"Did you—er——" he began.
At that moment the man across the aisle twitched his coat sleeve. "Looking for the book you left with me?" he asked casually. "Here it is."
The other stared at him in uneasy surprise. "I didn't——"
"Oh, yes, you did," the man across the aisle interrupted. "Anyway, you meant to. You'll remember if you think a minute. You didn't leave it with that young lady, because you don't know her, and you're not the kind of man to butt in where you're not wanted. Now, are you?"
"Of course not," the other replied, with a show of indignation. "I don't know——"
"Then that's all right," said the stranger quietly. "Here's your book. And there's your seat. And don't make any more mistakes."
The gregarious gentleman accepted this advice and his book meekly. Thereafter he avoided even looking in Clyde's direction. To her relief the stranger did not presume on the service he had rendered. He stretched his long legs upon the opposite seat, leaned back, and gazed silently at the roof. The afternoon dragged on. Clyde and Nita went to the diner and returned. Afterward the stranger presumably did likewise, spending a decent interval in the smoker. Darkness fell, and the Limited thundered on westward across the plains to the country of the foothills, the mountain ranges, and its goal at the thither end of the Pacific slope.
Suddenly, with a scream of air and a grinding of brake shoes, the train came to a stop. Clyde looked out. The level, monotonous plains were no longer there. The country was rolling, studded with clumps of cottonwoods. The moon, close to the full, touched the higher spots with silver, intensifying the blackness of the shadows.
Clyde peered ahead to the limit of her restricted area of vision, for the lights of a station or a town. There was none. Not even the lighted square of a ranch-house window broke the night. Five minutes passed, ten, and still the train remained motionless. Suddenly, at the forward end of the coach, appeared the porter. Followed the occupants of the smoking compartment, each with his hands on the shoulders of the man in front of him in impromptu lockstep. Behind them came an apparition which caused the passengers, after a first gasp of incredulity, to vent their feelings in masculine oaths and little feminine screams of alarm.
This intruder was a large man, powerfully built. His hat was shoved back from his forehead, but his face was concealed by a square of dark cloth, cut with eyeholes. In his right hand he dandled with easy familiarity an exceedingly long-barrelled revolver. His left hand rested upon the twin of it, in a holster at his thigh. At his shoulder was another man, similarly masked.