All that day we lay at Flagstaff, and after a good sleep, as there was no use keeping the party cooped up in their car, I drummed up some ponies and took the Cullens and Ackland over to the Indian cliff-dwellings.  I don’t think Lord Ralles gained anything by staying behind in a sulk, for it was a very jolly ride, or at least that was what it was to me.  I had of course to tell them all how I had settled on them as the criminals, and a general history of my doings.  To hear Miss Cullen talk, one would have inferred I was the greatest of living detectives.

“The mistake we made,” she asserted, “was not securing Mr. Gordon’s help to begin with, for then we should never have needed to hold the train up, or if we had we should never have been discovered.”

What was more to me than this ill-deserved admiration were two things she said on the way back, when we two had paired off and were a bit behind the rest.

“The sandwiches and the whiskey were very good,” she told me, “and I’m so grateful for the trouble you took.”

“It was a pleasure,” I said.

“And, Mr. Gordon,” she continued, and then hesitated for a moment—­“my—­Frederic told me that you—­you said you honored me for—?”

“I do,” I exclaimed energetically, as she paused and colored.

“Do you really?” she cried.  “I thought Fred was only trying to make me less unhappy by saying that you did.”

“I said it, and I meant it,” I told her.

“I have been so miserable over that lie,” she went on; “but I thought if I let you have the letters it would ruin papa.  I really wouldn’t mind poverty myself, Mr. Gordon, but he takes such pride in success that I couldn’t be the one to do it.  And then, after you told me that train-robbers were hung, I had to lie to save them.  I ought to have known you would help us.”

I thought this a pretty good time to make a real apology for my conduct on the trail, as well as to tell her how sorry I was at not having been able to repack her bag better.  She accepted my apology very sweetly, and assured me her belongings had been put away so neatly that she had wondered who did it.  I knew she only said this out of kindness, and told her so, telling also of my struggles over that pink-beribboned and belaced affair, in a way which made her laugh.  I had thought it was a ball gown, and wondered at her taking it to the Canon; but she explained that it was what she called a “throw”—­which I told her accounted for the throes I had gone through over it.  It made me open my eyes, thinking that anything so pretty could be used for the same purposes for which I use my crash bath-gown, and while my eyes were open I saw the folly of thinking that a girl who wore such things would, or in fact could, ever get along on my salary.  In that way the incident was a good lesson for me, for it made me feel that, even if there had been no Lord Ralles, I still should have had no chance.