in Carleton's estimation.
And the afternoon following Regan's and Carleton's conversation, alone
in the room, for Halstead was out, he was hanging over his desk a
pretty sick man, though his pen moved steadily with the work before
him, when the connecting door from the super's office opened, and Bob
Donkin, the despatcher, came hurriedly in.

"Where's the super?" he asked quickly.

"I don't know," said P. Walton. "He went out in the yards with Regan
half an hour ago. I guess he'll be back shortly."

"Well, you'd better try and find him, and give him this. Forty-two'll
be along in twenty minutes." Donkin slapped a tissue on the desk, and
hurried back to his key in the despatchers' room.

P. Walton picked up the tissue and read it. It was from the first
station west on the line.

Gopher Butte, 3.16 P. M.

J. H. CARLETON, Supt. Hill Division:

No. 42 held up by two train robbers three miles west of here Express
messenger Nulty in game fight killed one and captured the other in the
express car. Arrange for removal of body, and have sheriff on hand to
take prisoner into custody on arrival in Big Cloud. Everything O.K.

McCURDY, Conductor.

P. Walton, with the telegram in his hand, rose from his chair and made
for the hall through the super's room, reading it a second time as he
went along. There had been some pretty valuable express stuff on the
train, as he knew from the correspondence that had passed through his
hands--and he smiled a little grimly.

"Well, they certainly missed a good one," he muttered to himself. "I
think I'd rather be the dead one than the other. It'll go hard with
him. Twenty years, I guess."

He stepped out into the hall to the head of the stairs--and met
Carleton coming up.

Carleton, quick as a steel trap, getting the gist of the message in a
glance, brushed by P. Walton, hurried along the hall to the
despatchers' room--and the next moment a wide-eyed call boy was
streaking uptown for the sheriff, and breathlessly imparting the tale
of the hold-up, embellished with gory imagination, to every one he met.

By the time Forty-two's whistle sounded down the gorge, there was a
crowd on the platform bigger than a political convention, and P.
Walton, by virtue of his official position, rather than from physical
qualifications, together with his chief, Regan, the ticket agent, the
baggage master and Carruthers, the sheriff, were having a hard time of
it to keep themselves from