“I beg your parding, ma’am,” said the colonel, raising his hat politely with one hand, while he reopened the coach-door with the other, “but we’re a-takin’ up a collection fur some very deservin’ object. We wuz a-goin’ to make the gentlemen fork over the hull amount, but ez they hain’t got enough, we’ll hev to bother you.”
The old lady trembled, and felt for her pocketbook, and raised her vail. The colonel looked into her face, slammed the stage-door, and, sitting down on the hub of one of the wheels, stared vacantly into space.
“Nothin’?” queried Perkins, in a whisper, and with a face full of genuine sympathy.
“No—yes,” said the colonel, dreamily. “That is, untie ’em and let the stage go ahead,” he continued, springing to his feet. “I’ll hurry back to the cabin.”
And the colonel dashed into the bushes, and left his followers so paralyzed with astonishment, that Old Black afterward remarked that, “ef ther’d ben anybody to hold the hosses, he could hev cleaned out the hull crowd with his whip.”
The passengers, now relieved of their weapons, were unbound, and allowed to re-enter the stage, and the door was slammed, upon which Old Black picked up his reins as coolly as if he had merely laid them down at the station while horses were being changed; then he cracked his whip, and the stage rolled off, while the colonel’s party hastened back to their hut, fondly inspecting as they went certain flasks they had obtained while transacting their business with the occupants of the stage.
Great was the surprise of the road-agents as they entered their hut, for there stood the colonel in a clean white shirt, and in a suit of clothing made up from the limited spare wardrobes of the other members of the gang.
But the suspicious Cranks speedily subordinated his wonder to his prudence, as, laying on the table a watch, two pistols, a pocketbook, and a heavy purse, he exclaimed:
“Come, colonel, bizness before pleasure; let’s divide an’ scatter. Ef anybody should hear ’bout it, an’ find our trail, an’ ketch us with the traps in our possession, they might——”