“Why, sure! Ain’t you the real thing in Jesse Jameses?” soothed the sheriff. At the sound of Collins’ voice, the masked man had started perceptibly, and his right hand had jumped forward an inch or two to cover the speaker more definitely. Thereafter, no matter what else engaged his attention, the gleaming eyes behind the red bandanna never wandered for a moment from the big plainsman. He was taking no risks, for he remembered the saying current in Arizona, that after Collins’ hardware got into action there was nothing left to do but plant the deceased and collect the insurance. He had personal reasons to know the fundamental accuracy of the colloquialism. The train-conductor fussed up to the masked outlaw with a ludicrous attempt at authority. “You can’t rob the passengers on this train. I’m not responsible for the express-car, but the coaches—” A bullet almost grazed his ear and shattered a window on its way to the desert. “Drift, you red-haired son of a Mexican?” ordered the man behind the red bandanna. “Git back to that seat real prompt. This here’s taxation without representation.” The conductor drifted as per suggestion. The minutes ticked themselves away in a tense strain marked by pounding hearts. The outlaw stood at the end of the aisle, watching the sheriff alertly. “Why doesn’t the music begin?” volunteered Collins, by way of conversation, and quoted: “On with the dance. Let joy be unconfined.” A dull explosion answered his question. The bandits were blowing open the safe in the express-car with dynamite, pending which the looting of the passengers was at a standstill. A second masked figure joined his companion at the end of the passage and held a hurried conversation with him. Fragments of their low-voiced talk came to Collins. “Only thirty thousand in the express-car. Not a red cent on the old man himself.” “Where’s the rest?” The irritation in the newcomer’s voice was pronounced. Collins slewed his head and raked him with keen eyes that missed not a detail. He was certain that he had never seen the man before, yet he knew at once that the trim, wiry figure, so clean of build and so gallant of bearing, could belong only to Wolf Leroy, the most ruthless outlaw of the Southwest. It was written in his jaunty insolence, in the flashing eyes. He was a handsome fellow, white-toothed, black-haired, lithely tigerish, with masterful mouth and eyes of steel, so far as one might judge behind the white mask he wore. Alert, cruel, fearless from the head to the heel of him, he looked the very devil to lead an enterprise so lawless and so desperate as this. His vigilant eyes swept contemptuously up and down the car, rested for a moment on the young woman in Section 3, and came back to his partner. “Bah! A flock of sheep—tamest bunch of spring lambs we ever struck. I’ll send Scotty in to go through them. If anybody gets gay, drop him.” And the outlaw turned on his heel.