best galleries will
find--"

"Back up," exclaimed the man from Topaz City. "There was a game last
month in our town in which $90,000 changed hands on a pair of--"

"Ta-romt-tara!" went the orchestra. The stage curtain, blushing pink
at the name "Asbestos" inscribed upon it, came down with a slow
midsummer movement. The audience trickled leisurely down the elevator
and stairs.

On the sidewalk below, the New Yorker and the man from Topaz City
shook hands with alcoholic gravity. The elevated crashed raucously,
surface cars hummed and clanged, cabmen swore, newsboys shrieked,
wheels clattered ear-piercingly. The New Yorker conceived a happy
thought, with which he aspired to clinch the pre-eminence of his city.

"You must admit," said he, "that in the way of noise New York is far
ahead of any other--"

"Back to the everglades!" said the man from Topaz City. "In 1900, when
Sousa's band and the repeating candidate were in our town you
couldn't--"

The rattle of an express wagon drowned the rest of the words.

V

HOLDING UP A TRAIN

Note. The man who told me these things was for several years
an outlaw in the Southwest and a follower of the pursuit he
so frankly describes. His description of the _modus operandi_
should prove interesting, his counsel of value to the
potential passenger in some future "hold-up," while his
estimate of the pleasures of train robbing will hardly induce
any one to adopt it as a profession. I give the story in
almost exactly his own words.
O. H.

Most people would say, if their opinion was asked for, that holding
up a train would be a hard job. Well, it isn't; it's easy. I have
contributed some to the uneasiness of railroads and the insomnia of
express companies, and the most trouble I ever had about a hold-up was
in being swindled by unscrupulous people while spending the money I
got. The danger wasn't anything to speak of, and we didn't mind the
trouble.

One man has come pretty near robbing a train by himself; two have
succeeded a few times; three can do it if they are hustlers, but five
is about the right number. The time to do it and the place depend upon
several things.

The first "stick-up" I was ever in happened in 1890. Maybe the way I
got into it will explain how most train robbers start in the business.
Five out of six Western outlaws are just cowboys out of a job and gone
wrong.