"Now, what the devil is she stopping there for?" inquired Sammy Durgan of the universe in an injured tone.
He started along through the cut. And then Sammy Durgan stopped himself—as though he were rooted to the earth—and a sort of grayish white began to creep over his face. Came echoing through the cut a shout, a yell, another, a chorus of them—then a shot, another shot, a fusilade of them—and then a din mingling the oaths, the yells, and the shots into a hideous babel that rang terror in Sammy Durgan's ears.
Sammy Durgan promptly sidled in and hugged up against the rock wall that towered above him. Here he hesitated an instant, then he crept cautiously forward. Where he could not see, it was axiomatic that he could not be seen; and where he could not be seen, it was equally logical that he would be safe.
Sammy Durgan's face, quite white now, was puckered as it had never been puckered before, and his lips moved in a kind of twitching, jerky way as he crept along. Then suddenly, a voice, that seemed nearer than the others, but which from the acoustic properties of the cut he could not quite locate, bawled out fiercely over the confusion, prefaced with an oath:
"Get that express car door open, and be damned quick about it! Go on, shoot along the side of the train every time you see a head in a window!"
Sammy Durgan's mouth went dry, and his heart lost a beat, then went to pounding like a trip-hammer. Labatt and the Big Cloud Daily Sentinel hadn't drawn any exaggerated picture. A hold-up—in broad daylight!
"Holy Mither!" whispered Sammy Durgan.
He crept farther forward, very cautiously—still farther—and then he lay full length, crouched against the rock wall at the end of the cut. He could see now, and the red hair of Sammy Durgan kind of straggled down damp over his forehead, and his little black eyes lost their pupils.
It was a passenger train; one side of it quite hidden by the sharp curve of the track, the other side presented almost full on to Sammy Durgan's view—the whole length of it. And Sammy Durgan, gasping, stared. Not ten yards away from the mouth of the cut a huge pile of ties were laid across the rails, with the pilot of the stalled engine almost nosing them. Down the embankment, a very steep embankment where the Dam River swirled along, marched there evidently at the revolver's point, the engine crew stood with their hands up in the air—at the revolver's point with a masked man behind it. Along the length of the train, two or three more masked men were shooting past the windows in curt intimation to the passengers that the safest thing they could do was to stay where they were; and farther down, by the rear coach, the conductor and two brakemen, like their mates of the engine crew, held their hands steadfastly above their heads as another bandit covered them with his weapon. And through the open door of the express car Sammy Durgan could see bobbing heads and straining backs, and the express company's safe being worked across the floor preparatory to heaving it out on the ground.
It takes long to tell it—Sammy Durgan got it all as a second flies. And something, a bitter something, seemed to be gnawing at Sammy Durgan's vitals.