea,
although Jeb was hearing it for the first time.

By gesture he commanded them to climb out, one at a time, and in single
file to march farther away from the rifles, since at some personal cost
they might have yet attempted a rush and overpowered him. But there was
no rush in these exhausted men, and, except for a few who showed signs
of relief, they took the situation with stolid gravity.

In a hundred yards he halted them and called the child, who came bravely
out of hiding with the remnants of her family; but, confronted by the
grimly uniformed line, she drew back screaming.

"It's all right, little one," Jeb called reassuringly. "These are your
horses; come quickly, hop up and ride!"

One of the prisoners, understanding French, began to laugh as he
translated this to his comrades, but Jeb peremptorily stopped all
conversation. To let these fellows get an inch beyond the strictest
discipline was to invite disaster. Yet now he could give orders through
this interpreter, and soon the column was marching silently southward,
its first three men each bearing on his shoulders a wan little victim
from the "empire of death." The others followed obediently enough, while
Jeb, in a position to enfilade the column--thus maintaining a command of
each file--brought up the rear. From his attitude and voice the captives
seemed to know that he was on a very dangerous tension, and that the
slightest hesitation on their part would mean instant death. They had no
desire to test his skill further than that one snap shot through their
officer's brain.

His first concern was to drive straight southward and get clear of the
machine-gun redoubts, which he felt sure were being extended westward;
and as the success of this plan hinged largely upon absolute silence, he
had promised fourteen inches of bayonet to the first man who spoke,
coughed, sneezed, or stubbed his toe. Moreover, he was recklessly
prepared to execute this threat without a second's hesitation, fully
realizing that if he would hold supremacy against such overpowering odds
h