WILLIAMS,” said the Old-Timer to us, as he directed us to that progressive but uninteresting little town, “when I first came west was a typical shoot-’em-up town, with thirty-six saloons;—thirty of them in tents,” he added emphatically, as if this made a climax of iniquity, I remarked later to Toby.
“The drinking, I suppose, was more intense,” she replied.
“Owing to more frequent drafts,” I retaliated.
Williams, set in a sea of white dust, looked both modern and harmless, as if to make up for its youthful wild oats by a humdrum middle-age. Numerous drug-stores had replaced its three dozen saloons, and a Sabbath calm reigned on its dusty streets. We bought gasoline, and went on, not over-pleased with Williams. We felt it did not live up to its early rakishness. But appearances count for very little after all. Not five minutes later, a small man driving a small car, with a large blond woman beside him, approached and signaled us. We saw he was excited, and she, though normally florid, was the color of an uncooked pie.
My prophetic soul caused me to say, “Shall we stop? It may be a hold-up,” when he called, “Stop! stop! We’ve just been held up, a mile back.”
“When?”
“Five minutes ago.” We had spent those same five minutes buying gasoline at Williams. “Canst work in the ground so fast?” I apostrophised our guardian angels. The woman broke in shrilly. “Two masked men with revolvers stood by the road. They took everything we had, then made for the woods.”
“Did you lose much?”
“Nine dollars,” said the little man. “If I’d had more they’d got it.”
When the shaken couple left, we debated whether to go ahead. Perhaps the masked pair awaited us in the road beyond. Finally deciding they would be no more anxious to meet us than we them, we hid our valuables, I in my hat and Toby under the floor. Before we finished, a Ford approached driven by two men of villainous appearance enhanced by a week’s beard, and criminal looking red shirts. Seeing us they wavered, slowed down and seemed about to stop beside us, then changed their minds and dashed past, looking at us searchingly. Their peculiar conduct and unprepossessing features made us certain that they were the thieves. Our long expected bandits had come, and had passed us for a little man in a flivver with nine dollars. We were to a certain extent relieved, I must confess. Still, when you go west adventuring, your friends expect you to be held up by outlaws, and you hate to disappoint them with an anti-climax.