His plan was to occupy all the mountain roads and passes leading out of the six counties with armed bands of militia, while at the same time he himself advanced slowly along the highroads with his gentlemen-volunteers joining hands together from place to place.

Between various groups of the volunteers were regular lines of _pandurs_ who had to thoroughly scour all the forests they came to.

The encircling network of this gigantic army of beaters grew narrower and narrower day by day and was to converge towards a fixed point which Squire Gerzson said he would more definitely indicate later on.
Moreover there was a flying column admitted to the full confidence of its leader, whose duty it was to appear suddenly and unexpectedly in all parts of the closely environed region, in order to head off anything like a definite plan of defence on the part of the adventurers and track them down more easily.

The leadership of this special corps was entrusted to young Szilard Vamhidy, upon whose ingenuity, determination and ability Squire Gerzson professed to place the utmost reliance.
As soon as he had received this important charge, Szilard took horse and set off at the head of his four and twenty _pandurs_.

First of all he went in the direction of the Alps of Bihar and along a narrow mountain path and through a melancholy, uncanny, region with not a living plant by the wayside and not a morsel of moss on the naked rock.
No sound is to be heard there but the eternal sighing of the wind, and in the dizzy depths below the traveller sees nothing but dense, dreary forests crowding one upon another with the Alpine eagles circling and screaming above them.
It was just the place for a hunted band of robbers to turn upon their pursuers for a last life and death struggle,--here where even the bodies of the slain would never be found.