“Why? What do you mean?” clamored the others excitedly.
“Well—THIS is about the spot where the up coach was robbed six months ago,” returned the messenger.
“Dear me!” said the lady in the back seat, rising with a half hysterical laugh, “hadn't we better get out before they come?”
“There is not the slightest danger, madam,” said a quiet, observant man, who had scarcely spoken before, “or the expressman would not have told us; nor would he, I fancy, have left his post beside the treasure on the box.”
The slight sarcasm implied in this was enough to redden the expressman's cheek in the light of the coach lamp which Yuba Bill had just unshipped and brought to the window. He would have made some tart rejoinder, but was prevented by Yuba Bill addressing the passengers: “Ye'll have to put up with ONE light, I reckon, until we've got this job finished.”
“How long will it last, Bill?” asked the man nearest the window.
“Well,” said Bill, with a contemptuous glance at the elegant coach axe he was carrying in his hand, “considerin' these purty first-class highly expensive hash choppers that the kempany furnishes us, I reckon it may take an hour.”
“But is there no place where we can wait?” asked the lady anxiously. “I see a light in that house yonder.”
“Ye might try it, though the kempany, as a rule, ain't in the habit o' makin' social calls there,” returned Bill, with a certain grim significance. Then, turning to some outside passengers, he added, “Now, then! them ez is goin' to help me tackle that tree, trot down! I reckon that blitherin' idiot” (the stranger with the lantern, who had disappeared) “will have sense enough to fetch us some ropes with his darned axe.”
The passengers thus addressed, apparently miners and workingmen, good humoredly descended, all except one, who seemed disinclined to leave the much coveted seat on the box beside the driver.