ld 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 tail-board 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. 3 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
with such difficulty that I was almost tempted to give him
nitroglycerin, instead of strychnine, but he said he would be all
right as soon as he became accustomed to the rarefied air, quite
pooh-poohing my suggestion that he take No. 2 back to Trinidad;
and while I was still urging, the train started. Leaving him the
vials of digitalis and strychnine, therefore, I went back, and
dined _solus_ on my own car, indulging at the end in a cigar,
the smoke of which would keep turning into pictures of