would have to stay overnight there, but she
could go on home. He bought her ticket and
put her on the train. She saw him slip a
twenty-dollar bill into her handbag with her
ticket. That bill, she said, should have
aroused her suspicions at once -- but did
not.

The trains are never called at little junction
towns; everybody knows when they come in.
Mr. Cutter showed his wife's ticket to the
conductor, and settled her in her seat before
the train moved off. It was not until nearly
nightfall that she discovered she was on the
express bound for Kansas City, that her ticket
was made out to that point, and that Cutter
must have planned it so. The conductor told
her the Black Hawk train was due at Way-
more twelve minutes after the Kansas City
train left. She saw at once that her husband
had played this trick in order to get back to
Black Hawk without her. She had no choice
but to go on to Kansas City and take the first
fast train for home.

Cutter could have got home a day earlier
than his wife by any one of a dozen simpler
devices; he could have left her in the Omaha
hotel, and said he was going on to Chicago for

[[287]]

p286 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p287w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p288

v?