you think of it before?
Rustle, damn you, an', ef you're any good, mebbe so you can git to
'Frisco afore frost comes, or anywhere else you likes. Rustle! By
jiminy, I've got it; I'll jes' stand up that thar Overland Express. Them
fellers what rides on it's got more'n they've got any sort o' use for.
What's the matter with makin' 'em whack up with a feller! 'Course
they'll kick, an' thar'll be a whole passle o' marshals an' sheriffs out
after you, but what o' that? Reckon Old Blue'll carry you out o' range.
He's the longest-winded chunk o' horse meat in these parts. Then you'll
have to stay out strictly on the scout fer a few weeks, till they gits
tired o' huntin' of you, so you can slip out o' this yere neck o' woods
'thout leavin' a trail.

"An' Lord! but won't it be fun! 'Bout as much fun, I reckon, as doin'
'Frisco. Won't them tenderfeet beller when they hears the guns
a-crackin' an' the boys a-yellin'! Le' see; wonder who I'd better take
along?"

Scruples? Kit had none. Bred and raised a merry freebooter on the
unbranded spoils of the cattle range, it was no long step from stealing a
maverick to holding up a train.

With a man of perhaps any other class, a plan to engage in a new business
enterprise of so much greater magnitude than any of those he had been
accustomed to would have been made the subject of long consideration.
Not so with Kit. Cowboy life compels a man to think quickly, and often
to act quicker than he finds it convenient to think. The hand skilled to
catch the one possible instant when the wide, circling loop of the lariat
may be successfully thrown, and the eye and finger trained to accurate
snap-shooting, do not well go with a mind likely to be long in reaching a
resolution or slow to execute one.

So Kit at once began to cast about for two or three of the right sort of
boys to join him. Three were quickly chosen out of his own and a
neighboring outfit. They were Mitch Lee and Taggart, two white cowboys
of his own type and temper, and George Cleveland, a negro, known as a
desperate fellow, game for anything. It needed no great argument to
secure the co-operation of these men. A mere tip of the lark and the
loot to be had was enough.

The boys saw their respective bosses. They "allowed they'd lay off for a
few days and go to town." So they were paid off, slung their Winchesters
on their saddles, mounted their favorite horses, and rode away. They met
in Silver City, coming