the matter, Fatty? Got a chill?” inquired one of the robbers, as he deftly swept the plunder into the sack.
“For—God's sake—don't shoot. I have—a wife—and five children,” he stammered, with chattering teeth.
“No race suicide for Fatty. But whyfor do they let a sick man like you travel all by his lone?”
“I don't know—I—Please turn that weapon another way.”
“Plumb chuck full of malaria,” soliloquized the owner of the weapon, playfully running its business end over the Chicago man's anatomy. “Shakes worse'n a pair of dice. Here, Fatty. Load up with quinine and whisky. It's sure good for chills.” The man behind the bandanna gravely handed his victim back a dollar. “Write me if it cures you. Now for the sky-pilot. No white chips on this plate, parson. It's a contribution to the needy heathen. You want to be generous. How much do you say?”
The man of the cloth reluctantly said thirty dollars, a Lincoln penny, and a silver-plated watch inherited from his fathers. The watch was declined with thanks, the money accepted without.
The Pullman porter came into the car under compulsion of a revolver in the hand of a fourth outlaw, one in a black mask. His trembling finger pointed out the satchel and suit-case of Major Mackenzie, and under orders he carried out the baggage belonging to the irrigation engineer. Collin observed that the bandit in the black mask was so nervous that the revolver in his hand quivered like an aspen in the wind. He was slenderer and much shorter than the Mexican, so that the sheriff decided he was a mere boy.
It was just after he had left that three shots in rapid succession rang out in the still night air.
The red-bandannaed one and his companion, who had apparently been waiting for the signal, retreated backward to the end of the car, still keeping the passengers covered. They flung rapidly two or three bullets through the roof, and under cover of the smoke slipped out into the night. A moment later came the thud of galloping horses, more shots, and, when the patter of hoofs had died away—silence.
The sheriff was the first to break it. He thrust his brown hands deep into his pockets and laughed—laughed with the joyous, rollicking abandon of a tickled schoolboy.
“Hysterics?” ventured the mining engineer sympathetically.
Collins wiped his eyes. “Call 'em anything you like. What pleases me is that the reverend gentleman should have had this diverting experience so prompt after he was wishing for it.” He turned, with concern, to the clergyman. “Satisfied, sir? Did our little entertainment please, or wasn't it up to the mark?”
But the transported native of Pekin was game. “I'm quite satisfied, if you are. I think the affair cost you a hundred dollars or so more than it did me.”
“That's right,” agreed the sheriff heartily. “But I don't grudge it—not a cent of it. The show was worth the price of admission.”
The car conductor had a broadside ready for him. “Seems to me you shot off your mouth more than you did that big gun of yours, Mr. Sheriff.”
Collins laughed, and clapped him on the back. “That's right. I'm a regular phonograph, when you wind me up.” He did not think it necessary to explain that he had talked to make the outlaws talk, and that he had noted the quality of their voices so carefully that he would know them again among a thousand. Also he had observed—other things—the garb of each of the men he had seen, their weapons, their manner, and their individual peculiarities.
The clanking car took up the rhythm of the rails as the delayed train plunged forward once more into the night. Again the clack of tongues, set free from fear, buzzed eagerly. The glow of the afterclap of danger was on them, and in the warm excitement each forgot the paralyzing fear that had but now padlocked his lips. Courage came flowing back into flabby cheeks and red blood into hearts of water.
At the next station the Limited stopped, and the conductor swung from a car before the wheels had ceased rolling and went running into the telegraph office.
“Fire a message through for me, Pat. The Limited has been held up,” he announced.
“Held up?” gasped the operator.
“That's right. Get this message right through to Sabin. I'm not going to wait for an answer. Tell him I'll stop at Apache for further instructions.”
With which the conductor was out again waving his lantern as a signal for the train to start. Sheriff Collins and Major Mackenzie had entered the office at his heels. They too had messages to send, but it was not until the train was already plunging into the night that the station agent read the yellow slips they had left and observed that both of them went to the same person.
“Lieutenant Bucky O'Connor, Douglas, Arizona,” was the address he read at the top of each. His comment serves to show the opinion generally in the sunburned territory respecting one of its citizens.
“You're wise guys, gents, both of yez. This is shure a case for the leftenant. It's send for Bucky quick when the band begins to play,” he grinned.
Sitting down, he gave the call for Tucson, preparatory to transmitting the conductor's message to the division superintendent. His fingers were just striking the first tap when a silken voice startled him.
“One moment, friend. No use being in a hurry.”
The agent looked up and nearly fell from his stool. He was gazing into the end of a revolver held carelessly in the hand of a masked man leaning indolently on the counter.
“Whe—where did you come from?” the operator gasped.
“Kaintucky, but I been here a right smart spell. Why? You takin' the census?” came the drawling answer.
“I didn't hear youse come in.”
“I didn't hear you come in, either,” the man behind the mask mocked. But even as he spoke his manner changed, and crisp menace rang in his voice. “Have you sent those messages yet?”
“Wha—what messages?”
“Those lying on your desk. I say, have you sent them?”
“Not yet.”
“Hand them over here.”
The operator passed them across the counter without demur.
“Now reach for the roof.”
Up shot the station agent's hands. The bandit glanced over the written sheets and commented aloud:
“Huh! One from the conductor and one from Mackenzie. I expected those. But this one from Collins is ce'tainly a surprise party. I didn't know he was on the train. Lucky for him I didn't, or mebbe I'd a-put his light for good and all. Friend, I reckon we'll suppress these messages. Military necessity, you understand.” And with that he lightly tore up the yellow sheets and tossed them away.
“The conductor will wire when he reaches Apache,” the operator suggested, not very boldly.
The outlaw rolled a cigarette deftly and borrowed a match. “He most surely will. But Apache is seventy miles from here. That gives us an extra hour and a half, and with us right now time is a heap more valuable than money. You may tell Bucky O'Connor when you see him that that extra hour and a half cinches our escape, and we weren't on the anxious seat any without it.”
It may have been true, as the train robber had just said, that time was more valuable to him then than money, but if so he must have held the latter of singularly little value. For he sat him down on the counter with his back against the wall and his legs stretched full length in front of him and glanced over the Tucson Star in leisurely fashion, while Pat's arms still projected roofward.
The operator, beginning to get over his natural fright, could not withhold a reluctant admiration of this man's aplomb. There was a certain pantherish lightness about the outlaw's movements, a trim grace of figure which yet suggested rippling muscles