HE LETTERS

"But what was yore idea in coming to Marysville a-tall?"

"To get that release Father signed--I thought it might be in his
safe."

"Anybody give you the idea it might be?"

She shook her head. "Nobody."

"You've got more brains than I have, for a fact. But how were you
figuring on getting into the safe?"

"Oh, I brought a bunch of keys along. What are you laughing at? I
thought one might fit."

"Keys for a safe! Say, don't you know you don't open safes with keys?
They've got combinations, safes have."

"I didn't know it. How could I? I never saw a safe in my life till
I saw this one to-night. I thought they had locks like any other
ordinary--Oh, I think you're horrid to laugh!"

"I'm not laughing. Lean over, and I'll show you.... There, I ain't
laughing, am I?"

"Not now, but you were.... Not another one, Racey. Sit back where you
belong, will you? You can hold my hand if you like. But I wasn't such
a fool as you seem to think, Racey. I brought an extra key along in
case the others didn't fit."

"Extra key?"

"Surely--seven sticks of dynamite, caps, and fuse. Chuck had a lot he
was using for blowing stumps, so I borrowed some from his barn. He
didn't know I took it."

"I should hope not," Racey declared, fervently. "You leave dynamite
alone, do you hear? Where is it now?"

"Oh, I left it on the floor in Tweezy's house when I found I didn't
need it any longer."

"Thank God!" breathed Racey, whose hair had begun to rise at the bare
idea of the explosives still being somewhere on her person. "What was
yore motive in hold in' up Jack Harpe and Jakey Pooley?"

"Was that who they were? I couldn't see their faces. Well, when I had
broken the lock and opened the back window and crawled through, I went
into the front room where I thought likely the safe would be, and I
was just going to strike a match when I heard a snap at the front
window as the lock broke. Maybe I wasn't good and scared. I paddled
into the other front room by mistake. Got turned around in the dark, I
suppose. And before I could open a window and get out I heard two men
in the front room I'd just left. I didn't dare open a window then.
They'd have heard me surely, so I just knelt down behind a bed. And
after a while, when one man was busy at the safe, the fat man came
into my room and sat down on a chair inside the door. Lordy, I hardly
dared breathe. It's a wonder my hair didn't turn white. Once I thought
they must have he