both directions, the train ran alongside the platform at Barker's; and;
Watkins, inperturbable as usual, met Sinclair, and gave him his letters.

"Perry gang wiped out, I hear, Major," said he "Good thing for the
country. That's a lesson the 'toughs' in these parts won't forget for a
long time. Plucky girl that give 'em away, wasn't she. Hope she's all
right."

"She is all right," said Sinclair, with a smile.

"Glad of that. By-the-way, that father of her'n passed in his checks
to-night. He'd got one warning from the Vigilantes, and yesterday they
found out he was in with this gang, and they was a-going for him; but
when the telegram come, he put a pistol to his head and saved them all
trouble. 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: