“I whipped him, Geronimo,” they heard a voice say.
“My ——!” snorted Eskimo. “I thought Geronimo was dead or in jail.”
Then the engine awoke and the part of a train started backing down the track, but there was no more shooting. Once away from that immediate spot the engineer put on more power, and went roaring back toward where they had cut loose from the rest of the train.
The three cowboys sat up in the grass and watched the dim figures of a man and a dog, heading toward Blue Wells, while from far down the railroad came the shrill whistle of the locomotive.
Johnny Grant got to his feet, and was joined by Eskimo and Oyster. The shooting had sobered them considerably, and when Eskimo produced the bottle Johnny shoved it aside.
“Aw, to —— with the stuff!” he said. “I’ve been seein’ too many things already. Let’s go home before we get killed for bein’ on earth.”
“I dunno,” said Eskimo, after a deep pull at the bottle. “It seems like anythin’ is liable to happen around here, but I never expected to be ambushed by a danged train.”
They crawled back through the barbed-wire right-of-way fence, and headed for home, too muddled to do much wondering what it was all about.
The train passed Jim Legg before he reached Blue Wells, and he got there just after the announcement of the hold-up. A crowd had gathered at the depot, and Jim Legg heard some one saying that about thirty thousand had been stolen.
He heard some one question Chet Le Moyne, who admitted that the Santa Rita pay-roll had been on the train. Men had gone to notify the sheriff. Jim Legg did not realize that they were speaking about the train he had fell out of, even when the disheveled express messenger made his appearance. He had been picked up along the track.