soldiers, and told them what they must do. He had deceived them. He
had not told them the whole truth as he himself knew it. They must
leave at once, scattering up among the hills and keeping close mouths
as to where they had been and what they had done. He would go down and
give himself up, for if the railroad people once had him in custody
they would not bother so very much about bringing the others to
punishment.

His men looked at him in a sort of puzzled wonder. They did not
understand, unless it might be that he had suddenly gone crazy. There
was an enemy marching up the line toward them, bent upon killing or
capturing them. They turned from him and without a spoken word,
without a signal of any sort, loosed a rifle volley across the front
of the oncoming troops. The battle was on!

The volley had been fired by men who were accustomed to shoot deer and
foxes from distances greater than this. The first two ranks of the
soldiers fell as if they had been cut down with scythes. Not one of
them was hit above the knees. The firing stopped suddenly as it had
begun. The hill men had given a terse, emphatic warning. It was as
though they had marked a dead line beyond which there must be no
advance.

These soldiers had never before been shot at. The very restraint which
the hill men had shown in not killing any of them in that volley
proved to the soldiers even in their fright and surprise how deadly
was the aim and the judgment of the invisible enemy somewhere in the
woods there before them. To their credit, they did not drop their arms
or run. They stood stunned and paralysed, as much by the suddenness
with which the firing had ceased as by the surprise of its beginning.

Their officers ran forward, shouting the superfluous command for them
to halt, and ordering them to carry the wounded men back to the cars.
For a moment it seemed doubtful whether they would again advance or
would put themselves into some kind of defence formation and hold the
ground on which they stood.

Jeffrey Whiting, looking beyond them, saw two other trains come slowly
creeping up the line. From the second train he saw men leaping down
who did not take up any sort of military formation. These he knew were
sheriffs' posses, fighting men sworn in because they were known to be
fighters. They were natural man hunters who delighted in the chase of
the human animal. He had often seen them in the hills on the hunt, and
he knew that they were an ene