"You look kinda shaky, Whitey," said Bill "You been makin' a night of it, too?"
Without further questioning Whitey sat down and told the story of the adventure, from the boys' awakening to their finding the bodies of the three men hanging from the railroad bridge.
"So you were right about String an' Ham's bein' crooks," Bill said, when the boy had finished.
"Yes, but even so, it seems terrible for them to die that way," Whitey replied.
"The express folks is tired o' havin' their cars robbed, an' if you'd known what I found out at the Junction, you might o' saved yourself some trouble," said Bill. "They was a shipment of a hundred thousand dollars in gold in that there car, an' they was six fellers went along to pertect it. Not detectives, or nothin', just fellers that was hired, an' was dyin' for excitement. I reck'n some o' the passengers was as tired o' bein' held up as those fellers was pinin' for excitement, an' when String an' Ham an' Whiff made their poor little play, they musta thought they'd struck a hornet's nest."
"But to hang them," Whitey protested. "Why didn't they shoot them, if they had to kill them?"
"Well, ye see hangin' makes it look worse for the next fellers what thinks o' holdin' up a train," said Bill. "They'd stole three o' our hosses, anyway, an' that's a hangin' offense."
But Whitey was not inclined to argue about the justice or injustice of the lynching. He went away with Injun, and tried to eat. And he tried, too, to forget the horror of the scene at the bridge. But all his life long he never quite succeeded in doing that.