Jeb did not know how to challenge them, but a pointed rifle and a stern command in any language is never difficult of translation between soldiers of opposing armies. He saw now that six of them were laboring with a large stone, and there could be no more favorable time for him to act. With a bound he reached the edge.
"Hands up!" he barked.
The fifteen faces turned to him were 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 he must let his words and acts mesh with the nicety of machine gears, or his authority would vanish.