It was some time after the receipt of this brief message that the meeting in the sleeping car, already referred to, occurred, and it was during his many visits to me at Denver that he related the detective stories herein re-told.
"How is it," I asked one day, "that you are assistant superintendent of mail service here in the West, when you are under thirty and new, comparatively, at the business?"
"Hard luck," said Doc, smiling sadly, coughing and thumping his chest.
Then it was that he began to tell me some of his experience in the postal car, but he did not tell it all. He was as modest as he was honest, and would not tell to me, his friend, the real tales of heroism in which he was himself the hero. He told enough, however, to interest me and cause me to find out more from a mutual friend, and to verify the information by some of the reports and correspondence which I was afterward permitted to see. I found that his loyalty, bravery, and devotion to duty had been warmly commended in autograph letters from the highest officials in the mail service.
