"Don't shame me needlessly; of course I didn't. One of our locomotive engineers, a man whom I had discharged for drunkenness, was the hero. It was a most daring thing. The desperado is known in the Red Desert as 'The Killer,' and he has had the entire region terrorized so completely that the town marshal of Angels, a man who has never before shirked his duty, refused to serve the warrant. Judson, the engineer, made the capture—took the 'terror' from his place in a gambling-den, disarmed him, and brought him in. Judson himself was unarmed, and he did the trick with a little steel wrench such as engineers use about a locomotive."
Miss Brewster, being Colorado-born, was deeply interested.
"Now you are no longer dull, Howard!" she exclaimed. "Tell me in words just how Mr. Judson did it."
"It was an old dodge, so old that it seemed new to everybody. As I told you, Judson was discharged for drunkenness. All Angels knows him for a fighter to the finish when he is sober, and for the biggest fool and the most harmless one when he is in liquor. He took advantage of this, reeled into the gambling-place as if he were too drunk to see straight, played the fool till he got behind his man—after which the matter simplified itself. Rufford, the desperado, had no means of knowing that the cold piece of metal Judson was pressing against his back was not the muzzle of a loaded revolver, and he had every reason for supposing that it was; hence, he did all the things Judson told him to do."
Miss Eleanor did not need to vocalize her approval of Judson; the dark eyes were alight with excitement.
"How fine!" she applauded. "Of course, after that, you took Mr. Judson back into the railway service?"
"Indeed, I did nothing of the sort; nor shall I, until he demonstrates that he means what he says about letting the whiskey alone."
"'Until he demonstrates'—don't be so cold-blooded, Howard! Possibly he saved your life."
"Quite probably. But that has nothing to do with his reinstatement as an engineer of passenger-trains. It would be much better for Rufford to kill me than for me to let Judson have the chance to kill a train-load of innocent people."
"And yet, a few moments ago, you called yourself a coward, cousin mine. Could you really face such an alternative without flinching?"