or 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 found 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 shou