d the
flowers lying in the ditch. The experience seemed to sadden and
distress Miss Cullen very much for the rest of the afternoon, and I
kicked myself for having called her attention to the brute, and could
have knocked him down for the way he had looked at her. It is curious
that I felt thankful at the time that Drute was not holding up a train
Miss Cullen was on. It is always the unexpected that happens. If I
could have looked into the future, what a strange variation on this
thought I should have seen!

The three days went all too quickly, thanks to Miss Cullen, and by the
end of that time I began to understand what love really meant to a
chap, and how men could come to kill each other for it. For a fairly
sensible, hard-headed fellow it was pretty quick work, I acknowledge;
but let any man have seven years of Western life without seeing a
woman worth speaking of, and then meet Miss Cullen, and if he didn't
do as I did, I wouldn't trust him on the tailboard of a locomotive,
for I should put him down as defective both in eyesight and in
intellect.

CHAPTER II

THE HOLDING-UP OF OVERLAND NO. 3

On the third day a despatch came from Frederic Cullen telling his
father he would join us at Lamy on No. 8 that evening. I at once
ordered 97 and 218 coupled to the connecting train, and in an hour we
were back on the main line. While waiting for the overland to arrive,
Mr. Cullen asked me to do something which, as it later proved to have
considerable bearing on the events of that night, is worth mentioning,
trivial as it seems. When I had first joined the party, I had given
orders for 97 to be kicked in between the main string and their
special, so as not to deprive the occupants of 218 of the view from
their observation saloon and balcony platform. Mr. Cullen came to me
now and asked me to reverse the arrangement and make my car the tail
end. I was giving orders for the splitting and kicking in when No. 3
arrived, and thus did not see the greeting of Frederic Cullen and his
family. When I joined them, his father told me that the high altitude
had knocked his son up so, that he had to be helped from the ordinary
sleeper to the special and had gone to bed immediately. Out West we
have to know something of medicine, and my car had its chest of drugs:
so I took some tablets and went into his state-room. Frederic was like
his brother in appearance, though not in manner, having a quick, alert
way. He was breathing wit