“Of course; that’s all understood; but the credit belongs to your horse and to Don Gordon’s pointers. If I hadn’t seen the horse, I should not have known that anything had happened to you; and if Punch and Dandy had not been with me, I should have gone right by that thicket of bushes without once suspecting that there was anybody hidden there. Well, proceed. The man let your horse go—then what?”
“Then they all jumped on me, and before I fully comprehended the situation, I was helpless and speechless. They turned my pockets inside out, but the only thing they found in them that was worth stealing, was my revolver. One of them grabbed that and the mail-bag and made off with them, while the other two carried me into the bushes and left me there.”
“Did they make much of a haul?” asked Hopkins.
“I can’t answer that question, for I don’t know what there was in the mail-bag. If they had robbed me a few days ago, that is, on the fifteenth, they would have got something to pay them for their trouble, for I had in my pocket seven hundred dollars of Silas Jones’s money that I brought from the county seat for him.”
They would have secured something else, also, and that was a check that was worth five thousand dollars to Mr. Brigham, but which would have been of no more value to the robbers than so much waste paper. The mail-carrier, however, was not aware of that fact, and if Lester Brigham had only been wise enough to keep his own counsel, no one in the settlement, except those interested, would have known that David was ever intrusted with money or its equivalent.
“I’ll never carry any more funds for anybody,” said David, choking back a sob. “Indeed, I don’t suppose I shall ever have another chance.”
“Why not?” asked Hopkins. “You are in no way to blame for the-loss of your mail-bag.”
“I know it; and I am very glad indeed that I was not found and released by any one who lives in the settlement. As you are a stranger here you are, of course, neither a friend nor an enemy to me, and consequently you can have no object in defending or condemning me.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean just this: There is no one in the neighborhood who has warmer friends and more bitter enemies than I have. I know that my friends will stand by me in my trouble, but there are a good many in the settlement who will say that I wasn’t robbed at all—that I stole the mail and made up a story to cover my guilt. I am neither blind nor deaf, and I can put my hand on a dozen men and boys who are watching for a chance to throw me out of my position so that they can apply for it themselves. No one ever thought the mail-carrier’s berth was worth anything until I got it, and now everybody wants it.”