There was a ring of crisp menace in the sinister voice that was a spur to obedience. The unanimous show of hands voted “Aye” with a hasty precision that no amount of drill could have compassed.
It was a situation that might have made for laughter had there been spectators to appreciate. But of whatever amusement was to be had one of the victims seemed to hold a monopoly. Collins, his arm around the English children by way of comfort, offered a sardonic smile at the consternation his announcement and its fulfillment had created, but none of his fellow passengers were in the humor to respond.
The shock of an earthquake could not have blanched ruddy faces more surely. The Chicago drummer, fat and florid, had disappeared completely behind a buttress of the company's upholstery.
“God bless my soul!” gasped the Pekin-Bostonian, dropping his eyeglass and his accent at the same moment. The dismay in his face found a reflection all over the car. Miss Wainwright's hand clutched at her breast for an instant, and her color ebbed till her lips were ashen, but her neighbor across the aisle noticed that her eyes were steady and her figure tense.
“Scared stiff, but game,” was his mental comment.
“Gents to the right and ladies to the left; line up against the walls; everybody waltz.” called the man behind the guns, with grim humor.
The passengers fell into line as directed, Collins with the rest.
“You're calling this dance, son; it's your say-so, I guess,” he conceded.
“Keep still, or I'll shoot you full of holes,” growled the autocrat of the artillery.
“Why, sure! Ain't you the real thing in Jesse Jameses?” soothed the sheriff.
At the sound of Collins' voice, the masked man had started perceptibly, and his right hand had jumped forward an inch or two to cover the speaker more definitely. Thereafter, no matter what else engaged his attention, the gleaming eyes behind the red bandanna never wandered for a moment from the big plainsman. He was taking no risks, for he remembered the saying current in Arizona, that after Collins' hardware got into action there was nothing left to do but plant the deceased and collect the insurance. He had personal reasons to know the fundamental accuracy of the colloquialism.
The train-conductor fussed up to the masked outlaw with a ludicrous attempt at authority. “You can't rob the passengers on this train. I'm not responsible for the express-car, but the coaches—”
A bullet almost grazed his ear and shattered a window on its way to the desert.
“Drift, you red-haired son of a Mexican?” ordered the man behind the red bandanna. “Git back to that seat real prompt. This here's taxation without representation.”
The conductor drifted as per suggestion.
The minutes ticked themselves away in a tense strain marked by pounding hearts. The outlaw stood at the end of the aisle, watching the sheriff alertly.
“Why doesn't the music begin?” volunteered Collins, by way of conversation, and quoted: “On with the dance. Let joy be unconfined.”
A dull explosion answered his question. The bandits were blowing open the safe in the express-car with dynamite, pending which the looting of the passengers was at a standstill.
A second masked figure joined his companion at the end of the passage and held a hurried conversation with him. Fragments of their low-voiced talk came to Collins.
“Only thirty thousand in the express-car. Not a red cent on the old man himself.”
“Where's the rest?” The irritation in the newcomer's voice was pronounced.
Collins slewed his head and raked him with keen eyes that missed not a detail. He was certain that he had never seen the man before, yet he knew at once that the trim, wiry figure, so clean of build and so gallant of bearing, could belong only to Wolf Leroy, the most ruthless outlaw of the Southwest. It was written in his jaunty insolence, in the flashing eyes. He was a handsome fellow, white-toothed, black-haired, lithely tigerish, with masterful mouth and eyes of steel, so far as one might judge behind the white mask he wore. Alert, cruel, fearless from the head to the heel of him, he looked the very devil to lead an enterprise so lawless and so desperate as this. His vigilant eyes swept contemptuously up and down the car, rested for a moment on the young woman in Section 3, and came back to his partner.
“Bah! A flock of sheep—tamest bunch of spring lambs we ever struck. I'll send Scott in to go through them. If anybody gets gay, drop him.” And the outlaw turned on his heel.
Another of the highwaymen took his place, a stout, squat figure in the flannel shirt, spurs, and chaps of a cow-puncher. It took no second glance to tell Collins this bandy-legged fellow had been a rider of the range.
“Come, gentlemen, get a move on you,” Collins implored. “This train's due at Tucson by eight o'clock. We're more than an hour late now. I'm holding down the job of sheriff in that same town, and I'm awful anxious to get a posse out after a bunch of train-robbers. So burn the wind, and go through the car on the jump. Help yourself to anything you find. Who steals my purse takes trash. 'Tis something, nothing. 'Twas mine; 'tis his. That's right, you'll find my roll in that left-hand pocket. I hate to have you take that gun, though. I meant to run you down with that same old Colt's reliable. Oh, well, just as you say. No, those kids get a free pass. They're going out to meet papa at Los Angeles, boys. See?”
Collins' running fire of comment had at least the effect of restoring the color to some cheeks that had been washed white and of snatching from the outlaws some portion of their sense of dominating the situation. But there was a veiled vigilance in his eyes that belied his easy impudence.
“That lady across the aisle gets a pass, too, boys,” continued the sheriff. “She's scared stiff now, and you won't bother her, if you're 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