Now they were there, and Tom heard wild cries on the platform. Then a door was pulled open and some one asked: "Where are the robbers?" Tom was lifted out, for his right shin-bone had been smashed and he couldn't stand. A stretcher was improvised, and he was carried out. Dozens of people were standing round the station. The wagon was gone, and so were the horses. Where to? The wide, deserted prairie gave no answer. A great many footprints in the sand showed at least that Tom had spoken the truth. He pointed out the holes made in the shutters by the bandits, and told the whole story a dozen times, until at last he fainted away again. When he came to half an hour later it all seemed like a horrible dream--like a scene from a robber's tale. He found himself in a comfortable Pullman car on the way to Umatilla, where he had to tell his story all over again, in order that the fairly hopeless pursuit of the highwaymen might be begun from there. _Chapter IV_ ECHOES IN NEW YORK WALLA WALLA, May 7. "This morning, at ten o'clock, the station Swallowtown, on the Oregon line, was surprised by bandits. They captured the station in order to hold up the express train to Umatilla. The plot was frustrated by the decisive action of the station official, who jumped on the passing train and warned the passengers. Unfortunately, the robbers succeeded in escaping, but the Umatilla police have started in pursuit. The majority of the bandits are said to have been Japanese." In these words the attack on Swallowtown was wired to New York, and when John Halifax went to the office of the _New York Daily Telegraph_ at midnight, to work up the telegrams which had come in during Sunday for the morning paper, his chief drew his attention in particular to the remark at the end of the message, and asked him to make some reference in his article to the dangers of the Japanese immigration, which seemed to be going on unhindered over the Mexican and Canadian frontiers. John Halifax would have preferred to comment editorially on the necessity of night rest for newspaper men, but settled down in smothered wrath to write up the highwaymen who had committed the double crime of desecrating the Sabbath and robbing the train. But scarcely had he begun his article under the large headlines "Japanese Bandits--A Danger no longer Confined to the Frontier, but Stalking about in the Heart of the Country,"--he was just on the point of setting off Tom's brave deed against the rascality of the bandits, when another package of telegrams was laid on the table. He was going to push them irritably aside when his glance fell on the top telegram, which began with the words, "This morning at ten o'clock the station at Connell, Wash., was attacked by robbers, who----"