55

VI THE HAPPENINGS DOWN HANCE'S TRAIL 69

VII A CHANGE OF BASE 82

VIII HOW DID THE SECRET LEAK OUT? 93

IX A TALK BEFORE BREAKFAST 107

X WAITING FOR HELP 118

XI THE LETTERS CHANGE HANDS AGAIN 130

XII AN EVENING IN JAIL 140

XIII A LESSON IN POLITENESS 153

XIV "LISTENERS NEVER HEAR ANYTHING GOOD" 165

XV THE SURRENDER OF THE LETTERS 175

XVI A GLOOMY GOOD-BY 186

THE

Great K. & A. Train-Robbery

CHAPTER I

THE PARTY ON SPECIAL NO. 218

Any one who hopes to find in what is here written a work of
literature had better lay it aside unread. At Yale I should have
got the sack in rhetoric and English composition, let alone other
studies, had it not been for the fact that I played half-back on
the team, and so the professors marked me away up above where I
ought to have ranked. That was twelve years ago, but my life
since I received my parchment has hardly been of a kind to
improve me in either style or grammar. It is true that one woman
tells me I write well, and my directors never find fault with my
compositions; but I know that she likes my letters because,
whatever else they may say to her, they always say in some form,
"I love you," while my board approve my annual reports because
thus far I have been able to end each with "I recommend the
declaration of a dividend of -- per cent from the earnings of the
current year." I should therefore prefer to reserve my writings
for such friendly critics, if it did not seem necessary to make
public a plain statement concerning an affair over which there
appears to be much confusion. I have heard in the last five years
not less than twenty renderings of what is commonly called "the
great K. & A. train-robbery,"--some so twisted and distorted that
but for the intermediate versions I should never have recognized
them as attempts to narrate the series of events in which I
played a somewhat prominent part. I have read or been told that,
unassisted, the pseudo-hero captured a dozen desperadoes; that he
was one of the road agents himself; that he was saved from
lynching only by the timely arrival of cavalry; that the action
of the United States government in rescuing him