The brakeman turned to the conductor.
“You go down this side and I’ll go down the other. Unless he’s on top, we’ll find him.”
The brakeman circled the engine and walked down the other side of the train, flashing his lantern beneath the trucks of the coaches, but without any success. He and the portly conductor met on the right-hand side of the train.
“Nobody in sight,” said the brakeman wearily. “Might as well high-ball, Charley.”
The engineer had climbed back into his cab, and he saw one of the men signal him to go ahead. It was slightly upgrade, and the staccato exhaust echoed across the hills as the big drivers spinned ahead of the sand stream. Then the drivers gripped heavily and the engine surged ahead.
They had proceeded about a hundred yards, when the fireman, looking back toward the rear, noticed that the lights of the rear coach were getting farther away all the time.
He turned quickly and yelled at the engineer:
“Hey! We’re broke in two, Frank!”
But before the engineer could grasp the import of his words a man was standing in the gangway behind them, covering them with a heavy six-shooter. The man was masked with a black cloth that covered all of his head and neck. The engineer started to retard the throttle.
“Pull her open!” snapped the masked man. “Git back there on yore seat and look ahead.”