We were very near to our destination, it proved, and in half an hour we reached a water tank. It was near a little creek and in a strip of wood. I had judged that we were on our way to a water tank from the few lines Mooney had shown me, and what he had said. The money of the Mexican government would be on a train that would stop here for water, and, like the pirates of the Spanish Main, it was our affair to capture the treasure.
We stopped. Mooney got down and removed from the car a bundle upon which he had been sitting. White and I upended the hand car and sent it down the embankment into the thick bushes; then we moved around behind the water tank to prepare for the undertaking.
The night had long ceased to be dark. There was no moon, but the sky was sown with stars, and there was a sort of faint white light in the world. We could see distinctly what we were about, even in the thicket behind the water tank, shaded somewhat by the wood. Here Mooney untied his bundle.
It contained three suits of overalls such as are worn by railroad men, blue trousers and a sort of blue coat; they were not new. Mooney was too clever a person, as I came afterward to realize, to make his party conspicuous by any new article.
This was the disguise for our bodies. For head covering Mooney had three sugar sacks dyed black, with round holes for the eyes and mouth. These we pulled over our heads. He had also an ordinary burlap feed sack—the “loot sack,” he called it.
Then he brought out the weapons.
He made a little speech about these weapons. They were the latest model of automatic pistols, each precisely like the others. He said it was a great mistake to go out with a different variety of weapons because in a protracted fight there could be no exchange of ammunition.
His voice drawled with nervous jerks at the end of it. He might have been lecturing to a Sunday school. He asked me if I understood the weapon. I did not understand it and said so.
“Well,” he said, “it is simple enough. You have only to pull the trigger and keep on pulling it; whatever happens will be over by the time you get to the last cartridge. Don’t worry about it, my son.”
He added another direction: