Page:Cy Warman--The express messenger and other tales of the rail.djvu/179

Rh tough, nodding down the road where a lone horseman was going away with the sunset on his back.

"Yes."

"Well, he's goin' out to his place in the country, goes every Sat day night an' comes back Monday; hold 'im up."

Doc knew the man, as he knew nearly every man in the place, by the description given him at Chicago, and by the middle of the following week this wealthy citizen had been notified from headquarters that he would be held up on the next Saturday night. Doc was at his post, and as the lone horseman came down the road, the highwayman stepped out from the shadows of a jack oak and covered his man.

That night the gang drank up the best part of twenty-eight dollars and fifty cents, and voted Doc a dead game "toucher."

The verdancy of the gang he had to deal with made Doc's work comparatively easy. He invariably drank gin and water, and by a simple trick that a child ought to have detected—the trick of drinking the water and leaving the gin—he always kept sober.