ward figures than
usual.

"Well, well," said John Big Moose, as the boys entered the room. "You
two seem to have extended your holiday to the next morning."

"You look kinda shaky, Whitey," said Bill "You been makin' a night of
it, too?"

Without further questioning Whitey sat down and told the story of the
adventure, from the boys' awakening to their finding the bodies of the
three men hanging from the railroad bridge.

"So you were right about String an' Ham's bein' crooks," Bill said, when
the boy had finished.

"Yes, but even so, it seems terrible for them to die that way," Whitey
replied.

"The express folks is tired o' havin' their cars robbed, an' if you'd
known what I found out at the Junction, you might o' saved yourself some
trouble," said Bill. "They was a shipment of a hundred thousand dollars
in gold in that there car, an' they was six fellers went along to
pertect it. Not detectives, or nothin', just fellers that was hired, an'
was dyin' for excitement. I reck'n some o' the passengers was as tired
o' bein' held up as those fellers was pinin' for excitement, an' when
String an' Ham an' Whiff made their poor little play, they musta thought
they'd struck a hornet's nest."

"But to hang them," Whitey protested. "Why didn't they shoot them, if
they had to kill them?"

"Well, ye see hangin' makes it look worse for the next fellers what
thinks o' holdin' up a train," said Bill. "They'd stole three o' our
hosses, anyway, an' that's a hangin' offense."

But Whitey was not inclined to argue about the justice or injustice of
the lynching. He went away with Injun, and tried to eat. And he tried,
too, to forget the horror of the scene at the bridge. But all his life
long he never quite succeeded in doing that.

* * * * *

And that night, in the bunk house, the talk was all about the tragedy of
the morning. Bill Jordan and four of the cowboys were there, to say
nothing of Slim, the cook. Slim had another grievance, for, now that Ham
had gone, he was again forced to cook for the men, misery or no misery.

Whitey loved to sit in the long, half-lighted room, and listen to the
talk and yarns of the cowboys, for, "boys" they were called, whether
they were eighteen or fifty, and in many ways boys they seemed to have
remained.

They had threshed over the lynching. Whitey had answered a thousand
questions about his experiences, had been praised and blamed with equal
frankness, an