Through this nobody spoke; only the eyes of the armed one watched vigilantly everywhere and the shotgun ranged the assemblage across its front and back again. Under his breath some one made moan, as the heaping double handful of green-and-yellow stuff was crumpled down into the open-mawed bag. It might have been Highpockets who moaned.
“Now then,” bade the robber, when the paper had gone to join the silver, “anybody here who's lost his money to-night or any other night can come and get it back. But come one at a time—and come mighty slow and careful.”
Curiously enough only two came—the young freight conductor and the youth who was a clerk in the time-keeper's office at the yards.
Shamefacedly the freight conductor stooped, flinching away from the gun muzzles which pointed almost in his right ear, and picked out certain bills.
“I lost an even hundred—more'n I can afford to lose,” he mumbled. “I'm takin' just my own hundred.” He retired rearward after the manner of a crab.
The boy wore an apologetic air as he salvaged twenty-two dollars from the cache. After he had crawfished back to the table where the others were, none else offered to stir.
“Anybody else?” inquired the collector of loot.
“Well, I squandered a little coin here this evenin', but I'm satisfied,” spoke Josh Herron, now grinning openly. “I'm gittin' my money's worth.” He glanced sidewise toward the suffering proprietor.
“All done?”
Nobody answered.