"Bullet holes!" Joe Chessman snapped.
Hawkins turned to him. "By the looks of things, MacBride's whole unit
has gone over to the rebels. Complete with their double-barreled
muskets. A full thousand of them."
Watson looked frigidly at Leonid Plekhanov. "You insisted on issuing
guns to men we weren't sure of."
Plekhanov grumbled, "Confound it, don't use that tone of voice with me.
We have to arm our men, don't we?"
Watson said, "Yes, but our still comparatively few advanced weapons
shouldn't go into the hands of anybody but trusted citizens of the
State, certainly not to a bunch of mercenaries. The only ones we can
_really_ trust even among the Tulans, are those that were kids when we
first took over. The one's we've had time to indoctrinate."
"The mistake's made. It's too late now," Plekhanov said. "Hawkins go
back and dust those cavalrymen as they come through the pass."
Reif said, "It was a mistake, too, to allow them the secret of the
crossbow."
Plekhanov roared, "I didn't _allow_ them anything. Once the crossbow was
introduced it was just a matter of time before its method of
construction got to the enemy."
"Then it shouldn't have been introduced," Reif said, his eyes
unflinching from the Earthman's.
Plekhanov ignored him. He said, "Hawkins, get going on that dusting.
Watson, pull what units we already have in this valley back through the
pass we control. We'll avoid battle until more of their army has fallen
away."
Hawkins said with deceptive mildness, "I just told you those cavalrymen
have muskets. To fly low enough to use gas on them, I'd get within easy
range. Point one, this is the only aircraft we've built. Point two,
MacBride is probably dead, killed when those cavalrymen mutinied. Point
three, I came on this expedition to help modernize the Texcocans, not to
die in battle."
Plekhanov snarled at him. "Coward, eh?" He turned churlishly to Watson
and Reif. "Start pulling back our units."