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very morning after the night the U.S. commissioner had raised the reward ante on him from three thousand to five thousand dollars Dave Coyle had begged a handout breakfast from the commissioner’s cook. While the commissioner ate in the dining room with his wife Dave Coyle had eaten at the kitchen table. Finished, he had thanked the cook, walked into the dining room and thanked the commissioner and his wife, and had gone out the front door.
    It was stories like that worried a man and made him jumpy. The hours from one till three were the tough ones. If he could weather them, Sheriff Beal thought, he would be safe, for Sholto would be on the train then. And nothing short of dynamiting a bridge would keep Sholto from reaching Santa Fe.
    At two-thirty he sent a man down to see if the train was on time and with orders that it wasn’t to leave until his party had boarded it. At ten minutes to three McFee, Carol, and Maitland came down the stairs, paid their bill in silence, and walked out. At five minutes to three, when he heard the train whistle, Beal sent word up to Wallace and Sholto.
    The best plan was, he reflected, to put Sholto in the middle of the whole mob of men and walk down to the station, keeping an eye on second-story windows. They left the hotel about three and started the block’s walk down to the tracks, and every man there had a gun in his hand, and every second-story window was suspect.
    The crowd on the station platform was cleared off ahead of time so that the platform was empty except for the freight agent and his helper and the baggage truck. One truck, the contents of which were to be loaded, stood off to one side, while the other truck was being loaded at the open door of the baggage car. Beal glanced cursorily at the car, then stationed his men at six-foot intervals along the station platform, facing the crowd of townspeople gaping at the whole business. The unloading was finished, and the loading began.
    The coffin was the biggest piece of freight on the truck. The black cross burned into its top with a hot iron and the shape of it told the curious what it was, although there were few curious about it now. The crowd was nervous, and there was no talk. If the break came it would come now. The coffin was taken in and placed on the floor in a corner of the seventh car. The rest of the freight and mail was loaded swiftly, and then Sholto, who had been standing in a group inside the warehouse, was hustled out and into the car. Twenty picked men surrounded him and followed him into the baggage car. Sheriff Beal stepped in last. He waved to the train crew, smiled at the crowd outside, and closed the door. The train pulled out, and back in the coach Carol McFee drew the first easy breath in three hours.
    Inside the baggage car Beal sat down on the nearest piece of freight and mopped his face with a handkerchief. Nobody would ever know what a relief it was to get that door closed and the train moving. He said to Tate Wallace, “Are those doors locked?”
    Tate grinned. “Both the end doors and the side doors. You ain’t nervous, are you, Beal?”
    â€œI am,” Beal said. “I’ll be nervous until we get over the grade and out of Yellow Jacket County.”
    Wallace sneered. “Dave Coyle may take chances, but not them kind of chances. The only way he could stop us now is by blowin’ up the train.”
    â€œHe won’t do that,” Ernie See said dryly. “McFee’s on the train.”
    Beal shook his head doubtfully and looked at Sholto, who was sitting with his back to the mail racks, where the clerks were sorting out the mail. The other men were scattered in the back end of the car, their rifles leaned against the wall. If Beal was scared they were not, for they were talking and joking among themselves, conversing with the two deputy marshals.
    Beal said to Sholto, “You never come closer to havin’ a bullet in your back.”
    Sholto’s