answer.

"I didn't hear youse come in."

"I didn't hear you come in, either," the man behind the mask mocked. But
even as he spoke his manner changed, and crisp menace rang in his voice.
"Have you sent those messages yet?"

"Wha--what messages?"

"Those lying on your desk. I say, have you sent them?"

"Not yet."

"Hand them over here."

The operator passed them across the counter without demur.

"Now reach for the roof."

Up shot the station agent's hands. The bandit glanced over the written
sheets and commented aloud:

"Huh! One from the conductor and one from Mackenzie. I expected those.
But this one from Collins is ce'tainly a surprise party. I didn't know
he was on the train. Lucky for him I didn't, or mebbe I'd a-put his
light for good and all. Friend, I reckon we'll suppress these messages.
Military necessity, you understand." And with that he lightly tore up
the yellow sheets and tossed them away.

"The conductor will wire when he reaches Apache," the operator
suggested, not very boldly.

The outlaw rolled a cigarette deftly and borrowed a match. "He most
surely will. But Apache is seventy miles from here. That gives us
an extra hour and a half, and with us right now time is a heap more
valuable than money. You may tell Bucky O'Connor when you see him that
that extra hour and a half cinches our escape, and we weren't on the
anxious seat any without it."

It may have been true, as the train robber had just said, that time was
more valuable to him then than money, but if so he must have held the
latter of singularly little value. For he sat him down on the counter
with his back against the wall and his legs stretched full length in
front of him and glanced over the Tucson Star in leisurely fashion,
while Pat's arms still projected roofward.

The operator, beginning to get over his natural fright, could not
withhold a reluctant admiration of this man's aplomb. There was a
certain pantherish lightness about the outlaw's movements, a trim grace
of figure which yet suggested rippling muscles perfectly under control,
and a quiet wariness of eye more potent than words at repressing
insurgent impulses. Certainly if ever there was a cool customer and one
perfectly sure of himself, this was he.

"Not a thing in the Star to-day," Pat's visitor commented, as he
flung it away with a yawn. "I'll let a thousand dollars of the express
company's money that there will be something more interesting in it
to-morr