"No."
The three horses suddenly broke into a gallop. Payne reached for his field glasses, but before he could bring them to bear the cavalcade had disappeared behind a cluster of cabbage palms on a small hammock probably five hundred yards away.
The negroes stopped work suddenly, eyeing their masters for instructions, but ready to run the next instant if the instructions were not forthcoming.
"Lie down! Right where you are." Payne's orders seemed to drop the blacks in their tracks. Relieved at having a white man think for them they stretched their great bodies in the grass, their eyes not on the menace of the hammock, but upon Payne. Payne and Higgins remained standing, their carbines lying across their left arms.
"If they can hit anything at that distance they've got to be pretty good shots, Hig."
"I'll say they have. Got to have pretty good tools, too; and most of the rifles I've seen round here are the old forty-fours."
"If they are Garman's men they'll have up-to-date rifles all right."
"Sure. The best money can buy." Higgins shrewdly estimated the range to the palms. "Say, Payne, if they've got Springfields or something as good, and can use them, we're making a fool play standing here."
"Lie down, there."
"Down hell! What I mean is we ought to get closer to 'em so we'd have an even break with these little 30-30s."