However, De Bray’s hundred was passed over, and the woman tucked it into the foliage and replaced the hat on her head.
“Now,” she said, with a relieved sigh, “if the worst should happen, I have done what little I could to save my money.”
“I don’t think ye need ter worry none,” said Hotchkiss, glaring at Pete for having started the talk about road-agents.
After this there was silence in the mountain-wagon for a good half-hour. De Bray lighted a cigarette. He also tried to talk, but his attempts were met with chilling silence. Pete, Chick Billings, and Hotchkiss had marked him down in their minds as about the poorest specimen of a tenderfoot they had ever met, and they wanted nothing more to do with him.
At the end of a half-hour a surprise was sprung. The stage-trail, winding along toward the rim of Sun Dance Cañon, entered a stretch where great heaps of boulders massed themselves along each side.
Suddenly a shout, grimly menacing, rang from behind one of the boulders.
“Halt!”
Everybody in the stage gave a startled jump. The unexpected had happened.
Over the tops of the boulders, on each side of the trail, appeared masked faces and leveled rifles.
Chick Billings, recovering from the first shock of surprise, seized his lines in a firmer grip and raised his whip.