When we came up to the cart I unfolded the letter and read: TO PROP. BANK OF TRACK'S END AND OTHER CITIZENS AND FOLKS: The Undersined being in need of a little Reddy Munny regrets that they have to ask you for $5,000. Leave it behind the bord nailed to the door of Bill Mountain's shack too mile northwest and there wunt be no trubble. If we don't get munny to buy fuel with we shall have to burn your town to keep warm. Maybe it will burn better now than it did last fall. So being peecibel ourselves, and knowing _how very peecibel_ you all are, it will be more plesent all around if you come down with the cash. No objextions to small bills. We know _how few there are of you_ but we don't think we have asked for too much. Yours Respecfully, D. PIKE, and numrous Frends. P.X. Thow somewhat short on reddy funs, We still no how to use our guns. This is poetry but we mean bizness. CHAPTER IV We prepare to fight the Robbers and I make a little Trip out to Bill Mountain's House: after I come back I show what a great Fool I can be. The next minute I was back in the depot reading this letter to the others. When I had finished they all looked pretty blank. At last Jim Stackhouse said: "Well, I'd like to know what we're going to do about it?" Tom Carr laughed. "If they come it will be the duty of the street commissioner to remove 'em for obstructing the car lines," he said. I don't think Andrew understood this joke, though the rest of us laughed, partly, I guess, to keep up our courage. "Well," went on Carr, "there's one thing sure--we can't send them five thousand dollars even if we wanted to; and we don't want to very much. I don't believe there is a hundred dollars in the whole town outside of Clerkinwell's safe." "What do you suppose there is in that?" asked Baker. "There might be a good deal and there might not be so much," said Carr. "I heard that he saved $20,000 out of the failure of his business back east and brought it out here to start new with. He certainly didn't take any of it away with him, nor use much of it here. He might have sent it back some time ago, but it hasn't gone through the express office if he did." "Nor it hasn't gone through the post-office," said Frank Valentine. "I guess it's in the safe yet, most of it." "Very likely," answered Carr. "But even if it is I don't believe Pike and those fellows would know enough to get it out unless they had all day to work at it; and what would we be doing all that time?" "Shooting," said Jim Stackhouse; but I thought he said it as if he would rather be doing anything else. I didn't know so much about men then as I do now, but I could see that Tom Carr was the only man in the lot that could be depended on in case of trouble. "Well, how are we fixed for things to shoot with?" went on Carr.