I don’t think Andrew understood this joke, though the rest of us laughed, partly, I guess, to keep up our courage.
“Well,” went on Carr, “there’s one thing sure–we can’t send them five thousand dollars even if we wanted to; and we don’t want to very much. I don’t believe there is a 33 hundred dollars in the whole town outside of Clerkinwell’s safe.”
“What do you suppose there is in that?” asked Baker.
“There might be a good deal and there might not be so much,” said Carr. “I heard that he saved $20,000 out of the failure of his business back east and brought it out here to start new with. He certainly didn’t take any of it away with him, nor use much of it here. He might have sent it back some time ago, but it hasn’t gone through the express office if he did.”
“Nor it hasn’t gone through the post-office,” said Frank Valentine. “I guess it’s in the safe yet, most of it.”
“Very likely,” answered Carr. “But even if it is I don’t believe Pike and those fellows would know enough to get it out unless they had all day to work at it; and what would we be doing all that time?”
“Shooting,” said Jim Stackhouse; but I thought he said it as if he would rather be doing anything else. I didn’t know so much about men then as I do now, but I could see that Tom Carr was the only man in the lot that could be depended on in case of trouble. 34
“Well, how are we fixed for things to shoot with?” went on Carr.
“I’ve got a repeating rifle,” answered Valentine. “So have you, and so has Cy. I guess Sours left some shooting-irons behind, too, didn’t he, Jud?”
“Yes; a Winchester and a shot-gun,” I replied.