ird was a notification to Lieutenant O'Connor, of the Arizona
Rangers, of the hold-up, specifying time and place of the occurrence.
The sheriff knew it was not necessary to add that the bandits were
probably heading south to get into Sonora. Bucky would take that for
granted and do his best to cover the likely spots of the frontier.

It was nearly eleven when the Limited drew in to Tucson. Sabin was on
the platform anxiously awaiting their arrival. Collins reached him even
before the conductor.

"Ordered the special, Mr. Sabin?" he asked, in a low voice.

The railroad man was chewing nervously on an unlit cigar. "Yes, sheriff.
You want only an engine and one car, I suppose."

"That will be enough. I've got to go uptown now and meet Dillon.
Midnight sharp, please."

"Do you know how much they got?" Sabin whispered.

"Thirty thousand, I hear, besides what they took from the passengers.
The conductor will tell you all about it. I've got to jump to be ready."

A disappointment awaited him in the telegrapher's room at the depot. He
found a wire, but not from the person he expected. The ranger in charge
at Douglas said that Lieutenant O'Connor was at Flag staff, but pending
that officer's return he would put himself under the orders of Sheriff
Collins and wait for instructions.

The sheriff whistled softly to himself and scratched his head. Bucky
would not have waited for instructions. By this time that live wire
would have finished telephoning all over Southern Arizona and would
himself have been in the saddle. But Bucky in Flagstaff, nearly three
hundred miles from the battlefield, so far as the present emergency
went, might just as well be in Calcutta. Collins wired instructions to
the ranger and sent a third message to the lieutenant.

"I expect I'll hear this time he's skipped over to Winslow," he told
himself, with a rueful grin.

The special with the posse on board drew out at midnight sharp. It
reached the scene of the holdup before daybreak. The loading board was
lowered and the horses led from the car and picketed. Meanwhile two
of the men lit a fire and made breakfast while the others unloaded the
outfit and packed for the trail. The first faint streaks of gray dawn
were beginning to fleck the sky when Collins and Dillon, with a lantern,
moved along the railroad bed to the little clump of cottonwoods where
the outlaws had probably lain while they waited for the express. They
scanned this ground inch by i