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 self up on his long legs, which were singularly straight for a saddle-bred man.

"Don't you git tangled up and not come back with that ticket," Pete Benson admonished him. "We'd be in a one-hell of a fix if you didn't come back."

Wallace Ramsey and Joe Lobdell added their solemn asseveration that they sure would be in a one-hell of a fix if the boss got tangled up in the crowd on Union Avenue and lost his points of direction. None of them considered the little old handbag under the boss' seat, kicked around carelessly, impatiently sometimes, when it got persistently in somebody's way, whiclr contained thirty-five thousand and odd dollars in currency, the net proceeds of the shipment. It was altogether inconsiderable to them; it wasn't their money. They'd have piled off the train at the first stop and walked back to Kansas City if the boss had lost his points in the whirl of humanity and missed the train with that long blue ticket, carrying the old handbag and all with them, red-necked and resentful of the imposition.

"Don't you worry—I'll be back on the dot," Sid assured them.

"I wouldn't resk it for no old booze-skimmin' muskeeter like Waco," Wallace protested. "Let him hoof it, dang him."

No chance of the boss straying off; he scarcely let go the handrail when he gingerly stepped down in his tight new boots with three-inch heels. He stood there so close to the step that one hop would have landed him safely aboard at the first turning of a wheel, combing the confusing stream of people which ran in and out among the