“You see, I should hate awfully to be compelled to shoot you!” he explained, in a cold-blooded tone that made her shudder. “It would be bad for both of us; and bad to muss up the stage, you know; it’s really a very good stage, and newly recushioned. So you understand how I feel about it.”
“You are a devil!” she gasped again.
“Only a man determined to protect himself at all hazards. I wanted to look out and see if we aren’t reaching the vicinity of Stag Mountain. In the cañon, just beyond it, as you doubtless know, there have been a lot of stage hold-ups lately; it may be we will meet trouble there. We are nearing the place right now. Our Jehu above seems to be laying on the whip a little more heavily, and I judge that he is thinking of that place, too. He has been through a good many of the hold-ups. I should think, by this time, he would be so used to them that if they did not happen he would miss them as a bit of fun.”
She did not answer.
“But I’ll say this. If we are held up there, you sit still right where you are. Otherwise, this revolver might go off in your face. I shouldn’t hold myself responsible for the consequences.”
The tall peak of Stag Mountain came into view.
Benson closed the woman’s hand bag and dropped the key into his pocket. Then he lifted the skirt of the dress he had put on over his clothing, and hid the revolver somewhere under it.
“We’re comin’ to ther place,” Hank Elmore bellowed to them, leaning down from his high perch so that they could hear him. “But I don’t reckon we’ll meet up with any trouble to-day.”
He cracked his whip over the backs of the horses, and the stage lurched and bounded into the gorge that swung past the hill, and on into the cañon noted for its many hold-ups.
As if to bolster his courage, he began to sing.