CHAPTER IX—DICK HALLIARD
The conversation was not of a nature to improve the courage of the occupants of the stagecoach, for, when children spend an evening in exchanging ghost stories, they find the darkness of their bed-rooms more fearful than before.
Since the young gentlemen on the rear seat began to believe that a meeting with a stage robber was quite certain to take place before reaching Piketon, they saw the need of an understanding all round.
The driver repeated that he never carried firearms, for, if he did, he would be tempted to use them with the surety of getting himself into trouble.
“If a man orders you to hold up your hands and you do it, why he aint going to hurt you,” was the philosophy of the old man; “all he’ll do is just to go through you; but if you have a gun or pistol, you’ll bang away with it, miss the chap, and then he’ll bore you; so it’s my rule, when them scamps come along, to do just as they tell me; a man’s life is worth more to him than all his money, and that’s me every time.”
“But you might be quick enough to drop him first,” suggested Wagstaff, who would have preferred the driver to be not quite so convincing in his arguments.
“Mighty little chance of that! You see the feller among the trees is all ready and waiting; he can take his aim afore you know he is there; now when you fellers fire at him it won’t do for you to miss—remember that!”
“We don’t intend to,” replied McGovern.
“Of course you don’t intend to, but the chances are that you will, and then it will be the last of you!”
“But won’t you be apt to catch it on the front seat?”