For some moments profound silence and darkness had accompanied a Sierran stage-coach towards the summit. The huge, dim bulk of the vehicle, swaying noiselessly on its straps, glided onward and upward as if obeying some mysterious impulse from behind, so faint and indefinite appeared its relation to the viewless and silent horses ahead. The shadowy trunks of tall trees that seemed to approach the coach windows, look in, and then move hurriedly away, were the only distinguishable objects. Yet even these were so vague and unreal that they might have been the mere phantoms of some dream of the half-sleeping passengers; for the thickly-strewn needles of the pine, that choked the way and deadened all sound, yielded under the silently-crushing wheels a faint soporific odor that seemed to benumb their senses, already slipping back into unconsciousness during the long ascent. Suddenly the stage stopped.
Three of the four passengers inside struggled at once into upright wakefulness. The fourth passenger, John Hale, had not been sleeping, and turned impatiently towards the window. It seemed to him that two of the moving trees had suddenly become motionless outside. One of them moved again, and the door opened quickly but quietly, as of itself.
“Git down,” said a voice in the darkness.
All the passengers except Hale started. The man next to him moved his right hand suddenly behind him, but as quickly stopped. One of the motionless trees had apparently closed upon the vehicle, and what had seemed to be a bough projecting from it at right angles changed slowly into the faintly shining double-barrels of a gun at the window.
“Drop that!” said the voice.
The man who had moved uttered a short laugh, and returned his hand empty to his knees. The two others perceptibly shrugged their shoulders as over a game that was lost. The remaining passenger, John Hale, fearless by nature, inexperienced by habit, awaking suddenly to the truth, conceived desperate resistance. But without his making a gesture this was instinctively felt by the others; the muzzle of the gun turned spontaneously on him, and he was vaguely conscious of a certain contempt and impatience of him in his companions.
“Git down,” repeated the voice imperatively.
The three passengers descended. Hale, furious, alert, but helpless of any opportunity, followed. He was surprised to find the stage-driver and express messenger standing beside him; he had not heard them dismount. He instinctively looked towards the horses. He could see nothing.
“Hold up your hands!”
One of the passengers had already lifted his, in a weary, perfunctory way. The others did the same reluctantly and awkwardly, but apparently more from the consciousness of the ludicrousness of their attitude than from any sense of danger. The rays of a bull's-eye lantern, deftly managed by invisible hands, while it left the intruders in shadow, completely illuminated the faces and figures of the passengers. In spite of the majestic obscurity and silence of surrounding nature, the group of humanity thus illuminated was more farcical than dramatic. A scrap of newspaper, part of a sandwich, and an orange peel that had fallen from the floor of the coach, brought into equal prominence by the searching light, completed the absurdity.
“There's a man here with a package of greenbacks,” said the voice, with an official coolness that lent a certain suggestion of Custom House inspection to the transaction; “who is it?” The passengers looked at each other, and their glance finally settled on Hale.
“It's not HIM,” continued the voice, with a slight tinge of contempt on the emphasis. “You'll save time and searching, gentlemen, if you'll tote it out. If we've got to go through every one of you we'll try to make it pay.”
The significant threat was not unheeded. The passenger who had first moved when the stage stopped put his hand to his breast.
“T'other pocket first, if you please,” said the voice.
The man laughed, drew a pistol from his hip pocket, and, under the strong light of the lantern, laid it on a spot in the road indicated by the voice. A thick envelope, taken from his breast pocket, was laid beside it. “I told the d—d fools that gave it to me, instead of sending it by express, it would be at their own risk,” he said apologetically.
“As it's going with the express now it's all the same,” said the inevitable humorist of the occasion, pointing to the despoiled express treasure-box already in the road.
The intention and deliberation of the outrage was plain enough to Hale's inexperience now. Yet he could not understand the cool acquiescence of his fellow-passengers, and was furious. His reflections were interrupted by a voice which seemed to come from a greater distance. He fancied it was even softer in tone, as if a certain austerity was relaxed.
“Step in as quick as you like, gentlemen. You've five minutes to wait, Bill.”
The passengers reentered the coach; the driver and express messenger hurriedly climbed to their places. Hale would have spoken, but an impatient gesture from his companions stopped him. They were evidently listening for something; he listened too.
Yet the silence remained unbroken. It seemed incredible that there should be no indication near or far of that forceful presence which a moment ago had been so dominant. No rustle in the wayside “brush,” nor echo from the rocky canyon below, betrayed a sound of their flight. A faint breeze stirred the tall tips of the pines, a cone dropped on the stage roof, one of the invisible horses that seemed to be listening too moved slightly in his harness. But this only appeared to accentuate the profound stillness. The moments were growing interminable, when the voice, so near as to startle Hale, broke once more from the surrounding obscurity.
“Good-night!”
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 men will do, and ez we'll hev to take horses from the station we'll hev to take the fourth man from there.”
With these words he resumed his uninteresting conversation with the equally uninterested Rawlins, and the undenominated passenger subsided into an admiring and dreamy contemplation of them both. With all his principle and really high-minded purpose, Hale could not help feeling constrained and annoyed at the sudden subordinate and auxiliary position to which he, the projector of the enterprise, had been reduced. It was true that he had never offered himself as their leader; it was true that the principle he wished to uphold and the effect he sought to obtain would be equally demonstrated under another; it was true that the execution of his own conception gravitated by some occult impulse to the man who had not sought it, and whom he had always regarded as an incapable. But all this was so unlike precedent or tradition that, after the fashion of conservative men, he was suspicious of it, and only that his honor was now involved he would have withdrawn from the enterprise. There was still a chance of reasserting himself at the station, where he was known, and where some authority might be deputed to him.
But even this prospect failed. The station, half hotel and half stable, contained only the landlord, who was also express agent, and the new volunteer who Clinch had suggested would be found among the stable-men. The nearest justice of the peace was ten miles away, and Hale had to abandon even his hope of being sworn in as a deputy constable. This introduction of a common and illiterate ostler into the party on equal terms with himself did not add to his satisfaction, and a remark from Rawlins seemed to complete his embarrassment.
“Ye had a mighty narrer escape down there just now,” said that gentleman confidentially, as Hale buckled his saddle girths.
“I thought, as we were not supposed to defend ourselves, there was no danger,” said Hale scornfully.
“Oh, I don't mean them road agents. But HIM.”
“Who?”
“Kernel Clinch. You jist ez good as allowed he hadn't any grit.”
“Whatever I said, I suppose I am responsible for it,” answered Hale haughtily.
“That's what gits me,” was the imperturbable reply. “He's the best shot in Southern California, and hez let daylight through a dozen chaps afore now for half what you said.”
“Indeed!”
“Howsummever,” continued Rawlins philosophically, “ez he's concluded to go WITH ye instead of FOR ye, you're likely to hev your ideas on this matter carried out up to the handle. He'll make short work of it, you bet. Ef, ez I suspect, the leader is an airy young feller from Frisco, who hez took to the road lately, Clinch hez got a personal grudge agin him from a quarrel over draw poker.”
This was the last blow to Hale's ideal crusade. Here he was—an honest, respectable citizen—engaged as simple accessory to a lawless vendetta originating at a gambling table! When the first shock was over that grim philosophy which is the reaction of all imaginative and sensitive natures came to his aid. He felt better; oddly enough he began to be conscious that he was thinking and acting like his companions. With this feeling a vague sympathy, before absent, faintly showed itself in their actions. The Sharpe's rifle put into his hands by the stable-man was accompanied by a familiar word of suggestion as to an equal, which he was ashamed to find flattered him. He was able to continue the conversation with Rawlins more coolly.
“Then you suspect who is the leader?”
“Only on giniral principles. There was a finer touch, so to speak, in this yer robbery that wasn't in the old-fashioned style. Down in my country they hed crude ideas about them things—used to strip the passengers of everything, includin' their clothes. They say that at the station hotels, when the coach came in, the folks used to stand round with blankets to wrap up the passengers so ez not to skeer the wimen. Thar's a story that the driver and express manager drove up one day with only a copy of the Alty Californy wrapped around 'em; but thin,” added Rawlins grimly, “there WAS folks ez said the hull story was only an advertisement got up for the Alty.”
“Time's up.”
“Are you ready, gentlemen?” said Colonel Clinch.
Hale started. He had forgotten his wife and family at Eagle's Court, ten miles away. They would be alarmed at his absence, would perhaps hear some exaggerated version of the stage coach robbery, and fear the worst.
“Is there any way I could send a line to Eagle's Court before daybreak?” he asked eagerly.
The station was already drained of its spare men and horses. The undenominated passenger stepped forward and offered to take it himself when his business, which he would despatch as quickly as possible, was concluded.
“That ain't a bad idea,” said Clinch reflectively, “for ef yer hurry you'll head 'em off in case they scent us, and try to double back on the North Ridge. They'll fight shy of the trail if they see anybody on it, and one man's as good as a dozen.”
Hale could not help thinking that he might have been that one man, and had his opportunity for independent action but for his rash proposal, but it was too late to withdraw now. He hastily scribbled a few lines to his wife on a sheet of the station paper, handed it to the man, and took his place in the little cavalcade as it filed silently down the road.