"Go tell your troubles to your Lion Man," growled Orman, taking another drink.
"Don't be an old meany, Tom. You know I don't care anything about him. There isn't any one but you."
"Yes, I know it—except when you think I'm not looking. You don't think I'm blind, do you?"
"You may not be blind, but you're all wet," she snapped angrily. "I—"
A shot from the rear of the column halted her in mid-speech. Then came another and another in quick succession, followed by a fusillade.
Orman leaped to his feet. Men started to run toward the rear. He called them back. "Stay here!" he cried. "They may attack here, too—if that's who it is back again. Major White! Tell the sheik to send a horseman back there pronto to see what's happened."
Naomi Madison fainted. No one paid any attention to her. They left her lying where she had fallen. The black askaris and the white men of the company stood with rifles in tense fingers, straining their eyes into the woods about them.
The firing at the rear ceased as suddenly as it had begun. The ensuing silence seemed a thing of substance. It was broken by a weird, blood-curdling scream from the dark wood on the opposite bank of the river.
"Gad!" exclaimed Baine. "What was that?"
"I think the bounders are just trying to frighten us," said White.