up the steps onto the platform of the
Pullman--where the Pullman conductor got a grip on him just in time to
save him from spilling--and then the train pulled out: with the
Pullman conductor keeping him steady, and he throwing back good-bye
kisses to the Hen with both hands.

Hill said the Hen and Santa Fe kept quiet till the hind-lights showed
beyond the end of the deepo platform: and then the Hen grabbed Santa
Fe round the neck and just hung onto him--so full of laugh she was
limp--while they both roared. And Hill said he roared too. It was the
most comical bit of business, he said, he'd tumbled to in all his born
days!

It wasn't till the train got clean round the curve above the station,
Hill said, that Charley and the Hen could pull 'emselves together so
they could talk. Then the Hen let a-go of Santa Fe's neck and said
comical--speaking kind of precise and toney, like as if she was an
officer's wife sure enough: "You had better return to your study, dear
Uncle Charley, and finish writing that sermon you said we'd
interrupted you in that was about caring for the sheep as well as the
lambs!"

And then they went off together yelling, Hill said, over to the Forest
Queen.

III

HART'S NEPHEW'S HOLD-UP

Hill always said he counted on coming into Palomitas some day on one
of his mules bareback--leaving the other five dead or stampeded, and
the coach stalled somewhere--and bringing his hair only because
road-agents hadn't no use for hair and his wasn't easy to get anyhow,
he being so bald on top there wasn't nothing to ketch a-hold of if
anybody wanted to lift what little there was along the sides. Of
course that was just Hill's comical way of putting it; but back of his
fool talk there was hard sense--as there was apt to be back of Hill's
talk every time. He knew blame well what he was up against, Hill did;
and if he hadn't been more'n extra sandy he never could a-held down
his job.

Till Hill started his coach up, the only way to get across to Santa Fe
from Palomitas was to go a-horseback or walk. Both ways was unhealthy;
and the coach, being pretty near as liable to hold-ups, wasn't much
healthier. It had to go slow, the coach had--that was a powerful mean
road after you left Pojuaque and got in among the sandhills--and you
never was sure when some of them bunches of scrub-cedar wasn't going
to wake up and take to pumping lead into you. Only a nervy man, like
Hill was, ever could have took the contra