From Sand Hill to Pine. Bret Harte
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been forced and the money was gone. I managed to snap the lock again before I handed it down. I thought they might discover it at once and chase us, but they didn't.”
“And then thar war no greenbacks in the box that they took?” gasped Bill, with staring eyes.
“No!”
Bill raised his hand in the air as if in solemn adjuration, and then brought it down on his knee, doubling up in a fit of uncontrollable but perfectly noiseless laughter. “Oh, Lord!” he gasped, “hol' me afore I bust right open! Hush,” he went on, with a jerk of his fingers towards the next room, “not a word o' this to any one! It's too much to keep, I know; it's nearly killing me! but we must swaller it ourselves! Oh, Jerusalem the Golden! Oh, Brice! Think o' that face o' Snapshot Harry's ez he opened that treasure box afore his gang in the brush! And he allers so keen and so easy and so cock sure! Created snakes! I'd go through this every trip for one sight of him as he just riz up from that box and cussed!” He again shook with inward convulsions till his face grew purple, and even the red came back to the younger man's cheek.
“But this don't bring the money back, Bill,” said Brice gloomily.
Yuba Bill swallowed the glass of whiskey at a gulp, wiped his mouth and eyes, smothered a second explosion, and then gravely confronted Brice.
“When do you think it was taken, and how?”
“It must have been taken when I left the coach on the road and went over to that settler's cabin,” said Brice bitterly. “Yet I believed everything was safe, and I left two men—both passengers—one inside and one on the box, that man who sat the other side of you.”
“Jee whillikins!” ejaculated Bill, with his hand to his forehead, “the men I clean forgot to pick up in the road, and now I reckon they never intended to be picked up, either.”
“No doubt a part of the gang,” said Brice, with increased bitterness; “I see it all now.”
“No!” said Bill decisively, “that ain't Snapshot Harry's style; he's a clean fighter, with no underhand tricks. And I don't believe he threw down that tree, either. Look yer, sonny!” he added, suddenly laying his hand on Brice's shoulder, “a hundred to one that that was the work of a couple o' d——d sneaks or traitors in that gang who kem along as passengers. I never took any stock in that coyote who paid extra for his box-seat.”
Brice knew that Bill never looked kindly on any passenger who, by bribing the ticket agent, secured this favorite seat, which Bill felt was due to his personal friends and was in his own selection. He only returned gloomily:—
“I don't see what difference it makes to us which robber got the money.
“Ye don't,” said Bill, raising his head, with a sudden twinkle in his eyes. “Then ye don't know Snapshot Harry. Do ye suppose he's goin' to sit down and twiddle his thumbs with that skin game played on him? No, sir,” he continued, with a thoughtful deliberation, drawing his fingers slowly through his long beard, “he spotted it—and smelt out the whole trick ez soon ez he opened that box, and that's why he didn't foller us! He'll hunt those sneak thieves into h-ll but what he'll get 'em, and,” he went on still more slowly, “by the livin' hokey! I reckon, sonny, that's jest how ye'll get your chance to chip in!”
“I don't understand,” said Brice impatiently.
“Well,” said Bill, with more provoking slowness, as if he were communing with himself rather than Brice, “Harry's mighty proud and high toned, and to be given away like this has cut down into his heart, you bet. It ain't the money he's thinkin' of; it's this split in the gang—the loss of his power ez boss, ye see—and ef he could get hold o' them chaps he'd let the money slide ez long ez they didn't get it. So you've got a detective on your side that's worth the whole police force of Californy! Ye never heard anything about Snapshot Harry, did ye?” asked Bill carelessly, raising his eyes to Brice's eager face.
The young man flushed slightly. “Very little,” he said. At the same time a vision of the pretty girl in the settler's cabin flashed upon him with a new significance.
“He's more than half white, in some ways,” said Bill thoughtfully, “and they say he lives somewhere about here in a cabin in the bush, with a crippled sister and her darter, who both swear by him. It mightn't be hard to find him—ef a man was dead set on it.”
Brice faced about with determined eyes. “I'LL DO IT,” he said quietly.
“Ye might,” said Bill, still more deliberately stroking his beard, “mention my name, ef ye ever get to see him.”
“Your name,” ejaculated the astonished Brice.
“My name,” repeated Bill calmly. “He knows it's my bounden duty to kill him ef I get the chance, and I know that he'd plug me full o' holes in a minit ef thar war a necessity for it. But in these yer affairs, sonny, it seems to be the understood thing by the kempany that I'm to keep fiery young squirts like you, and chuckle-headed passengers like them”—jerking his thumb towards the other room—“from gettin' themselves killed by their rashness. So ontil the kempany fill the top o' that coach with men who ain't got any business to do BUT fightin' other men who ain't got any other business to do BUT to fight them—the odds are agin us! Harry has always acted square to me—that's how I know he ain't in this sneak-thief business, and why he didn't foller us, suspectin' suthin', and I've always acted square to him. All the same, I'd like ter hev seen his face when that box was opened! Lordy!” Here Bill again collapsed in his silent paroxysm of mirth. “Ye might tell him how I laughed!”
“I would hardly do that, Bill,” said the young man, smiling in spite of himself. “But you've given me an idea, and I'll work it out.”
Bill glanced at the young fellow's kindling eyes and flushing cheek, and nodded. “Well, rastle with that idea later on, sonny. I'll fix you all right in my report to the kempany, but the rest you must work alone. I've started out the usual posse, circus-ridin' down the road after Harry. He'd be a rough customer to meet just now,” continued Bill, with a chuckle, “ef thar was the ghost of a chance o' them comin' up with him, for him and his gang is scattered miles away by this.” He paused, tossed off another glass of whiskey, wiped his mouth, and saying to Brice, with a wink, “It's about time to go and comfort them thar passengers,” led the way through the crowded barroom into the stage office.
The spectacle of Bill's humorously satisfied face and Brice's bright eyes and heightened color was singularly effective. The “inside” passengers, who had experienced neither the excitement nor the danger of the robbery, yet had been obliged to listen to the hairbreadth escapes of the others, pooh-poohed the whole affair, and even the “outsides” themselves were at last convinced that the robbery was a slight one, with little or no loss to the company. The clamor subsided almost as suddenly as it had arisen; the wiser passengers fashioned their attitude on the sang-froid of Yuba Bill, and the whole coach load presently rolled away as complacently as if nothing had happened.
II
The robbery furnished the usual amount of copy for the local press. There was the inevitable compliment to Yuba Bill for his well-known coolness; the conduct of the young expressman, “who, though new to the service, displayed an intrepidity that only succumbed to numbers,” was highly commended, and even the passengers received their meed of praise, not forgetting the lady, “who accepted the incident with the light-hearted pleasantry characteristic of the Californian woman.” There was the usual allusion to the necessity of a Vigilance Committee to cope with this “organized lawlessness” but it is to be feared that the readers of “The Red Dog Clarion,” however ready to lynch a horse thief, were of the opinion that rich stage express companies were quite able to take care of their own property.
It was with full cognizance of these facts and their uselessness to him that the next morning Mr. Ned Brice turned from the road where the coach had just halted on the previous night and approached the settler's cabin. If a little less sanguine than he was in Yuba Bill's presence, he was still doggedly inflexible in his design, whatever it might have been, for he had not revealed it even