But as the train-crew passed her, she heard one of them say:
“That guy’s a whirlwind with a gun! Didn’t do no hesitatin’, did he?”
And again:
“Now, what do you suppose would make a guy jump in that way an’ run a chance of gettin’ plugged—plenty? Do you reckon he was just yearnin’ fer trouble, or do you reckon they was somethin’ else behind it?”
The girl might have answered, but she did not. She sat very still, comparing Carrington with this man who had plunged instantly into a desperate gun-fight to protect her. And she knew that Carrington would not have done as Taylor had done. And had Carrington seen her face just at that moment he would have understood that there was no possibility of him ever achieving the success of which he had dreamed.
She heard one of the men say that the two men were to be placed in the baggage-car until they reached Dawes; and then Carrington and Parsons came to where she sat.
They talked, but the girl did not hear them, for her thoughts were on the picture Taylor made when he appeared at the door of the smoking-compartment arrayed in his cowboy rigging, the grim smile on his face, his guns flaming death to the man who thought to take advantage of her helplessness.
CHAPTER V—THE UNEXPECTED
The train pulled out again presently, and the water-tank and the cut were rapidly left in the rear. Taylor returned to the smoking-room and resumed his seat, and while the girl looked out of the window, some men of the train-crew removed the body of the train-robber and obliterated all traces of the fight. And Carrington and Parsons, noting the girl’s abstractedness, again left her to herself.
It had been the girl’s first glimpse of a man in cowboy raiment, and, as she reflected, she knew she might have known Taylor was an unusual man. However, she knew it now.