"Oh!" she cried. "Now I know. When the train was held up. Why, of course it was you. I'm so glad to meet you again. I've always wanted to thank you for relieving me of the attentions of that—that——"
"That fresh guy," he supplied gravely.
"Thank you! That 'fresh guy,'" she smiled. "But for you I should have lost my watch. And then you lent me ten dollars."
"Well, you see, they got all your cash."
"I don't know whatever made me take it. I have it still. I didn't need it. I had a book of travellers' checks and credits at the coast. I intended to give it back to you at once. I hope it didn't inconvenience——"
She stopped, conscious that her estimate of the finances of the man in the train had probably been mistaken.
"Not a bit," he replied. "I had a small roll stowed away."
"But what became of you?" she asked. "You didn't come back. I asked the conductor and the porters—everybody. What happened?"
"Why, the explanation is very simple, though I'm not proud of it. When I heard the shooting up in front I thought it was up to me to help the train boys, and I went out with the best intentions. The holdups were backing off, burning a lot of powder but doing no harm, and I guessed that their horses were in a bluff about five hundred yards from the track. Of course, once they got in the saddle they would make a get-away, so far as we were concerned, and I thought if I could beat them to the horses and turn the animals loose we would practically have them rounded up. That's what I tried to do. But as I was running I tripped, and went headfirst into a stump or a stone. Anyway, it knocked me out, and when I emerged from dreamland the train was moving, and I couldn't catch it. So I just tramped the ties to the next station. And there I had a job explaining that I wasn't a holdup myself. It didn't strike those boneheads that no sane holdup would come walking along the track a few hours after a robbery."
Clyde was disappointed at the baldness of his narration. Almost any man would have made some effort at description. Dunne had made none whatever. He had confined himself to the barest of bare facts.