Bucky O'Connor: A Tale of the Unfenced Border by William MacLeod Raine (free ebook reader for pc TXT) 📖

white men. Her watch and purse are on the seat. Take them, if you want them, and let it go at that.”

Miss Wainwright listened to this dialogue silently. She stood before them cool and imperious and unwavering, but her face was bloodless and the pulse in her beautiful soft throat fluttered like a caged bird.

“Who's doing this job?” demanded one of the hold-ups, wheeling savagely on the impassive officer “Did I say we were going to bother the lady? Who's doing this job, Mr. Sheriff?”

“You are. I'd hate to be messing the job like you—holding up the wrong train by mistake.” This was a shot in the dark, and it did not quite hit the bull's-eye. “I wouldn't trust you boys to rob a hen-roost, the amateur way you go at it. When you get through, you'll all go to drinking like blue blotters. I know your kind—hell-bent to spend what you cash in, and every mother's son of you in the pen or with his toes turned up inside of a month.”

“Who'll put us there?” gruffly demanded the bowlegged one.

Collins smiled at him with confidence superb “Mebbe I will—and if I don't Bucky O'Connor will—those of you that are left alive when you go through shooting each other in the back. Oh, I see your finish to a fare-you-well.”

“Cheese it, or I'll bump you off.” The first out law drove his gun into the sheriff's ribs.

“That's all right. You don't need to punctuate that remark. I line up with the sky-pilot and chew the cud of silence. I merely wanted to frame up to you how this thing's going to turn out. Don't come back at me and say I didn't warn you, sonnie.”

“You make my head ache,” snarled the bandy-legged outlaw sourly, as he passed down with his sack, accumulating tribute as he passed down the aisle with his sack, accumulating tribute as he went.

The red-kerchiefed robber whooped when they came to the car conductor. “Dig up, Mr. Pullman. Go way down into your jeans. It's a right smart pleasure to divert the plunder of your bloated corporation back to the people. What! Only fifty-seven dollars. Oh, dig deeper, Mr. Pullman.”

The drummer contributed to the sack eighty-four dollars, a diamond ring, and a gold watch. His hands were trembling so that they played a tattoo on the sloping ceiling above him.

“What's 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