point's the cross-roads. I'm supposed to halt every one who comes,
and to ask him his business. And that'd be impossible to do from
the guardroom here. Let this be a lesson to you men, now. In
interpretin' orders, when a point's in doubt, always look for the
meaning of the orders rather than the letter of them, obeying the
letter only when the meaning and the letter are the same thing. The
letter of our orders says the guardroom. The meaning's clear. We're
here to guard the cross-roads. We take the meaning, and let the
letter hang!

"Besides! The way it seems to me, if there's any more trouble cooking
in this neighborhood, it's going to cook pretty fast, and it's going
to boil around that guardroom; and if we're not in the guardroom,
why, that's point number one for us! Leave the guardroom lantern
lighted, and bring out nothing but your cartridge-pouches and the
box of ammunition. Leave everything else where it lies. Quick, now."

They obeyed him on the run, afraid to be out of his sight for a moment
even, trusting him as little children trust a nurse, and ready to
do anything so long as he would only keep them up and doing, and
not make them stay by the scene of the murders. Brown knew their
state of mind as accurately as he knew the range of their service
rifles, and he knew just how he could best keep panic from them.
He knew too, if not what was best to do, at least what he intended
doing, and he knew how he could best get them in a state to do it.

Behind his own mind lay all the while a sense of loneliness and
hopelessness. He did not entertain the thought of failure to hold
the crossroads, and he was so certain that General Baines would come
with his division that he could almost see the advance-guard trotting