e.
Plainer than words his eyes asked a question, and hers answered it.

The sheriff stopped him with a smiling query: "Hit hard, major?"

Mackenzie frowned. "The scoundrels took thirty thousand from the express
car, I understand. Twenty thousand of it belonged to our company. I was
expecting to pay off the men next Tuesday."

"Hope we'll be able to run them down for you," returned Collins
cheerfully. "I suppose you lay it to Wolf Leroy's gang?"

"Of course. The work was too well done to leave any doubt of that." The
major resumed his seat behind Miss Wainwright.

To that young woman the sheriff repeated his unanswered question in the
form of a statement. "I'm waiting to learn that better reason, ma'am."

She was possessed of that spice of effrontery more to be desired than
beauty. "Shall we say that you had no wish to injure your friends?"

"My friends?"

Her untender eyes mocked his astonishment. "Do I choose the wrong word?"
she asked, with an audacity of a courage that delighted him. "Perhaps
they are not your friends--these train robbers? Perhaps they are mere
casual acquaintances?"

His bold eyes studied with a new interest her superb, confident
youth--the rolling waves of splendid Titian hair, the lovely, subtle
eyes with the depths of shadowy pools in them, the alluring lines of
long and supple loveliness. Certainly here was no sweet, ingenuous youth
all prone to blushes, but the complex heir of that world-old wisdom the
weaker sex has shaped to serve as a weapon against the strength that
must be met with the wit of Mother Eve.

"You ce'tainly have a right vivid imagination, ma'am," he said dryly.

"You are quite sure you have never seen them before?" her velvet voice
asked.

He laughed. "Well, no--I can't say I am."

"Aren't you quite sure you have seen them?"

Her eyes rested on him very steadily.

"You're smart as a whip, Miss Wainwright. I take off my hat to a young
lady so clever. I guess you're right. About the identity of one of those
masked gentlemen I'm pretty well satisfied."

She drew a long breath. "I thought so."

"Yes," he went on evenly, "I once earmarked him so that I'd know him
again in case we met."

"I beg pardon. You--what?"

"Earmarked him. Figure of speech, ma'am. You may not have observed that
the curly-headed person behind the guns was shy the forefinger of
his right hand. We had a little difficulty once when he was resisting
arrest, and it just happened that my gun