Bucky O'Connor: A Tale of the Unfenced Border by William MacLeod Raine (learn to read books .txt) 📗

office at his heels. They too had messages to send, but it was not until the train was already plunging into the night that the station agent read the yellow slips they had left and observed that both of them went to the same person.

“Lieutenant Bucky O'Connor, Douglas, Arizona,” was the address he read at the top of each. His comment serves to show the opinion generally in the sunburned territory respecting one of its citizens.

“You're wise guys, gents, both of yez. This is shure a case for the leftenant. It's send for Bucky quick when the band begins to play,” he grinned.

Sitting down, he gave the call for Tucson, preparatory to transmitting the conductor's message to the division superintendent. His fingers were just striking the first tap when a silken voice startled him.

“One moment, friend. No use being in a hurry.”

The agent looked up and nearly fell from his stool. He was gazing into the end of a revolver held carelessly in the hand of a masked man leaning indolently on the counter.

“Whe—where did you come from?” the operator gasped.

“Kaintucky, but I been here a right smart spell. Why? You takin' the census?” came the drawling answer.

“I didn't hear youse come in.”

“I didn't hear you come in, either,” the man behind the mask mocked. But even as he spoke his manner changed, and crisp menace rang in his voice. “Have you sent those messages yet?”

“Wha—what messages?”

“Those lying on your desk. I say, have you sent them?”

“Not yet.”

“Hand them over here.”

The operator passed them across the counter without demur.

“Now reach for the roof.”

Up shot the station agent's hands. The bandit glanced over the written sheets and commented aloud:

“Huh! One from the conductor and one from Mackenzie. I expected those. But this one from Collins is ce'tainly a surprise party. I didn't know he was on the train. Lucky for him I didn't, or mebbe I'd a-put his light for good and all. Friend, I reckon we'll suppress these messages. Military necessity, you understand.” And with that he lightly tore up the yellow sheets and tossed them away.

“The conductor will wire when he reaches Apache,” the operator suggested, not very boldly.

The outlaw rolled a cigarette deftly and borrowed a match. “He most surely will. But Apache is seventy miles from here. That gives us an extra hour and a half, and with us right now time is a heap more valuable than money. You may tell Bucky O'Connor when you see him that that extra hour and a half cinches our escape, and we weren't on the anxious seat any without it.”

It may have been true, as the train robber had just said, that time was more valuable to him then than money, but if so he must have held the latter of singularly little value. For he sat him down on the counter with his back against the wall and his legs stretched full length in front of him and glanced over the Tucson Star in leisurely fashion, while Pat's arms still projected roofward.

The operator, beginning to get over his natural fright, could not withhold a reluctant admiration of this man's aplomb. There was a certain pantherish lightness about the outlaw's movements, a trim grace of figure which yet suggested rippling muscles perfectly under control, and a quiet wariness of eye more potent than words at repressing insurgent impulses. Certainly if ever there was a cool customer and one perfectly sure of himself, this was he.

“Not a thing in the Star to-day,” Pat's visitor commented, as he flung it away with a yawn. “I'll let a thousand dollars of the express company's money that there will be something more interesting in it to-morrow.”

“That's right,” agreed the agent.

“But I won't be here to read it. My engagements take me south. I'll make a present to the great Lieutenant O'Connor of the information. We're headed south, tell him. And tell Mr. Sheriff Collins, too—happy to entertain him if he happens our way. If it would rest your hands any there's no law against putting them in your trousers pockets, my friend.”

From outside there came a short sharp whistle. The man on the counter answered it, and slipped at once to the floor. The door opened, to let in another masked form, but one how different from the first! Here was no confidence almost insolent in its nonchalance. The figure was slight and boyish, the manner deprecating, the brown eyes shy and shrinking He was so obviously a novice at outlawry that fear sat heavy upon his shoulders. When he spoke, almost in a whisper, his teeth chattered.

“All ready, sir.”

“The wires are cut?” demanded his leader crisply.

“Yes, sir.”

“On both sides?”

“On both sides.”

His chief relieved the operator of the revolver in his desk, broke it, emptied out the shells, and flung them through the window, then tossed the weapon back to its owner.

“You'll not shoot yourself by accident now,” he explained, and with that he had followed his companion into the night.

There came to the station agent the sound of galloping horses, growing fainter, until a heavy silence seemed to fill the night. He stole to the door and locked it, pulled down the window blinds, and then reloaded his revolver with feverish haste. This done, he sat down before his keys with the weapon close at hand and frantically called for Tucson over and over again. No answer came to him, nor from the other direction when he tried that. The young bandit had told the truth. His companions had cut the wires and so isolated from the world for the time the scene of the hold-up. The agent understood now why the leader of the outlaws had honored him with so much of his valuable time. He had stayed to hold back the telegrams until he knew the wires were cut.