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.
They had ridden in silence for nearly an hour, and had passed the scene
of the robbery by a higher track. Morning had long ago advanced its
colors on the cold white peaks to their right, and was taking possession
of the spur where they rode.
“It looks like snow,” said Rawlins quietly.
Hale turned towards him in astonishment. Nothing on earth or sky looked
less likely. It had been cold, but that might have been only a current
from the frozen peaks beyond, reaching the lower valley. The ridge
on which they had halted was still thick with yellowish-green summer
foliage, mingled with the darker evergreen of pine and fir. Oven-like
canyons in the long flanks of the mountain seemed still to glow with the
heat of yesterday's noon; the breathless air yet trembled and quivered
over stifling gorges and passes in the granite rocks, while far at their
feet sixty miles of perpetual summer stretched away over the winding
American River, now and then lost in a gossamer haze. It was scarcely
ripe October where they stood; they could see the plenitude of August
still lingering in the valleys.
“I've seen Thomson's Pass choked up with fifteen feet o' snow earlier
than this,” said Rawlins, answering Hale's gaze; “and last September the
passengers sledded over the road we came last night, and all the time
Thomson, a mile lower down over the ridge in the hollow, smoking his
pipes under roses in his piazzy! Mountains is mighty uncertain; they
make their own weather ez they want it. I reckon you ain't wintered here
yet.”
Hale was obliged to admit that he had only taken Eagle's Court in the
early spring.
“Oh, you're all right at Eagle's--when you're there! But it's like
Thomson's--it's the gettin' there that--Hallo! What's that?”
A shot, distant but distinct, had rung through the keen air. It was
followed by another so alike as to seem an echo.
“That's over yon, on the North Ridge,” said the ostler, “about two miles
as the crow flies and five by the trail. Somebody's shootin' b'ar.”
“Not with a shot gun,” said Clinch, quickly wheeling his horse with a
gesture that electrified them. “It's THEM, and the've doubled on us! To
the North Ridge, gentlemen, and ride all you know!”
It needed no second challenge to completely transform that quiet
cavalcade. The wild man-hunting instinct, inseparable to most
humanity, rose at their leader's look and word. With an incoherent and
unintelligible cry, giving voice to the chase like the commonest hound
of their fields, the order-loving Hale and the philosophical Rawlins
wheeled with the others, and in another instant the little band swept
out of sight in the forest.
An immense and immeasurable quiet succeeded. The sunlight glistened
silently on cliff and scar, the vast distance below seemed to stretch
out and broaden into repose. It might have been fancy, but over the
sharp line of the North Ridge a light smoke lifted as of an escaping
soul.