"You bet it is!" purred the owner, proudly. "I paid six dollars for that gun." Lanky smothered a laugh and his friend grinned broadly: "I reckon that’d kill a man—if you stuck it in his ear." "Pshaw!" snorted the dyspeptic, scornfully. "You wouldn’t have time to get it out of that grip. Think a train-robber is going to let you unpack? Why don’t you carry it in your hip-pocket, where you can get at it quickly?" There were smiles at the stranger’s belief in the hip-pocket fallacy but no one commented upon it. "Was n’t there no passengers aboard when you was stuck up?" Lanky asked the conductor. "Yes, but you can’t count passengers in on a deal like that." Hopalong looked around aggressively: "We ’re passengers, ain’t we?" "You certainly are." "Well, if any misguided maverick gets it into his fool head to stick _us_ up, you see what happens. Don’t you know th’ fellers outside have all th’ worst o’ th’ deal?" "They have not!" cried the brakeman. "They ’ve got all the best of it," asserted the conductor emphatically. "I ’ve been inside, and I know." "Best nothing!" cried Hopalong. "They are on th’ ground, watching a danger-line over a hundred yards long, full of windows and doors. Then they brace th’ door of a car full of people. While they climb up the steps they can’t see inside, an’ then they go an’ stick their heads in plain sight. It’s an even break who sees th’ other first, with th’ men inside training their guns on th’ glass in th’ door!" "Darned if you ain’t right!" enthusiastically cried the fat man. Hopalong laughed: "It all depends on th’ men inside. If they ain’t used to handling guns, ’course they won’t try to fight. We ’ve been in so many gun-festivals that we would n’t stop to think. If any coin-collector went an’ stuck his ugly face against th’ glass in that door he ’d turn a back-flip off ’n th’ platform before he knowed he was hit. Is there any chance for a stick-up to-day, d’y think?" "Can’t tell," replied the brakeman. "But this is about the time we have the section-camps’ pay on board," he said, going into the baggage end of the car. Simms leaned over close to Skinny. "It’s on this train now, and I ’m worried to death about it. I wish we were at Sandy Creek." "Don’t you go to worryin’ none, then," the puncher replied. "It ’ll get to Sandy Creek all right." Hopalong looked out of the window again and saw that there was a gradual change in the nature of the scenery, for the plain was becoming more broken each succeeding mile. Small woods occasionally hurtled past and banks of cuts flashed by like mottled yellow curtains, shutting off the view. Scrub timber stretched away on both sides, a billowy sea of green, and miniature valleys lay under the increasing number of trestles twisting and winding toward a high horizon. Hopalong yawned again: "Well, it’s none o’ our funeral. If they let us alone I don’t reckon we ’ll take a hand, not even to bust up this monotony."