Young men, with the fire of ambition burning in them and a proper scorn for mere superficial ceremony, had to sweat their tempers and bow down beneath the yoke of senile pompousness.
Strong, savage, powder-weaned Hill-tribesmen--inheritors of egoistic independence and a love of loot--laughed loud and long and openly at System that prevented officers from taking arms against them until authority could come by delegate from somebody who slept.

By that time they would be across the border, quarrelling among themselves about division of the plunder! They had respect in plenty for the youth and virile middle age that dealt with them on the rare occasions when a timely blow was loosed.
Then they had proof that from that strange, mad country overseas there came men who could lead men--men who could strike, and who knew enough to hold their hands when the sudden blow had told--just men, who could keep their plighted word.

No border thief pretended that the British could not rule him; to a man, they laughed because the possible was not imposed.

And to the last bold, ruffianly iconoclast they stole when, where, and what they dared.
Things altered strangely soon after Ralph Cunningham, with the diffidence of youth but the blood of a line of soldiers leaping in him, took charge of his tiny force of nondescripts.

They were neither soldiers nor police.