When Mark Riley started out again in the afternoon for a second excursion with paste and brush, "slapping up" small posters with a celerity that bespoke extreme interest on his part, the astonished populace feared that he was announcing a postponement of the performance. Instead of that, however, he was heralding the fact that the Hemisphere Trunk Line and Express Company would gladly pay ten thousand dollars reward for the "apprehension and capture" of the men who robbed one of its richest trains a few nights before, seizing as booty over sixty thousand dollars in money, besides killing two messengers in cold blood. The great train robbery occurred in the western part of the State, hundreds of miles from Tinkletown, but nearly all of its citizens had read accounts of the deed in the weekly paper from Boggs City.
"I seen the item about it in Mr. Gregory's New York paper," said Anderson Crow to the crowd at Lamson's.
"Gee whiz, it must 'a' been a peach!" said Isaac Porter, open-mouthed and eager for details. Whereupon Marshal Crow related the story of the crime which stupefied the world on the morning of July 31st. The express had been held up in an isolated spot by a half-dozen masked men. A safe had been shattered and the contents confiscated, the perpetrators vanishing as completely as if aided by Satan himself. The authorities were baffled. A huge reward was offered in the hope that it might induce some discontented underling in the band to expose his comrades.
"Are you goin' after 'em, Anderson?" asked old Mr. Borton, with unfailing faith in the town's chief officer.
"Them fellers is in Asia by this time," vouchsafed Mr. Crow scornfully, forgetting that less than a week had elapsed since the robbery. He flecked a fly from his detective's badge and then struck viciously at the same insect when it straightway attacked his G.A.R. emblem.
"I doubt it," said Mr. Lamson. "Like as not they're right here in this State, mebby in this county. You can't tell about them slick desperadoes. Hello, Harry! Has anything more been heard from the train robbers?" Harry Squires approached the group with something like news in his face.
"I should say so," he said. "The darned cusses robbed the State Express last night at Vanderskoop and got away with thirteen hundred dollars. Say, they're wonders! The engineer says they're only five of them."
"Why, gosh dern it, Vanderskoop's only the fourth station west of Boggs City!" exclaimed Anderson Crow, pricking up his official ear. "How in thunder do you reckon they got up here in such a short time?"
"They probably stopped off on their way back from Asia," drily remarked Mr. Lamson; but it passed unnoticed.