Ali Baba

Well, he never did get them" trained"; never did the Forty Thieves achieve the heights of efficiency and cohesion and loyalty so rigidly expected of them; they never even learned to shoot, though he did manage to get out of the poor devils a fidelity that showed up rather prettily at the end.

Two weeks later the Pulajanes, the "Red Ones," swarmed down from the hills at night.

The outskirts of the pueblo were already crackling when he awoke, and the fear-mad inhabitants were flowing beneath his window like a black rivet capped with white froth. He sprang out of that window, ran to the cuartel, got his Thieves together, and charged for the Casa Popular--the Municipal House.

It was rather beautiful, that. Imagine these poor, slovenly disreputables, badly armed, untrained, filled, no doubt, with a distrust of themselves, with a knowledge of their insufficiency, of the hopelessness of any cause which they might cham