The engine crew were offering all the information they had to interested listeners.
“There were three men,” said the engineer.
“Three that you saw,” amended the messenger, who was nursing a black eye, several facial bruises and a bad limp. “The fourth one tangled with me in the car. That’s how the door happened to be open. He got on at Encinas. I ordered him off the car and he tangled with me. In the fight we both fell off. But I sure gave him enough to make him remember me.”
“Was he masked?” some one asked.
“Masked? No.”
“What kind of a lookin’ geezer?”
“Great big son-of-a-gun. It was kinda dark in the car, and I didn’t see his face very plain. I never suspected that he might be a stick-up man, or I’d have took a shot at him, but it all happened so quick that I didn’t have time. He tried to pull his gun, but I blocked it, and we sure pulled some scrap.”
Jim Legg kept in the background, wondering at the coincidence. Two scraps in express cars in the same evening.
“And we pretty near got ’em, even at that,” said the fireman. “They jumped out of the car, leavin’ me and Frank in there. Frank got the messenger’s shotgun and sure sprayed ’em good and plenty.
“But they were tough eggs, and stopped to do battle. You can see where their bullets hit the car. I think we hit some of ’em. But one of their bullets split the slide jigger on the pump-gun; so we decided to quit the battle.”