Frenzied with the disappointment of not finding a treasure-box, and thinking that I was screening a passenger by calling him an employee, the robber exclaimed.
“That’s played out. I want that man,” and, rattling the coach door, in language redundant with profane superlatives, he ordered him, if he wished to escape being shot, to come out and show himself.
Stewart, who had slept through all the previous part of the colloquy, on being thus summarily summoned, comprehended the situation of affairs, and slipping a small roll of greenbacks into his shoe, stepped out of the coach.
“Throw up your hands,” was the stern command addressed to him emphasized by the double muzzle of a loaded gun within a few feet of his head. He was not slow to comply, nor to submit with the best possible grace to the search which followed, yielding only a single Mexican dollar.
The fury of the robber as he held this meagre trophy of his enterprise up to the pale moonlight was dramatic in the highest possible degree, and yet so associated with his earlier disappointments, that one could hardly restrain oneself from bursting into a fit of laughter.
“What business have you,” he yelled, interlarding his speech with an unlimited use of profane and opprobrious epithets, “to be travelling through this country with no more money than that?”
Stewart answered that he was the horse-shoer of the company, which paid his bills while on the road, and he therefore had no need of money while thus employed.
After a careful examination of Stewart’s hands, which were found to be hard and callous, and the discovery of a box containing the tools used in horse-shoeing, the robber was satisfied that he had told the truth, and returned the Mexican dollar. Baffled at all points, he hurled the way-pocket into the sage brush, and in a tone of mingled anger and disgust, exclaimed,
“No passengers, no treasure-box, no nothing. This is a —— of an outfit.” With his gun still in point-blank range, he crept close beside the front wheel, and by the subdued light gazed scrutinizingly into my face for a brief space, as if to ascertain whether he had ever seen me before. He repeated this so often that I feared he would resolve the doubt he evidently entertained of my assured office against me, and shoot me for the imposition. This to me was the most terrible moment of the encounter. I returned his stare each time with an impassive countenance, resolved at all hazards to persist in my experiment. While thus occupied, he directed his companion to examine the contents of the rearward boot and overhaul the mail-bags within the coach. Ten minutes later, the search proving abortive, he said in slow, measured tones, dropping back a few paces, “Well, I guess you’d better drive on.”
Charley gathered up the reins, and was about giving the word to his horses, when it occurred to me that I might complete the deception I had all along practiced by a little ruse which the occasion seemed to demand.