They had seen our lights and were prepared to stop us. The men stood up with their weapons in their hands, an array of indiscriminate firearms. Our motor did not entirely stop. We slowed down, running into the crowd of men. Mooney got on his feet, shouting: “We have ’em surrounded in the express car. Get there as fast as you can; we’ve got to go into the town for gasoline.... Don’t stand here. Hurry!” To the posse the explanation was complete. We were a party of the train crew; one could clearly see that. What Mooney said coincided with the report that had come in to them. We did not wait for these men to reflect about it. We ran on past, Mooney shouting to them to make haste; that there was a man in the road with a lantern to stop them. “Let your cars out,” he cried, “for God’s sake.” And we went on. It was the only adventure on the way. The road skirted the town, and once past it Mooney considered the peril ended. We took off the trainmen’s uniforms and put them into the sack. The fog increased, it seemed to me, but its very density covered the close of our adventure. We ran along the street to the garage from which we had borrowed the car. White handled it with skill. He entered the street with a spurt of speed, then he cut off the engine and we glided almost noiselessly along to the very door of the garage. We got down. White unlocked the door and we pushed the car in; then he locked it again carefully. I don’t think he had a key; I think he manipulated that lock with a bent nail. But at any rate we walked away, having restored the car to its house, Mooney with the loot sack on his shoulder. It was Saturday night and the circus remained over until Sunday in the meadow beyond the town. Only the top of the great tent stood now above the sheet of fog as we set out across the field toward it. CHAPTER III The Bloodhounds I think the third holdup undertaken by these men was the most remarkable that ever occurred in all the history of train robberies. I do not mean that the result of it was so remarkable or that it was attended by peculiar adventures. But the cool nerve exhibited by Mooney—his deliberate assumption of enormous risk, and his plan to draw the attention of the authorities from his confederate—marks the affair as without equal. The plan, too, to get away with what was taken in the robbery was wholly original. In all record of criminal methods I have never known this plan to be adopted by anybody else. I think it was worked out by Mooney to meet a situation which he knew now existed. The two train robberies which we had undertaken had aroused the country. The authorities could be expected to make every effort to run down and capture the highwayman who should undertake a repetition of these affairs. Mooney knew this and he worked out a plan to meet it. The circus was loaded and moving when I first learned of this new adventure.