the man that got me out of clink.
Now, I half suspicion you're right about Colonel Jim, but, anyhow,
I'll tell you exactly what happened. Colonel Jim was a Britisher, and
I suppose that's why he and Wyoming Ed chummed together a good deal.
We called Jim Baxter Colonel, but he never said he was a colonel or
anything else. I was told he belonged to the British army, and that
something happened in India so that he had to light out He never
talked about himself, but he was a mighty taking fellow when he laid
out to please anybody. We called him Colonel because he was so
straight in the back, and walked as if he were on parade. When this
young English tenderfoot came out, he and the Colonel got to be as
thick as thieves, and the Colonel won a good deal of money from him at
cards, but that didn't make any difference in their friendship. The
Colonel most always won when he played cards, and perhaps that's what
started the talk about why he left the British army. He was the
luckiest beggar I ever knew in that line of business. We all met in
the rush to the new goldfields, which didn't pan out worth a cent, and
one after another of the fellows quit and went somewhere else. But
Wyoming Ed, he held on, even after Colonel Jim wanted to quit. As long
as there were plenty of fellows there, Colonel Jim never lacked money,
although he didn't dig it out of the ground, but when the population
thinned down to only a few of us, then we all struck hard times. Now,
I knew Colonel Jim was going to hold up a train. He asked me if I
would join him, and I said I would if there wasn't too many in the
gang. I'd been into that business afore, and I knew there was no
greater danger than to have a whole mob of fellows. Three men can hold
up a train better than three dozen. Everybody's scared except the
express messenger, and it's generally easy to settle him, for he
stands where the light is, and we shoot from the dark. Well, I
thought at first Wyoming Ed was on to the scheme, because when we were
waiting in the cut to signal the train he talked about us going on
with her to San Francisco, but I thought he was only joking. I guess
that Colonel Jim imagined that when it came to the pinch, Ed wouldn't
back out and leave us in the lurch: he knew Ed was as brave as a lion.
In the cut, where the train would be on the up grade, the Colonel got
his lantern ready, lit it, and wrapped a thin red silk handkerchief
round it. The express was timed to pass up the