Criminals -- Fiction; Social problems -- Fiction; United States -- Social conditions -- 1865-1918 -- Fiction
At evening they went into the woods and built a fire. There were
discouragements as to the fire; the wood was wet, but finally they
achieved a blaze, and Dillon went into the village after food. When he
returned the fire was going well, the men had dried their clothes, and
their habitual spirits had returned. In the water of a creek Dillon
washed the can he had found, and made tea; they cooked bacon on pointed
sticks, broke the bread and cheese, and ate their supper. Then, in the
comfort that came of dry clothes and warmth and the first meal they had
eaten that day, they sat about, rolled cigarettes, and waited for the
night. Then darkness fell, Dillon made them put out the fire, and they
tramped across the fields to the railroad.
"We’ll wait here for the John O’Brien," said Dillon, when they came to
the water-tank. "We must get the jug to-night--that’ll give us all day
to-morrow for the get-away."
They waited then, and waited, while the summer night deepened to
silence; once, the headlight of an engine sent its long light streaming
down the track; they made ready; the train came swaying toward them.
"Hell!" exclaimed Mandell, in the disappointment that was common to all
of them. "It’s a rattler!" And the lighted windows of a
passenger-train swept by.
They waited and waited, and no freight-train came. At midnight, when
they were all stiff and cold, Dillon ordered them into the village.
They were glad enough to go. In the one business street of the town
they found a building in which a light gleamed. They glanced through a
window; it was the post-office. Then Dillon changed his plan in that
ease with which he could change any plan, and forgot the little bank at
Cedarville. He placed Squeak at the rear of the building, Mandell in
the front.
"Come on, Dutch," he said.
He took Archie with him because he was not so sure of him as he was of
the two other men, though Archie felt that he had been honored above
them. He followed Dillon into the deep shadows that lay between the
post-office and the building next door. He kept close behind Dillon,
and watched with excitement while Dillon’s tall form bent before one of
the windows. Dillon was groping; presently he stood upright, his back
bowed, he strained and grunted and swore, then the screws gave, and
Dillon wrenched the little iron bars from the windows.
"Come on," he said.
He was crawling through the window; Archie followed.
Inside, Dillon stood upright, holding Archie behind him, and peered
about in the dim light from the oil lamp that burned before a tin
reflector on the wall. The safe was in the light. Dillon looked back,
made a mental note of the window’s location, and put out the lamp. Then
he lighted a candle and knelt before the safe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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