tion with me, helping with the
valise money bag, which was heavy with a good bit of coin for making
change. We got better acquainted on the walk, and I warmed immediately
to the frank, open-mannered young bank teller, little dreaming what
this acquaintance, begun in pure business routine, was destined to lead
to in the near future.

Barrett saw me safely aboard of my return train, and stood on the
platform at the open window of the car talking to me until the train
started. On my part this leave-taking talk was more or less
perfunctory; I was scanning the platform throng anxiously in search of
a certain heavy-shouldered man with a sinister face; and when, just as
the train began to move, I saw Dorgan swing himself up to the step of
the car ahead, I knew what was before me--or thought I did--and
surreptitiously drew the .45 from the inside coat-pocket where I had
carried it, twirling the cylinder to make sure that it was loaded and
in serviceable condition.

There was an excellent chance for a hold-up at the junction. It was
coming on to dusk as the through train made the stop, and there was no
town, not even a station; nothing but a water tank and the littered
jumble of a construction yard. My engine was making up a train of
material cars to be taken to our end-of-track camp, and I had to wait
for it to come within hailing distance.

Dorgan got off the through train at the same time that I did. I stood
with the money valise between my feet and folded my arms with a hand
inside of my coat and grasping the butt of the big revolver, shaking a
bit because all this was so foreign to anything I had ever experienced,
but determined to do what seemed needful at the pinch. Oddly enough,
as I thought, the track foreman made no move to approach me. Instead,
he kept his distance, busying himself with the filling and lighting of
a stubby black pipe. After a little time, and before it was quite
dark, my engine backed down to where I was standing and I climbed
aboard with my money bag, still with an eye on Dorgan. The last I saw
of him he was sitting on the end of a cross-tie, pulling away at his
pipe and apparently oblivious to me and to everything else. But I made
sure that when the material train should pull out he would be aboard of
it; and the event proved that he was.

Obsessed with the idea that Dorgan had chosen the time to make his
"clean-up," I took no chances after the end-of-track camp was reached.
The money