With a cheery wave of the hand she was off across the street. The girls sauntered along, regarding the stores and one of two lounging cowboys with interest.
“I wish we’d seen an Indian,” murmured Phyllis. “Just to prove that we are in the West.”
Valerie laughed. “I doubt if you would know one if you did. They don’t wear war paint any more, you know.”
“Of course I’d know one,” Phyllis said indignantly. “I--look, there is a general store. Perhaps you can get your rope in there, Gale.”
The girls mounted the single wooden step to the store and stepped into the queerest conglomeration of articles they had ever seen. It developed that Gale got her rope, Valerie got her gloves; in fact, they could get anything they wanted. Even postcards, of which they took a goodly supply.
There were few people on the street when they left the store. An automobile drew up before the bank and two men stepped out, a third remained at the wheel.
“Guess Virginia hasn’t come out of the bank yet,” Phyllis said, looking the length of the street and not seeing the western girl.
The three of them strolled to the bank and waited outside. Suddenly from inside the bank came the sound of shots and a scream. Two men appeared in the doorway with drawn revolvers. One man faced the crowd on the street, the other the people in the bank. The people on the street had become tense, fearful.
Valerie grasped one end of Gale’s rope and sprang across the pavement. Gale, realizing immediately her friend’s intention, grasped her end of the rope more securely. The bandits, running from the bank to their waiting car, tripped headlong over the rope. The first man’s gun flew one way and the black bag in which was the money from the bank flew the other.
Phyllis reached over, picked up the gun, and leveled it calmly at the bandits. Valerie secured the black bag. It had been alarmingly easy and so quickly done that the spectators did not at first realize that a robbery had been committed and foiled almost on the same instant. Then there arose a buzz of excited talk while two men stepped from the group of spectators and took charge of the thieves. Unnoticed, the car that had been meant for the bandits’ means of escape, sprang away from the curb and was gone in a cloud of dust.