Rufus Walker's father was the station agent and telegraph operator at Winona, in the heart of a vast wheat-raising section of Dakota. For miles the country stretched away in gentle undulations. In the spring you looked out on a sea of waving, tossing green, crinkled and fretted by every passing breeze. In the fall the green sea had turned to gold, and those noisy ships, the mowing-machines, went clattering through it. Now the vast expanse lay white and still under its frosty blanket. The wheat harvest had been gathered into the barns, and for weeks little Rufus had heard the farmers talking about "number one hard," and "number one," and all the other varieties of the grain. Right opposite the station and across the railroad track stood a grain elevator. Its gigantic shape rose over the little station like a castle towering above a tiny cottage. The farmers for miles around would begin to haul wheat to the elevator to-morrow, for Mr. Price, Pillsbury's elevator superintendent, had arrived that day. He had brought a satchel full of packages of new crisp bank-notes, and fat little rolls of gold eagles and double-eagles. He always paid cash for the wheat as he bought it. That is the custom all through the wheat country.
The thick black bag of alligator-skin that held more than five thousand dollars was locked in the safe that stood in the office of the grain elevator. The money was the attraction that had brought the three men, who silently got out of the sleigh in the shadow of the tall building. They tied their horses to a ring near the office door, then stealthily crept through the snow to the railroad station.
Little Rufus Walker woke up with a start. A big man with a handkerchief tied across the lower part of his face was shaking him by the shoulder.
"How old are you, sonny?" asked the stranger.
"Ten years last August," Rufus answered, huskily.
"Well, you're old enough to have sense," said the man. "All you've got to do is to keep still. We're just goin' to relieve Mr. Price of that bag o' money. You keep still, d'ye hear?"
The big man strode out of Rufus's room and joined his two companions at the further end of the hallway. They had gathered Mr. Price, Rufus's father, Mrs. Walker, and big Tom Walker in one of the rooms. Evidently the strangers had awakened Rufus last of all. He sat up, shivering, with the blankets wrapped around him. His hair was standing up so straight that it seemed to bend backward. His teeth chattered.
"Where's the boy?" he heard a strange voice ask.
"Oh, I left him in his bed!" replied the voice of the big man. "He's no bigger than your thumb, and he—"
"Better bring him in here with the rest," said the strange voice.