Without a second's hesitation Chip stepped up to him, and placing his hand on the train robber's shoulder, said quietly:
"Fred Wittrock, alias Jim Cummings, I want you."
Wittrock sprang back as though he had been shot, and glaring like an enraged lion, seemed about to rush upon the audacious detective.
In a twinkling the cold barrels of two revolvers were leveled at his head and, with the address and skill of a practiced adept, Sam passed his twisted steel wire "come alongs" around the outlaw's wrist, and Jim Cummings' career stopped short. Any attempt at escape was hopeless, and in silent surrender he held out his other hand and Chip snapped the hand-cuffs on him.
Before the people in the saloon had recovered from their astonishment, the detectives had taken desperate prisoner away, and finding a livery stable near drove to the Pinkerton headquarters. Haight and Weaver had not gone a block before the two detectives arrested them without any struggle, so that within one short half hour the three principals of the GREAT ADAMS EXPRESS robbery were placed behind the bars.
CHAPTER XVIII.
JIM CUMMINGS IN PINKERTON'S SWEAT-BOX—HIS CONFESSION.
All night long "Jim Cummings" walked the narrow limits of his room—still undaunted and fearless as of old. The gravity of his position only made him the more daring, and when the first beams of the morning broke through the barred window he had recovered his usual grit and nerve, and determined to die hard and game. Mr. Pinkerton, alone, came into the room just as the outlaw had finished the excellent breakfast which had been served him. Jim looked up, and holding out his hand, in a cheery voice said:
"Good morning, Mr. Pinkerton."
For a second Mr. Pinkerton hardly knew what to say. He was prepared to encounter either a desperate or a sullen prisoner, and was somewhat taken back when he received such a cordial greeting. It was but a second, and fully alive to all the tricks and maneuvers practiced by arrested criminals, he was on the qui vive.