His eyes gleamed at Andrew.
“And, if they raise you, I think they’ll
find you’ve more iron hidden away in you than
I have. But the way they’ll find it out
will be in an explosion that will wipe them out.
You’ve got to handle them without that explosion,
Lanning. Can you do it?”
The younger man moistened his lips. “I
think this job is going to prove worth while,”
he returned.
“Very well, then. But there are penalties
in your new position. In a pinch you’ve
got to do what I do—see that they have food
enough—go without sleep if one of them
needs your blankets—if any of ’em
gets in trouble, even into a jail, you’ve got
to get him out.”
“Better still,” smiled Andrew.
“And now,” said the leader, “I’ll
tell you about our next job as we go back to the boys.”
It was ten days later when the band dropped out of
the mountains into the Murchison Pass—a
singular place for a train robbery, Andrew could not
help thinking. They were at the southwestern end
of the pass, where the mountains gave back in a broad
gap. Below them, not five miles away, was the
city of Gidding Creek; they could see its buildings
and parks tumbled over a big area, for there was a
full twenty-five thousand of inhabitants in Gidding
Creek. Indeed, the whole country was dotted with
villages and towns, for it was no longer a cattle region,
but a semifarming district cut up into small tracts.
One was almost never out of sight of at least one
house.
It worried Andrew, this closely built country, and
he knew that it worried the other men as well; yet
there had not been a single murmur from among them
as they jogged their horses on behind Allister.
Each of them was swathed from head to heels in a vast
slicker that spread behind, when the wind caught it,
as far as the tail of the horse. And the rubber
creaked and rustled softly. Whatever they might
have been inclined to think of this daring raid into
the heart of a comparatively thickly populated country,
they were too accustomed to let the leader do their
thinking for them to argue the point with him.
And Andrew followed blindly enough. He saw, indeed,
one strong point in their favor. The very fact
that the train was coming out of the heart of the mountains,
through ravines which afforded a thousand places for
assault, would make the guards relax their attention
as they approached Gidding Creek. And, though
there were many people in the region, they were a fat
and inactive populace, not comparable with the lean
fellows of the north.
