There was a dead silence for the space of a long minute, and while it endured the man sat motionless, with his back against the wall and his hands locked over his knees. Then: "They'd all pat you on the back if yous was to let out that yell. I brought ten years with me when the warden give me my number, and I'm thinkin' they was comin' to me--all o' them." "But you don't want to go back?" "Not me; if it was to come to that, I'd a damned sight rather you'd squeeze a little harder on that trigger you've got under your finger; see?" "Then why did you take this long chance?" I demanded. "You say you knew I had spotted you; you might have known that I'd be ready for you." "I kind o' hoped you would," he said, drawling the words. "Yes; I sure did hope ye would--not but what I'm thinkin' I could 'a' done it alone." "Done what alone? What are you driv----" The interruption was imperative; a fierce "Hist!" from the corner beside the safe, and at the same instant a blurring of the gray patch of the window, a sash rising almost noiselessly, and two men, following each other like substance and shadow, legging themselves into the office over the window-sill. At first I thought Dorgan had set a trap for me; but before that unworthy suspicion could draw its second breath, the track foreman had hurled himself upon the two intruders, calling to me to come on and help him. The battle, such as it was, was short, sharp and decisive, as the darkness and the contracted fighting space constrained it to be. Though I dared not shoot, I contrived to use the rifle as a club on the man who was trying to choke Dorgan from behind, and after a hard-breathing minute or two we had them both down, one of them half stunned by the blow on his head from the gun-barrel, and the other with an arm twisted and temporarily useless. Under Dorgan's directions I cut a couple of lengths from a rope coil in the commissary with which we tied the pair hand and foot, dragging them afterward to the freer floor space beyond the pay-office partition. "They'll be stayin' put till mornin', I'm thinkin'," was Dorgan's comment as we retreated to the scene of the battle. Then, as he edged toward the open window: "Ye won't be needin' me any more to-night . . . I'll duck whilst the duckin's good." "Not just yet," I interposed, and pulled him to a seat on the cot beside me. "I want to know a few things first. You knew about the raid these fellows were planning?" "Sure, I did." "Tell me about it."