On the way the talk turned upon
stage-robbings and hold-ups. With the chance of the real thing as remote
as a visit from Mars, I could be an ass and a braggart. One of the men,
a salesman for a powder company, gave me the rope wherewith to hang
myself. He argued for non-resistance, and I remember that I grew
sarcastic over the spectacle afforded by a grown man, armed and in
possession of his five senses, permitting himself to be robbed without
attempting to resist. You can guess what followed?"
"I'd rather hear you tell it," said the listener at Superintendent
Leckhard's desk. "Go on."
Lidgerwood waited until the switching-engine, with its pop-valve open
and screaming like a liberated devil of the noise pit, had passed.
"Three miles beyond the supper station we had our hold-up; the
cut-and-dried, melodramatic sort of thing you read about, or used to
read about, in the early days, with a couple of Winchesters poking
through the scrub pines to represent the gang in hiding, and one lone,
crippled desperado to come down to the footlights in the speaking part.
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