obey. For all he cared the raiders could
take locomotive, train, caboose and all, provided he was left with a
whole skin.

CHAPTER III

THE HOLD-UP

Just beyond the flag station at White Point, where the forest-clad
slopes of the great hills crowded in upon the railroad track, a scene
of utter lawlessness was being silently enacted.

The spot was a lonely one, lonely with that oppressive solitude always
to be found where the great hills of ages rear their towering heads.
It was utterly cut off, too, from the outer world, by a monstrous
abutment of hill which left the track a mere ribbon, like the track of
some invertebrate, laboriously making its way through surroundings all
uncongenial and antagonistic. Yet the station was but a few hundred
yards beyond this point, where it lay open to the sweep of at least
three of the four winds of Heaven. But even so, the two places were as
effectually separated as though miles, and not yards, intervened.

No breath of air stirred the generous spruce and darkening pinewoods.
The drooping, westering sun, already athwart the barren crown of the
hill tops, left a false, velvety suggestion of twilight in the heart
of the valley, while a depressing superheat enervated all life, except
the profusion of vegetation which beautified the rugged slopes. For
the most part the stillness was profound, only the most trifling
sounds disturbing it. There was an uneasy shuffle of moving feet;
there was the occasional crisp clip of a driven axe; then, too,
weighty articles being dropped into the bottom of a heavy wagon sent
up their dull boom at long intervals.

The outlaws worked swiftly, but without apparent haste. The success of
their efforts depended upon rapidity of execution, that and the most
exact care for the detail of their organization. Provided these things
were held foremost in their minds there was small enough chance of
interruption. Had not the train, with its all unconscious driver,
passed upon its rumbling way toward Amberley? Had not all suspicion
been lulled in the mind of the bucolic agent, who was even now
laboriously expending a maximum of energy for a minimum return of
culinary delicacies in his vegetable patch? What was there to
interfere? Nothing. These men well knew that except for the flag
station there was not a habitation within ten miles, and the
ruggedness of the hills barred them to every form of traffic except
the irresistible impulse of railroad ente