It was the signal that they were free. The driver's whip cracked like a pistol shot, the horses sprang furiously forward, the huge vehicle lurched ahead, and then bounded violently after them. When Hale could make his voice heard in the confusion—a confusion which seemed greater from the colorless intensity of their last few moments' experience—he said hurriedly, “Then that fellow was there all the time?”
“I reckon,” returned his companion, “he stopped five minutes to cover the driver with his double-barrel, until the two other men got off with the treasure.”
“The TWO others!” gasped Hale. “Then there were only THREE men, and we SIX.”
The man shrugged his shoulders. The passenger who had given up the greenbacks drawled, with a slow, irritating tolerance, “I reckon you're a stranger here?”
“I am—to this sort of thing, certainly, though I live a dozen miles from here, at Eagle's Court,” returned Hale scornfully.
“Then you're the chap that's doin' that fancy ranchin' over at Eagle's,” continued the man lazily.
“Whatever I'm doing at Eagle's Court, I'm not ashamed of it,” said Hale tartly; “and that's more than I can say of what I've done—or HAVEN'T done—to-night. I've been one of six men over-awed and robbed by THREE.”
“As to the over-awin', ez you call it—mebbee you know more about it than us. As to the robbin'—ez far as I kin remember, YOU haven't onloaded much. Ef you're talkin' about what OUGHTER have been done, I'll tell you what COULD have happened. P'r'aps ye noticed that when he pulled up I made a kind of grab for my wepping behind me?”
“I did; and you wern't quick enough,” said Hale shortly.
“I wasn't quick enough, and that saved YOU. For ef I got that pistol out and in sight o' that man that held the gun—”
“Well,” said Hale impatiently, “he'd have hesitated.”
“He'd hev blown YOU with both barrels outer the window, and that before I'd got a half-cock on my revolver.”
“But that would have been only one man gone, and there would have been five of you left,” said Hale haughtily.
“That might have been, ef you'd contracted to take the hull charge of two handfuls of buck-shot and slugs; but ez one eighth o' that amount would have done your business, and yet left enough to have gone round, promiskiss, and satisfied the other passengers, it wouldn't do to kalkilate upon.”
“But the express messenger and the driver were armed,” continued Hale.
“They were armed, but not FIXED; that makes all the difference.”
“I don't understand.”
“I reckon you know what a duel is?”
“Yes.”
“Well, the chances agin US was about the same as you'd have ef you was put up agin another chap who was allowed to draw a bead on you, and the signal to fire was YOUR DRAWIN' YOUR WEAPON. You may be a stranger to this sort o' thing, and p'r'aps you never fought a duel, but even then you wouldn't go foolin' your life away on any such chances.”
Something in the man's manner, as in a certain sly amusement the other passengers appeared to extract from the conversation, impressed Hale, already beginning to be conscious of the ludicrous insufficiency of his own grievance beside that of his interlocutor.
“Then you mean to say this thing is inevitable,” said he bitterly, but less aggressively.
“Ez long ez they hunt YOU; when you hunt THEM you've got the advantage, allus provided you know how to get at them ez well as they know how to get at you. This yer coach is bound to go regular, and on certain days. THEY ain't. By the time the sheriff gets out his posse they've skedaddled, and the leader, like as not, is takin' his quiet cocktail at the Bank Exchange, or mebbe losin' his earnings to the sheriff over draw poker, in Sacramento. You see you can't prove anything agin them unless you take them 'on the fly.' It may be a part of Joaquim Murietta's band, though I wouldn't swear to it.”
“The leader might have been Gentleman George, from up-country,” interposed a passenger. “He seemed to throw in a few fancy touches, particlerly in that 'Good night.' Sorter chucked a little sentiment in it. Didn't seem to be the same thing ez, 'Git, yer d—d suckers,' on the other line.”
“Whoever he was, he knew the road and the men who travelled on it. Like ez not, he went over the line beside the driver on the box on the down trip, and took stock of everything. He even knew I had those greenbacks; though they were handed to me in the bank at Sacramento. He must have been hanging 'round there.”
For some moments Hale remained silent. He was a civic-bred man, with an intense love of law and order; the kind of man who is the first to take that law and order into his own hands when he does not find it existing to please him. He had a Bostonian's respect for respectability, tradition, and propriety, but was willing to face irregularity and impropriety to create order elsewhere. He was fond of Nature with these limitations, never quite trusting her unguided instincts, and finding her as an instructress greatly inferior to Harvard University, though possibly not to Cornell. With dauntless enterprise and energy he had built and stocked a charming cottage farm in a nook in the Sierras, whence he opposed, like the lesser Englishman that he was, his own tastes to those of the alien West. In the present instance he felt it incumbent upon him not only to assert his principles, but to act upon them with his usual energy. How far he was impelled by the half-contemptuous passiveness of his companions it would be difficult to say.
“What is to prevent the pursuit of them at once?” he asked suddenly. “We are a few miles from the station, where horses can be procured.”
“Who's to do it?” replied the other lazily. “The stage company will lodge the complaint with the authorities, but it will take two days to get the county officers out, and it's nobody else's funeral.”
“I will go for one,” said Hale quietly. “I have a horse waiting for me at the station, and can start at once.”
There was an instant of silence. The stage-coach had left the obscurity of the forest, and by the stronger light Hale could perceive that his companion was examining him with two colorless, lazy eyes. Presently he said, meeting Hale's clear glance, but rather as if yielding to a careless reflection—
“It MIGHT be done with four men. We oughter raise one man at the station.” He paused. “I don't know ez I'd mind taking a hand myself,” he added, stretching out his legs with a slight yawn.
“Ye can count ME in, if you're goin', Kernel. I reckon I'm talkin' to Kernel Clinch,” said the passenger beside Hale with sudden alacrity. “I'm Rawlins, of Frisco. Heerd of ye afore, Kernel, and kinder spotted you jist now from your talk.”
To Hale's surprise the two men, after awkwardly and perfunctorily grasping each other's hand, entered at once into a languid conversation on the recent election at Fresno, without the slightest further reference to the pursuit of the robbers. It was not until the remaining and undenominated passenger turned to Hale, and, regretting that he had immediate business at the Summit, offered to accompany the party if they would wait a couple of hours, that Colonel Clinch briefly returned to the subject.
“FOUR
