I said, “Sure, they’re so resourceful they capture bandits without knowing it. We don’t even know if he is a bandit.”
“We know we’ve got him. Isn’t that enough?” the kid said.
Jiminies, whoever he was, I could see we had him all right. He was as safe up there as he would have been in a dungeon. Because you can see how it was. The big tall trestle-work that held the axle was only as high as the middle of the wheel. Maybe he could have climbed down that, and maybe he couldn’t. But from the middle of the wheel up to the top the iron-work wasn’t close enough for him to reach from one brace to another. I didn’t see how he could even get out of the car to the nearest girder. If he took a chance, he’d break his neck. I suppose, just like Westy said, he had made for the lowest car and it had gone up with him on account of our weight hanging onto some of the other cars. Nine fellows are heavier than one. Gee whiz, it did seem a funny way to catch any one, but that fellow was caught, sure. I wondered how he felt up there.
“Do you think he’ll take a chance of his life?” one of the fellows asked.
“I bet he’s half crazy up there,” I said.
“Maybe he’ll shoot,” the kid said, kind of scared.
“What good would that do him?” Will said. “He’d have to shoot the whole nine of us, six or seven of us anyway, before the wheel would move. And besides, the axle is in his way.”
“If we all leave here the car will come down,” Warde Hollister said. “He could rock it so as to get the wheel started.”
“It’s rocking a little now,” Westy said.