There was a wait of fully three minutes, which seemed like as many hours to me, but not another sound came from inside the bank. Tall Jim agreed with Hughes that the jig was over, so we retreated cautiously. We didn’t know, but felt inclined to believe, that the bank watchman had seen our approach, and thinking that we really were whitecaps, or perhaps guessing more accurately as to our mission, had remained discreetly inside his stronghold, quite satisfied that his one-armed friend would not bleed to death. I have since concluded that we were mighty lucky that some cold lead did not find a lodgment in the carcass of one or more of us. The game being over, even before it had begun, we marched the gas-house man to where he had been picked up, and proceeded to dispose of him in a way to insure our safe departure. We certainly had no blame to put on him, for had he been one of us of his own free will, he couldn’t have done better. As a tool, he responded to our bidding with the same directness that a needle responds to the magnet. But for our safety he must be made to believe that we were actually a band of whitecaps, and not a lot of hungry bank looters. Tall Jim was the spokesman:-- “See here, one-armed chap,” said he, in a threatening voice, “our faces are covered, and you don’t know us, though some of us do you. More of us have seen the man in yonder bank, and he’s the feller we’re after. We’ll show him what happens to a man trotting around with another man’s wife, before morning.” The old man was trembling with apprehension; not over the bank watchman’s doings, as alleged, but for fear of what we might do with him. He managed to gasp out, “I--I--never heard Bill wuz after wimmen; I--I think ye must be mistaken, sirs.” “But we know, and that’s enough!” Tall Jim hissed the words much like a stage villain; and I laughed to myself, though I’d have felt better could I have roared freely, there was so much earnestness in the poor fellow’s voice. “Oh, it don’t seem possible, sirs, it don’t,” he said tremblingly. “He’s been tracing around with the wife of one of my friends here, I tell you, old man; and what’s more, she’s in the bank with him this moment.” “I didn’t see her go in, sir; and if a wooman did go there, sir, I couldn’t help it, sir.” “Well, I did,” insisted Tall Jim, with affected fierceness. “I saw my friend’s wife go in that bank, early in the evening, and she’s been there ever since. Now, sir, there’s going to be a little rail-riding done before sunrise, and at the end of the journey there’ll be found a big smoking kettle of tar and a fine fat tick of soft geese feathers; and when we’re through, there’ll be a new sort of a bird in this community, and we’re going to make it out of your friend the watchman. We’ll soon be in the bank, so don’t have any doubt about it.”