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Show Rnmriiff,TT r b us if auuif i ah " HOLD-UP OF FICTION AND HOLD-UP OF FACT "There's nothing differs more from real west-rn west-rn life than the tales of real western life, as told jy writers who claim to have taken part and, In-Iced, In-Iced, played the star role In most of the ad ventres ven-tres they so carefully describe, with an advertised adver-tised view to correct details." said an old fron-Jcrsman fron-Jcrsman of the seventies. "And of all the tales jf western life there's none that differs ao widely mm Ihe real thing as the tale of the stage-coach hold up. "The breathless reader tees vividly the out aws lying in wait along the edge of the 'mesa' bluff' Is U.o common a word to use while the .oach tolls up from the 'arroyo' so Is 'gulch' the leader, well masked in his 'poncho' Ukew Ise la 'cloak' carefully surveying the doomed vehicle. Then cornea the attack, the killing of the driver, the wild pursuit, the slaying of the leader of the band by the brave young mining engineer, wbo baa thrown himself In front of the beautiful millionaires daughter Just in time to save her life and get a bullet In his arm that she nurses through to marriage, the repulse of the outlaws, etc., all plentifully garulsbed with mongrel Mexican Mexi-can terms that are never hearl except on tha melodrama atage or seen outside the ta! aforesaid. afore-said. "Now In real life there Is aelJom any shooing IS a stagecoach robbery. One tbtng k certain, the driver never gets shot The driver la fteeer even -hot at. for ha ery sensibly puts up Ma hands, knowing bow suicidal would be any at-lt at-lt nipt' at rcMMance asinst trmed outlaws, and he sitting up there aa pretty a target as one ever saw In a shooting gallery. Furthermore, the last man they want to shoot is the driver, for that would mean a runaway team of all things what the robbers don't want; they've got enough to keep them busy, as It is. Perhaps I cannot Illustrate Illus-trate better what occurs at a real stage robloery than by giving you my experience when I waa driving stage through southern Idaho In the early eight It a. "I waa driving from CTionhone to l!fde City, about dusk one even!": waa going down the canon road that leads from Camas prairie to the headwaters of the payi ttr- not a settler for miles around. There was only ' lie passenger aboard, a young woman from New England. "Now, while the country she haj come from and that she waa going to were civilized all right, the strip In southern Idaho we were then trav , eling over waa pretty wild. Hut I didn't aay a word to her about It for fear of frightening the little thing. "She waa sitting up on the box with me and admiring tha sunset tints tn the western sky when, as we swung around a bend In the canon, a man Mandlng tn the middle of tha road about fifty feet ahead, wlfi a Wlnrhenrer rifle lying to the hollow of Lis arm. flung up Ms hand to ma. He waa the Brat human being we had aaea since left Bhoehona at daybreak that morning though that wasn't tha reaeoa I threw my leaden back OA their haunches, flung on the brake aad eaie to a sadden stop. 1 |