II.
About one o'clock on Thursday afternoon, William Walson, manager of the great Oceanic Coal Company, stepped out of the Fairmont Banking House in the Monongahela mining regions of West Virginia. It was pay-day at his mine, and he carried a black leather satchel in his hand containing twenty thousand dollars in bills. At this time the gigantic plant of this company was doing an enormous business. The labor unions of the vast Pennsylvania coal regions were out on the bitterest and most protracted strike of all history. The West Virginia operators were moving the heavens in order to supply the market; every man who could hold a pick was at work under the earth day and night.
The excitement was something undreamed of. The region was overrun with straggling workmen, tramps, "hobos," and the scum criminals of the cities, and was transformed as if by magic into a hunting-ground where the keen human ferret stalked the crook and the killer with that high degree of care and patience which obtains only with the man-hunter.
William Walson was tall, with short red beard and red hair, black eyes, and rather a sharp face; his jaw was square, bespeaking energy, but his expression was rather that of a man who won by the milder measures of conciliation and diplomacy. For almost a month he had been taxing his physical strength to the uttermost, and on this afternoon he looked worn and tired out utterly. He walked hurriedly from the bank door to the buck-board, untied the horse, raised the seat, and put the satchel down in the box under the cushion, then climbed in and drove away.
The great plant of the Oceanic Coal Company was on a branch of the railroad, some considerable distance from the main line by rail, but only a few miles over the hills from the Fairmont Junction. William Walson struck out across the country road. The sun shone warm. He had lost so much sleep that presently he began to feel drowsy, and as the horse jogged along he nodded in his seat.
About a mile from the town, at the foot of a little hill in the woods, a man stepped suddenly out from the fence and caught the horse by the bridle. Walson started and looked up. As he did so the stranger covered him with a revolver and bade him put up his hands and get out of the buck-board. The coal dealer saw in a moment that the highwayman meant what he said, and that resistance would be folly. He concluded also that he was confronted by one of the many toughs at large in the neighborhood, and that the fellow's intention was simply to rob him of his personal effects and such money as he might have in his pockets; it was more than probable that the man before him had no knowledge of the money hidden under the seat and would never discover it.
"Tie your horse, sir," said the highwayman.
Walson loosed the hitch strap and fastened the horse to a small tree by the roadside.
"Turn your back to me," said the robber, "and put out your hands behind you." The coal dealer obeyed, thinking that the fellow was now going through his pockets. To his surprise and astonishment the man came up close behind him and snapped a pair of handcuffs on his wrists.
"What do you mean by this?" cried Watson, whirling round on his heels.