"
When Mark Riley started out again in the afternoon for a second
excursion with paste and brush, "slapping up" small posters with a
celerity that bespoke extreme interest on his part, the astonished
populace feared that he was announcing a postponement of the
performance. Instead of that, however, he was heralding the fact that
the Hemisphere Trunk Line and Express Company would gladly pay ten
thousand dollars reward for the "apprehension and capture" of the men
who robbed one of its richest trains a few nights before, seizing as
booty over sixty thousand dollars in money, besides killing two
messengers in cold blood. The great train robbery occurred in the
western part of the State, hundreds of miles from Tinkletown, but nearly
all of its citizens had read accounts of the deed in the weekly paper
from Boggs City.
"I seen the item about it in Mr. Gregory's New York paper," said
Anderson Crow to the crowd at Lamson's.
"Gee whiz, it must 'a' been a peach!" said Isaac Porter, open-mouthed
and eager for details. Whereupon Marshal Crow related the story of the
crime which stupefied the world on the morning of July 31st. The express
had been held up in an isolated spot by a half-dozen masked men. A safe
had been shattered and the contents confiscated, the perpetrators
vanishing as completely as if aided by Satan himself.
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