The safe exploded to the tune of $30,000, all gold and currency. The
passengers thrust their heads casually out of the windows to look for
the thunder-cloud. The conductor jerked at the bell-rope, which
sagged down loose and unresisting, at his tug. Shark Dodson and Bob
Tidball, with their booty in a stout canvas bag, tumbled out of the
express car and ran awkwardly in their high-heeled boots to the
engine.
The engineer, sullenly angry but wise, ran the engine, according to
orders, rapidly away from the inert train. But before this was
accomplished the express messenger, recovered from Bob Tidball's
persuader to neutrality, jumped out of his car with a Winchester rifle
and took a trick in the game. Mr. John Big Dog, sitting on the coal
tender, unwittingly made a wrong lead by giving an imitation of a
target, and the messenger trumped him. With a ball exactly between
his shoulder blades the Creek chevalier of industry rolled off to
the ground, thus increasing the share of his comrades in the loot by
one-sixth each.
Two miles from the tank the engineer was ordered to stop.
The robbers waved a defiant adieu and plunged down the steep slope
into the thick woods that lined the track. Five minutes of crashing
through a thicket of chaparral brought them to open woods, where three
horses were tied to low-hanging branches.
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