Good riddance to everybody, I say. The sheriff's here now, and
is going east on the next train to get them fellows. He's got a big
posse together, and I wouldn't wonder if they was hard to hold in, after
the 'boys in blue' is gone."
In a few minutes the train was off, with its living freight--the just
and the unjust, the reformed and the rescued, the happy and the anxious.
With many of the passengers the episode of the night was already a thing
of the past. Sinclair sat by the side of his wife, to whose cheeks the
color had all come back; and Sally Johnson lay in her berth, faint
still, but able to give an occasional smile to Foster. In the station on
the Missouri the reporters were gathered about the happy superintendent,
smoking his cigars, and filling their note-books with items. In Denver,
their brethren would gladly have done the same, but Watkins failed to
gratify them. He was a man of few words. When the train had gone, and a
friend remarked:
"Hope they'll get through all right, now," he simply said:
"Yes, likely. Two shots don't 'most always go in the same hole." Then he
went to the telegraph instrument. In a few minutes he could have told a
story as wild as a Norse _saga_, but what he said, when Denver had
responded, was only--
_"No. 17, fifty-five minutes late."_
THE MISFORTUNES OF BRO' THOMAS WHEATLEY.
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