The horses pulled along at a quicker gait, and I was settling back into a state of tranquil somnolence, happy in the thought that we were not probably the first men who had been frightened by a couple of jackasses, when suddenly, as if springing out of the solid earth, two men jumped from the bushes. They were about twenty feet apart. The one most distant, a short, rather slender person, seized the bits of the leaders with his left hand, holding in the right a cocked revolver. The other, a stalwart figure of six feet, with corresponding physical proportions, raised a double-barrelled shotgun, and aiming it directly at my head, shouted in a fierce, impetuous tone,
“Halt! Don’t either of you move a hand. I want that treasure-box.” This startling salutation, with its accompanying demonstration, for a moment filled me with apprehension, but the quick reply of Charley, “There’s no treasure-box aboard,” restored me to instant calmness. Now, thought I, is the time to put my chosen theory into practice, and pass myself as express messenger.
“Don’t say a word to them, Charley!” said I, in a suppressed tone. “Let me do the talking.”
The big robber, whose determination was more strongly whetted by Charley’s reply to his first demand, now spoke in an angry tone, and with his gun in closer proximity to my head, exclaimed,
“I tell you I want that treasure-box, and quick too. Throw it right down there,” pointing to the ground alongside the forward wheel of the coach.
My rapid breathing had now so far abated that I was able to say in a steady, natural tone,
“The driver has told you the truth. I have no treasure-box on this run. I don’t know what the other boys have had. You fellow’s have run the road to suit yourselves this summer. I haven’t had a treasure-box for more than two months.”
“I know better than that,” he replied, with the usual formula of oaths, “and if you don’t throw out that box, I’ll shoot the top of your head off,” at the same time advancing two or three steps, and aiming his gun with both barrels cocked, less than a yard’s distance from my head;—by reaching forward I could have touched it.
The man was very nervous. I knew that his object was robbery without murder, rather than murder and robbery afterwards. In his excitement, which had been rapidly increasing in intensity, I feared that he might unintentionally pull the triggers on which his fingers were resting. To possibly avoid a fatal result in such case, I moved my head backward and forward, to the right and left, and tried to keep as much out of range as possible. All to no purpose:—the gun kept motion with me, and held me constantly in range. I finally said to him,
“Oblige me by holding your gun a little out of range with my head. You’ve got the drop on me, but I can’t believe you wish to kill a man who is ready to give you all he has.”