Before the girl could reply the young cowboy, who was used to acting on impulse, reentered the station and sauntered over to the ticket window. In a voice loud enough to be heard in the adjoining room he asked the ticket seller if the clock in the waiting room was right. Then, in a lower voice, he asked for a Denver ticket, accomplishing the exchange of money and transportation without calling any undue attention to the transaction. Then he sauntered to the door and stepped outside again. “Come on,” he said, thrusting the ticket into the girl’s hand and keeping tight hold of the little fist. “There’s no use of your going through the ticket office. We’ll hurry around the end of the building, and you can dodge past all those trunks and get to the gate, just as easy as a colt slipping through a corral.” “Where can I send the money for the ticket?” asked the girl, as they hurried through the darkness. “Oh, just send it to Milton Bertram, care of William Bertram, of the Box Ranch, Bertramville,” replied the cowpuncher. “If you don’t write me a long letter, telling me how you enjoyed the trip, I’m going to be sure peevish.” The girl laughed, and the note of her laughter was as clear as a meadow lark’s trill. Bertram stood in the darkness near the baggage room and watched her disappear through the gate. He saw the train depart and then turned regretfully away, his hand still thrilling to the touch of the girl’s hand, which had given his own a quick clasp of thankfulness. CHAPTER II WESTERN SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE. On the way to Denver, Bertram began to find out something concerning the nature of the enterprise with which he had become identified. The train was divided into two sections, the first consisting of three passenger and two baggage cars. A hundred men rode in the coaches, and the baggage cars were filled with a miscellaneous assortment of tents, saddles and general camp equipment. “There’s a train follerin’ right behind,” said Archie Beam, a cowpuncher, into whose seat Bertram had dropped. “It’s a stock train, and it’s got enough hosses for all us and more. I hear that every other train along the line has to give our two trains the right of way. You might think we was goin’ for the doctor, or somethin’ instid of bein’ on a stunt that prob’ly will make a lot of other fellers call for the doctor.” “Think we’re in for a scrap, do you, Arch?” asked Bertram, looking out of the window at the sagebrush that flitted by in a never-ending stream, as the train whirled through the desolate plateau country, where many an emigrant train had met a sad fate. “Boy, I know it!” said the cowpuncher, delighted to air his superior knowledge. “We’re goin’ to be jumped right in the middle of that northern Wyomin’ cattle trouble, and we’re goin’ to be told to begin shootin’ right and left, and never to let up till there ain’t a native hombre, left alive.” “Where’d you get your information, Arch?”