It went without saying that Manager Boothby would present "As You Like It" with an "unrivalled cast." He had "an all-star production," direct from "the leading theatres of the universe." 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.