“Lord Ralles, I joked a little the other morning about the way you thought road agents ought to be treated.  You have turned the joke very neatly and pluckily, and I want to apologize for myself and thank you for the railroad.”

“Neither is necessary,” he retorted airily, pretending not to see my hand.

I never claimed to have a good temper, and it was all I could do to hold myself in.  I turned to Miss Cullen to wish her a pleasant trip, and the thought that this might be our last meeting made me forget even Lord Ralles.

“I hope it isn’t good-bye, but only au revoir,” she said.  “Whether or no, you must let us see you some time in Chicago, so that I may show you how grateful I am for all the pleasure you have added to our trip.”  Then, as I stepped down off my platform, she leaned over the rail of 218, and added, in a low voice, “I thought you were just as brave as the rest, Mr. Gordon, and now I think you are braver.”

I turned impulsively, and said, “You would think so, Miss Cullen, if you knew the sacrifice I am making.”  Then, without looking at her, I gave the signal, the bell rang, and No. 3 pulled off.  The last thing I saw was a handkerchief waving off the platform of 218.

When the train dropped out of sight over a grade, I swallowed the lump in my throat and went to the telegraph instrument.  I wired Coolidge to give the alarm to Fort Wingate, Fort Apache, Fort Thomas, Fort Grant, Fort Bayard, and Fort Whipple, though I thought the precaution a mere waste of energy.  Then I sent the brakeman up to connect the cut wire.

“Two of the bullets struck up here, Mr. Gordon,” the man called from the top of the pole.

“Surely not!” I exclaimed.

“Yes, sir,” he responded.  “The bullet-holes are brand-new.”

I took in the lay of the land, the embers of the fire showing me how the train had lain.  “I don’t wonder nobody was hit,” I exclaimed, “if that’s a sample of their shooting.  Some one was a worse rattled man than I ever expect to be.  Dig the bullets out, Douglas, so that we can have a look at them.”

He brought them down in a minute.  They proved to be Winchesters, as I had expected, for they were on the side from which the robbers must have fired.

“That chap must have been full of Arizona tangle-foot, to have fired as wild as he did,” I ejaculated, and walked over to where the mail-car had stood, to see just how bad the shooting was.  When I got there and faced about, it was really impossible to believe any man could have done so badly, for raising my own Winchester to the pole put it twenty degrees out of range and nearly forty degrees in the air.  Yet there were the cartridge-shells on the ground, to show that I was in the place from which the shots had been fired.

While I was still cogitating over this, the special train I had ordered out from Flagstaff came in sight, and in a few moments was stopped where I was.  It consisted of a string of three flats and a box car, and brought the sheriff, a dozen cowboys whom he had sworn in as deputies, and their horses.  I was hopeful that with these fellows’ greater skill in such matters they could find what I had not, but after a thorough examination of the ground within a mile of the robbery they were as much at fault as I had been.