of the labor, as a coyote that has traveled all day and all night shakes off its weariness and trots on, pointing its keen nose against the wind. So she went on, sometimes humming” an air, sometimes pausing an instant to look across the valley at the burly peaks—and far beyond these, range after range of purple-clad monsters, like a great hierarchy whose heads rise closer and closer to heaven itself. She found herself smiling in spite of herself, and for no cause whatever.
She had estimated the distance to Three Rivers at about ten miles. Yet it seemed to her that she had covered scarcely a third of that space when the road twisted down and she was in the village. It was even smaller than Snider Gulch. The type of man to which she had grown accustomed during the past few weeks swarmed the street. They paid little attention to her, even as she had expected. Mountains discourage personal curiosity.
The six horses were already hitched to the stage and baggage was piled in the boot. After she bought a passage to Truckee, her money was exhausted. If she failed, the prospect was black indeed. She could not even telegraph for help, particularly since there was not a telegraph line within two days’ journey. She shrugged this thought away as unworthy.
When the passengers climbed up to select their seats, Geraldine remained on the ground to talk with the driver about his near leader, a long barreled bay with a ragged mane and a wicked eye. The driver as he went from horse to horse, examining tugs and other vital parts of the harness, informed her that the bay was the best mountain horse he had ever driven, and that with this team he could make two hours’ better time than on any of the other relays between Three Rivers and Truckee.
She showed such smiling interest in this explanation that he asked her to sit up on his seat while he detailed the other points of interest about this team.
Her heart quickened. The first point in the game was won.
As they swung out onto the shadowed road—for the canons were already half dark, though it was barely sunset—she made a careful inventory of the passengers. There were nine besides herself and all were men. Two of them sitting just behind the driver, held sawed off shotguns across their knees and stared with frowning sagacity into the trees on either side of the road, as if they already feared an attack. Their tense expectancy satisfied La Belle Geraldine that the first appearance of her bandit would take the fight out of them. The others were mostly young fellows who hailed each other in loud voices and broke into an immediate exchange of mining gossip. She feared nothing from any of these.
The driver worried her more. To be sure his only weapon was a rifle which lay along the seat just behind him, with its muzzle pointing out to the side, a clumsy position for rapid work. But his lean face with the small, sad eye made her guess at qualities of quiet fearlessness. However, it was useless to speculate on the chances for or against Montgomery! The event could be scarcely more than half an hour away.
They had scarcely left Three Rivers behind when she produced the small revolver from her pocket. The driver grinned and asked if it were loaded. It was a sufficient opening for Geraldine. She sketched briefly for his benefit a life in the wilds during which she had been brought up with a rifle in one hand and a revolver in the other. The stage driver heard her with grim amusement, while she detailed her skill in knocking squirrels out of a treetop.
“The top of a tree like that one, lady?” he asked, pointing out a great sugar pine.
“You don’t believe me?” asked Jerry, with a convincing assumption of pique, “I wish there was a chance for me to show you.”
“H-m!” said the driver. “There’s a tolerable lot of things for you to aim at along the road. Take a whirl at anything you want to. The horses won’t bolt when they, hear the gun.”
“If I did hit it,” said Jerry, with truly feminine logic, “you would think it was luck.”
She dropped the pistol back into the pocket of her dress. They were swinging round a curve which brought them to the foot of the long slope, at the top of which Montgomery must be waiting.
“I hope something happens,” she assured the driver, “and then I’ll show you real shooting.”
“Maybe,” he nodded, “I’ve lived so long, nothin’ surprises me, lady.”
She smiled into the fast-growing night and made no answer. Then she broke out into idle chatter again, asking the names of all the horses and a thousand other questions, for a childish fear came to her that he might hear the beating of her heart and learn its meaning. Up they drudged on the long slope, the harness creaking rhythmically as the horses leaned into the collars, and the traces stiff and quivering with the violence of the pull. The driver with his reins gathered in one hand and the long whip poised in the other, flicked the laggards with the lash.
“Look at them lug all together as if they was tryin’ to keep time!” he said to Geraldine? “I call that a team; but this grade here keeps them winded for a half an hour after we hit the top.”
The rank odor of the sweating horses rose to her. A silence, as if their imaginations labored with the team, fell upon the passengers. Even Geraldine found herself leaning forward in the seat, as though this would lessen the load.
“Yo ho, boys!” shouted the driver.
“Get into that collar, Dixie, you wall-eyed excuse for a hoss! Yea, Queen, good girl!”
His whip snapped and hummed through the air.
“One more lug altogether and we’re there!”
They lurched up onto the level ground and the horses, still leaning forward to the strain of the pull, stumbled into a feeble trot. Jerry sat a little side-wise in the seat so that from the corner of her eye she could watch the rest of the passengers. One of the guards was lighting a cigarette for the other!
“Hands up!” called a voice.
The driver cursed softly, and his arms went slowly into the air; the hands of the two guards shot up even more rapidly. Not three yards from the halted leaders, a masked man sat on a roan horse, reined across the road: and covered the stage with his revolver.
“Keep those hands up!” ordered the bandit. “Now get out of that stage—and don’t get your hands down while you’re doin’ it! You—all there by the driver, get up your hands damned quick!”
III. THE MIXED CAST
A great tide of mirth swelled in Jerry’s throat. She recognized in these deep and ringing tones, the stage voice of Freddie Montgomery. Truly he played his part well!
She crouched a little toward the stage driver, whipped out the revolver, and fired,—but a louder explosion blended with the very sound of her shot. The revolver spun out of her fingers and exquisite pain burned her hand.
Her rage kept her from screaming. She groaned between her set teeth. This was an ill day for Frederick Montgomery!
“For God’s sake!” breathed a voice from the stage behind her. “He’ll kill us all now! It’s Black Jim!”
“Down to the road with you,” cried the bandit, in the same deep voice, “and the next of you-all that tries a fancy trick, I’ll drill you clean!”
Warm
