s the man in an emergency
that counts, and if ever I get a chance at an emergency I'll show you.'
And Regan'll say: 'Sammy,' he'll say, 'you----'"

Sammy Durgan paused in his engrossing soliloquy as the roar of an
approaching train fell on his ears, and he scrambled quickly down from
the right of way to the bottom of the embankment. Just ahead of him
was a short, narrow, high-walled rock cut, and at the farther end the
track swerved sharply to the right, side-stepping, as it were, the
twist of the Dam River that swung in, steep-banked, to the right of way.

"I'll wait here," said Sammy Durgan, "'till she's through the cut."

Sammy Durgan waited. The train came nearer and nearer--and then Sammy
Durgan cocked his head in a puzzled way and stared through the cut. He
couldn't see anything, of course, for the curve, but from the sound she
had stopped just beyond the cut.

"Now, what the devil is she stopping there for?" inquired Sammy Durgan
of the universe in an injured tone.

He started along through the cut. And then Sammy Durgan stopped
himself--as though he were rooted to the earth--and a sort of grayish
white began to creep over his face. Came echoing through the cut a
shout, a yell, another, a chorus of them--then a shot, another shot, a
fusilade of them--and then a din mingling the oaths, the yells, and the
shots into a hideous babel that rang terror in Sammy Durgan's ears.

Sammy Durgan promptly sidled in and hugged up against the rock wall
that towered above him. Here he hesitated an instant, then he crept
cautiously forward. Where he could not see, it was axiomatic that he
could not be seen; and where he could not be seen, it was equally
logical that he would be safe.

Sammy Durgan's face, quite white now, was puckered as it had never been
puckered before, and his lips moved in a kind of twitching, jerky way
as he crept along. Then suddenly, a voice, that seemed nearer than the
others, but which from the acoustic properties of the cut he could not
quite locate, bawled out fiercely over the confusion, prefaced with an
oath:

"Get that express car door open, and be damned quick about it! Go on,
shoot along the side of the train every time you see a head in a
window!"

Sammy Durgan's mouth went dry, and his heart lost a beat, then went to
pounding like a trip-hammer. Labatt and the Big Cloud _Daily Sentinel_
hadn't drawn any exaggerated picture. A hold-up--in broad daylight!

"Holy Mither!" whi