man like me running around loose in a country full of senoritas and
fandangos. Lord! If she could only a-seen them. Positive
frights, that's what they are, their faces painted white as corpses
and their lips red as--as some of the train wrecks I've helped
clean up.

"It was a lovely April night, not a breath of wind, and a
tremendous big moon shining right over the top of Chimborazo.--Some
mountain that. The railroad skirted it twelve thousand feet above
sea level, and the top of it ten thousand feet higher than that.

"Mebbe I was drowsing, with Seth running the engine; but he slammed
on the brakes so sudden hard that I darn near went through the cab
window.

"'What the--' I started to yell, and 'Holy hell,' Seth says, as
both of us looked at what was on the track. And I agreed with Seth
entirely in his remark. It was an Indian girl--and take it from
me, Indians ain't Spiggoties by any manner of means. Seth had
managed to fetch a stop within twenty feet of her, and us bowling
down hill at that! But the girl. She--"

I saw the form of Mrs. Julian Jones stiffen, although she kept her
gaze fixed balefully upon two mud-hens that were prowling along the
lagoon shallows below us. "The hussy!" she hissed, once and
implacably. Jones had stopped at the sound, but went on
immediately.

"She was a tall girl, slim and slender, you know the kind, with
black hair, remarkably long hanging, down loose behind her, as she