I suppose.  Every hour convinced me that the two understood each other, not merely from the little asides and confidences they kept exchanging, but even more so from the way Miss Cullen would take his lordship down occasionally.  Yet, like a fool, the more I saw to confirm my first diagnosis, the more I found myself dwelling on the dimples at the corners of Miss Cullen’s mouth, the bewitching uplift of her upper lip, the runaway curls about her neck, and the curves and color 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 should have seen!