The impatient robbers, themselves the prey of fearful anxieties, broke in, barking like a pair of coyotes in a jumble of commands: "Now, line up with your backs that way, and no back talk. These guns shoot awful easy. And remember, as each party is finished with, they are to turn round and keep their hands up, on penalty of gittin' 'em shot off. Line up! Hands up! Give over there!"
Mrs. Jimmie Wellington took her time about moving into position, and her deliberation brought a howl of wrath from the robber: "Get into that line, you!"
Mrs. Wellington whirled on him: "How dare you, you brute?" And she turned up her nose at the gun.
The anxious conductor intervened: "Better obey, madame; he's an ugly lad."
"I don't mind being robbed," said Mrs. Jimmie, "but I won't endure rudeness."
The robber shook his head in despair, and he tried to wither her with sarcasm: "Pardong, mamselly, would you be so kind and condescendin' as to step into that there car before I blow your husband's gol-blame head off."
This brought her to terms. She hastened to her place, but put out a restraining hand on Jimmie, who needed no restraint. "Certainly, to save my dear husband. Don't strike him, Jimmie!"
Then each man stuck one revolver into its convenient holster, and, covering the passengers with the other, proceeded to frisk away valuables with a speed and agility that would have looked prettier if those impatient-looking muzzles had not pointed here, there and everywhere with such venomous threats.
And so they worked from each end of the car toward the middle. Their hands ran swiftly over bodies with a loathsome familiarity that could only be resented, not revenged. Their hands dived into pockets, and up sleeves, and into women's hair, everywhere that a jewel or a bill might be secreted. And always a rough growl or a swing of the revolver silenced any protest.
Their heinous fingers had hardly begun to ply, when the solemn stillness was broken by a chuckle and low hoot of laughter, a darkey's unctuous laughter. At such a place it was more shocking than at a funeral.