The Big Rock, where the mail car was cut off the Imperial Limited, now

*

By

DEPUTY COMMISSIONER
CECI, CIEANRIK

(RETIRED )

*

T WAS 11:15 on the night of May
8, 1906, and the Canadian Paci-
fic Railway's westbound Imperial

Limited was a little ahead of time.
Engineer Joe Callin had just checked
his watch, and as he hunched in the
cab, his gloved hand on the throttle,
he glanced occasionally out the
window at the velvet blackness which
cloaked the range land between Ducks
and Furrer Creek, a dozen miles from
Kamloops, British Columbia.

The steady rythmic drumming in
the stack throbbed and echoed across
the sage brush, as the swaying steel
monster with its string of heavy
coaches bored through the moonless
night.

Ahead the twin lines of polished
steel threw back the reflection of the
headlight’s stabbing beam.

But for some minutes now, Joe

TWENTY-FOURTH EDITION

known as Bill Miner Rock.

HOTTER THAN A
‘SHERIFF'S PISTOL

Cold Nerve and Icy Resolve made Bill Miner the
Dean of Road Agents in the Passing of the Old
West. At 17 he pulled off a $75,000 stage robbery

and made up his mind that “This Was the Life”
—And he never turned back. Hts record of stage
and train robberies spanned 50 years.

Callin had a feeling of uneasiness,
a feeling that he was being watched.

He shot a glance at his fireman,
Jack Ratcliffe. But the latter's eyes
were on his gauges. Suddenly, Callin
gave a start. Something had tapped
him on the shoulder. The something
was a man’s hand!

Whirling with a smothered excla-
mation, the engineer found himself
looking into the steady unflinching
eyes of a short, lightly built man, the
bottom half of his face masked with
a dirty handkerchief. In his right
hand he gripped a .45 automatic, the
muzzle level with Callin’s stomach.
Beside him stood a masked com-
panion, holding a gun on the fire-
man’s back.

In a lightning flash of deduction,
Callin tried to figure how the pair
got into the cab, They must have

come across the roof of the mail car
and dropped down on the tender, he
swiftly reasoned.

“What is this!” he exploded, re-
covering from his surprise.

“It’s a Hold-Up”

“It’s a hold-up,” said the man with
the .45 and the penetrating stare.
Even though his voice came from be-
hind the folds of a handkerchief,
it carried an air of quiet finality.

The two masked men quickly
slipped their hands over Callin and

Ratcliffe to see if they had any
weapons.
“What do you want us to do?”

asked Callin grimly.

“T’ll tell you in a minute what to
do,” was the quiet reply.

A mile or two flew by. Then Callin
felt the touch on his shoulder.

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