was about the
same thing, I suppose. Every hour convinced me that the two understood
each other, not merely from the little asides and confidences they
kept exchanging, but even more so from the way Miss Cullen would take
his lordship down occasionally. Yet, like a fool, the more I saw to
confirm my first diagnosis, the more I found myself dwelling on the
dimples at the corners of Miss Cullen's mouth, the bewitching uplift
of her upper lip, the runaway curls about her neck, and the curves and
color of her cheeks.

Half a day served to see everything in Santa Fe worth looking at, but
Mr. Cullen decided to spend there the time they had to wait for his
other son to join the party. To pass the hours, I hunted up some
ponies, and we spent three days in long rides up the old Santa Fe
trail and to the outlying mountains. Only one incident was other than
pleasant, and that was my fault. As we were riding back to our cars
on the second afternoon, we had to cross the branch road-bed, where a
gang happened to be at work tamping the ties.

"Since you're interested in road agents, Miss Cullen," I said, "you
may like to see one. That fellow standing in the ditch is Jack Drute,
who was concerned in the D.& R.G. hold-up three years ago."

Miss Cullen looked where I pointed, and seeing a man with a gun, gave
a startled jump, and pulled up her pony, evidently supposing that
we were about to be attacked. "Sha'n't we run?" she began, but then
checked herself, as she took in the facts of the drab clothes of the
gang and the two armed men in uniform. "They are convicts?" she asked,
and when I nodded, she said, "Poor things!" After a pause, she asked,
"How long is he in prison for?"

"Twenty years," I told her."

"How harsh that seems!" she said. "How cruel we are to people for a
few moments' wrong-doing, which the circumstances may almost have
justified!" She checked her pony as we came opposite Drute, and said,
"Can you use money?"

"Can I, lyedy?" said the fellow, leering in an attempt to look
amiable. "Wish I had the chance to try."

The guard interrupted by telling her it wasn't permitted to speak to
the convicts while out of bounds, and so we had to ride on. All Miss
Cullen was able to do was to throw him a little bunch of flowers she
had gathered in the mountains. It was literally casting pearls before
swine, for the fellow did not seem particularly pleased, and when,
late that night, I walked down there with a lantern I foun