"And now look at this one hundred and ninety-eight pounds of egotism sitting here smiling on the likeness of the lady who has just dropped bug-dust in his coffee. It's positively funny."
Such were the half-whispered musings of the would-be robber.
He actually grew drowsy waiting for Cassidy to go to sleep. The car lurched on a sharp curve, dislodging some boxes. Buck felt a strange, tingling sensation in his fingers and toes. Presently he nodded.
Cassidy sat gazing on the pictured face that had hovered over him in all his dreams for months, and as he gazed, seemed to feel her living presence. He rose as if to greet her, but kept his eyes upon the picture.
Suddenly realizing that something was wrong in his end of the car, Buck stood up, gripping the top of the piano-box. The scream of the engine startled him. The car crashed over the switch-frog at Curecanti, and Curecanti's Needle stabbed the starry vault above. The car swayed strangely and the lights grew dim.
Suddenly the awful truth flashed through his bewildered brain.
"O-o-o-oh, the wench!" he hissed, pulling his guns.
Cassidy, absorbed in the photo, heard a door slam; and it came to him instantly that Nora had boarded the train at Gunnison, and that some one was showing her over to the head end. As he turned to meet her, he saw Buck staggering toward him, holding a murderous gun in each hand. Instantly he reached for his revolver, but a double flash from the guns of the enemy blinded him and put out the bracket-lamps. As the messenger sprang forward to find his foe, the desperado lunged against him. Cassidy grabbed him, lifted him bodily, and smashed him to the floor of the car; but with the amazing tenacity and wonderful agility of the trained gun-fighter, Buck managed to fire as he fell. The big bullet grazed the top of Cassidy's head, and he fell unconscious across the half-dead desperado.
Buck felt about for his gun, which had fallen from his hand; but already the "bug-dust" was getting in its work. Sighing heavily, he joined the messenger in a quiet sleep.
At Cimarron they broke the car open, revived the sleepers, restored the outlaw to the Ohio State Prison, from which he had escaped, and the messenger to Nora O'Neal.