“I don’t know of any reason, onless it is that there never was a black bear found there, though they’re up among the mountains, where there’s a deer now and then. But won’t the scamp be fooled, though?” chuckled the driver.
“How’s that?”
“I never carry any shooting-irons, but you’ve got enough for us all, and, when he sings out and you shove the muzzles of your guns forward and let drive, why the State will be saved a big expense.”
“That’s so!” exclaimed Wagstaff, with a fierceness too vivid to be wholly genuine; “we’ve started out for a hunting trip with Bob Budd, and expect to bag all the bears and deer in the country, but we weren’t looking for stage robbers, because I don’t know that we have lost any, but if they choose to run into our way, why who’s to blame?”
“That’s so,” assented his companion, who, in truth, regretted more than ever that they had not made the entire journey to Piketon by train instead of partly in the lumbering stage-coach.
“It would be better,” he added, after a moment’s thought, “if the rogue had chosen the daytime.”
“Why so?” queried the New Englander.
“We can see to aim better.”
“So can he, can’t he?”
“Yes, but we would have prepared better than we can at night,” replied Wagstaff, nervously.