Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3

sh composition, let alone other studies, had it not been for the fact that I played half-back on the team, and so the professors marked me away up above where

ement concerning an affair over which there appears to be much confusion. I have heard in the last five years not less than twenty renderings of what is commonly called "the great K.& A. train robbery,"-some so twisted and distorted that but for the intermediate versions I should never have recognized them as attempts to narrate the series of events in which I played a somewhat prominent part. I have read or been told that, unassisted, the pseudo-hero captured a dozen desperadoes; that he was one of the road agents himself; that he was saved from

sion superintendent, and after I had stuck to that for a time I was appointed superintendent of the Kansas & Arizona Railroad, a line extending from Trinidad in Kansas to The Needles in Arizona, tapping the Missouri Western System at the first place, and the Great Southern at the other. With both lines we had important traffic agreements, as well as the closest relations, which sometimes were a little

charter had to be held in Ash Fork, Arizona. A second paragraph told me that Mr. Cullen's family accompanied him, and that they all wished to visit the Grand Ca?on of the Colorado on their way. Finally the president wrote that the party travelled

for that purpose. His party were about to sit down to breakfast, and he asked me to join them: so we passed into the dining-room at the forward end of the car, where I was introduced to "My son," "Lord Ralles," and "Captain Ackland." The son was a junior copy of his father, tall and fine-looking, but, in place of the frank and easy manner of his sire, he was so very English

"Here's the truant," and, turning, I faced a lady who had just entered. Mr. Cullen said, "Madge, let me introduce Mr. Gordon to you." My bow was made to a girl of about twenty, with light brown hair, the bluest of eyes, a fres

three. Before the meal was over I came to the conclusion that Lord Ralles was in love with Miss Cullen, for he kept making low asides to her; and from the fact that she all

Miss Cullen, like most Easterners, seemed to take a great i

she said, "and that I hide every night. So I really

r; "and if we were, you probably wouldn't even know th

get our money and our

s, and then, when the time came, steal forward, secure the express agent and postal clerk, climb over the tender, and compel the runner to stop the train at some lonely spot on the road. She made me tell her all the details of such robberies as I knew about, and, though I had never been concerned in any, I was able to describe several, which, as they were monotonously alike, I

uble express with us, and do you think we'd sit still

tled, I confess, by his speech, "but

tance impossible?" d

surprises. One side is prepared before the other side knows there is danger. Wi

ll, whatever the odds,"

Englishm

ld feel about you as the runner of a locomotive did when the old lady asked him if it was'nt very painf

ge any better than I did, for she said-you take Lord Ralles and Captain

yet, Miss Cullen," I replied, "and

t?" she

preferred to devote their attentions to other routes. "If we were boarded, Miss Cullen," I said, "your jewelry would be as safe as it is in Chicago, for the robbers woul

"We could have the fun of the adventure, and yet not

Ralles a chance to show us how to handle those gentry; but it's not to be

ad never met a sweeter or jollier girl. Her beauty, too, was of a kind that kept growing on one, and before I had known her twenty-four hours, without quite being in love with her, I was beginning to hate Lord Ralles, which was about the same thing, I suppose. Every hour convinced me that the two understood each other, not merely from the little asides and confidences

the hours, I hunted up some ponies, and we spent three days in long rides up the old Santa Fé trail and to the outlying mountains. Only one incident was other than pleasant,

ou may like to see one. That fellow standing in the ditch is Jack

t 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

ears," I

ments' wrong-doing, which the circumstances may almost have justified!" Sh

eering in an attempt to look amiab

ot 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 coul

r 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,