_ CHAPTER XIV. THE HOLD-UP
Keith returned home that night. He now and then thought of Lancaster with a little misgiving. It was apparent that Mrs. Yorke was his friend; but, after all, Alice would never think of marrying a gray-haired man. She could not do it.
His father's pleasure when he told him of the stand he had taken with Mr. Wickersham reassured him.
"You did exactly right, sir; as a gentleman should have done," he said, as his face lighted up with pride and affection. "Go back and make your own way. Owe no man anything."
Gordon went back to his little office filled with a determination to succeed. He had now a double motive: he would win Alice Yorke, and he would show Mr. Wickersham who he was. A visit from Squire Rawson not long after he returned gave him new hope. The old man chuckled as he told him that he had had an indirect offer from Wickersham for his land, much larger than he had expected. It had only confirmed him in his determination to hold on.
"If it's worth that to him," he said, "it's worth that to me. We'll hold on awhile, and let him open a track for us. You look up the lines and keep your eye on 'em. Draw me some pictures of the lands. I reckon Phrony will have a pretty good patrimony before I'm through." He gave Keith a shrewd glance which, however, that young man did not see.
Not long afterwards Gordon received an invitation to Norman's wedding. He was to marry Miss Caldwell.
When Gordon read the account of the wedding, with the church "banked with flowers," and the bridal couple preceded by choristers, chanting, he was as interested as if it had been his brother's marriage. He tried to picture Alice Yorke in her bridesmaid's dress, "with the old lace draped over it and the rosebuds festooned about her."
He glanced around his little room with grim amusement as he thought of the difference it might make to him if he had what Mrs. Yorke had called "an establishment." He would yet be Keith of Elphinstone.
One fact related disturbed him. Ferdy Wickersham was one of the ushers, and it was stated that he and Miss Yorke made a handsome couple.
Norman had long ago forgotten Ferdy's unfriendly action at college, and wishing to bury all animosities and start his new life at peace with the whole world, he invited Ferdy to be one of his ushers, and Ferdy, for his own reasons, accepted. Ferdy Wickersham was now one of the most talked-of young men in New York. He had fulfilled the promise of his youth at least in one way, for he was one of the handsomest men in the State. Mrs. Wickersham, in whose heart defeat rankled, vowed that she would never bow so low as to be an usher at that wedding. But her son was of a deeper nature. He declared that he was "abundantly able to manage his own affairs."
At the wedding he was one of the gayest of the guests, and he and Miss Yorke were, as the newspapers stated, undoubtedly the handsomest couple of all the attendants. No one congratulated Mrs. Wentworth with more fervid words. To be sure, his eyes sought the bride's with a curious expression in them; and when he spoke with her apart a little later, there was an air of cynicism about him that remained in her memory. The handsomest jewel she received outside of the Wentworth family was from him. Its centre was a heart set with diamonds.
For a time Louise Wentworth was in the seventh heaven of ecstasy over her good fortune. Her beautiful house, her carriages, her gowns, her husband, and all the equipage of her new station filled her heart. She almost immediately took a position that none other of the young brides had. She became the fashion. In Norman's devotion she might have quite forgotten Ferdy Wickersham, had Ferdy been willing that she should do so. But Ferdy had no idea of allowing himself to be forgotten. For a time he paid quite devoted attention to Alice Yorke; but Miss Alice looked on his attentions rather as a joke. She said to him:
"Now, Ferdy, I am perfectly willing to have you send me all the flowers in New York, and go with me to the theatre every other night, and offer me all the flattery you have left over from Louise; but I am not going to let it be thought that I am going to engage myself to you; for I am not, and you don't want me."
"I suppose you reserve that for my fortunate rival, Mr. Lancaster?" said the young man, insolently.
Alice's eyes flashed. "At least not for you."
So Ferdy gradually and insensibly drifted back to Mrs. Wentworth. For a little while he was almost tragic; then he settled down into a state of cold cynicism which was not without its effect. He never believed that she cared for Norman Wentworth as much as she cared for him. He believed that her mother had made the match, and deep in his heart he hated Norman with the hate of wounded pride. Moreover, as soon as Mrs. Wentworth was beyond him, he began to have a deeper feeling for her than he had ever admitted before. He set before himself very definitely just what he wanted to do, and he went to work about it with a patience worthy of a better aim. He flattered her in many ways which, experience had told him, were effective with the feminine heart.
Ferdy Wickersham estimated Mrs. Wentworth's vanity at its true value; but he underestimated her uprightness and her pride. She was vain enough to hazard wrecking her happiness; but her pride was as great as her vanity.
Thus, though Ferdy Wickersham flattered her vanity by his delicate attentions, his patient waiting, he found himself, after long service, in danger of being balked by her pride. His apparent faithfulness had enlisted her interest; but she held him at a distance with a resolution which he would not have given her credit for.
Most men, under such circumstances, would have retired and confessed defeat; but not so with Ferdy Wickersham. To admit defeat was gall and wormwood to him. His love for Louise had given place to a feeling almost akin to a desire for revenge. He would show her that he could conquer her pride. He would show the world that he could humble Norman Wentworth. His position appeared to him impregnable. At the head of a great business, the leader of the gayest set in the city, and the handsomest and coolest man in town--he was bound to win. So he bided his time, and went on paying Mrs. Wentworth little attentions that he felt must win her in the end. And soon he fancied that he began to see the results of his patience. Old Mr. Wentworth's health had failed rapidly, and Norman was so wholly engrossed in business, that he found himself unable to keep up with the social life of their set. If, however, Norman was too busy to attend all the entertainments, Ferdy was never too busy to be on hand, a fact many persons were beginning to note.
Squire Rawson's refusal of the offer for his lands began to cause Mr. Aaron Wickersham some uneasiness. He had never dreamed that the old countryman would be so intractable. He refused even to set a price on them. He "did not want to sell," he said.
Mr. Wickersham conferred with his son. "We have got to get control of those lands, Ferdy. We ought to have got them before we started the railway. If we wait till we get through, we shall have to pay double. The best thing is for you to go down there and get them. You know the chief owner and you know that young Keith. You ought to be able to work them. We shall have to employ Keith if necessary. Sometimes a very small lever will work a big one."
"Oh, I can work them easy enough," said the young man; "but I don't want to go down there just now--the weather's cold, and I have a lot of engagements and a matter on hand that requires my presence here now."
His father's brow clouded. Matters had not been going well of late. The Wentworths had been growing cooler both in business and in social life. In the former it had cost him a good deal of money to have the Wentworth interest against him; in the latter it had cost Mrs. Wickersham a good deal of heart-burning. And Aaron Wickersham attributed it to the fact, of which rumors had come to him, that Ferdy was paying young Mrs. Wentworth more attention than her husband and his family liked, and they took this form of resenting it.
"I do not know what business engagement you can have more important than a matter in which we have invested some millions which may be saved by prompt attention or lost. What engagements have you?"
"That is my affair," said Ferdy, coolly.
"Your affair! Isn't your affair my affair?" burst out his father.
"Not necessarily. There are several kinds of affairs. I should be sorry to think that all of my affairs you had an interest in."
He looked so insolent as he sat back with half-closed eyes and stroked his silken, black moustache that his father lost his temper.
"I know nothing about your affairs of one kind," he burst out angrily, "and I do not wish to know; but I want to tell you that I think you are making an ass of yourself to be hanging around that Wentworth woman, having every one talking about you and laughing at you."
The young man's dark face flushed angrily.
"What's that?" he said sharply.
"She is another man's wife. Why don't you let her alone?" pursued the father.
"For that very reason," said Ferdy, recovering his composure and his insolent air.
"---- it! Let the woman alone," said his father. "Your fooling around her has already cost us the backing of Wentworth & Son--and, incidentally, two or three hundred thousand."
The younger man looked at the other with a flash of rage. This quickly gave way to a colder gleam.
"Really, sir, I could not lower myself to measure a matter of sentiment by so vulgar a standard as your ---- money."
His air was so intolerable that the father's patience quite gave way.
"Well, by ----! you'd better lower yourself, or you'll have to stoop lower than that. Creamer, Crustback & Company are out with us; the Wentworths have pulled out; so have Kestrel and others. Your deals and corners have cost me a fortune. I tell you that unless we pull through that deal down yonder, and unless we get that railroad to earning something, so as to get a basis for rebonding, you'll find yourself wishing you had my 'damned money.'"
"Oh, I guess we'll pull it through," said the young man. He rose coolly and walked out of the office.
The afternoon he spent with Mrs. Norman. He had to go South, he told her, to look after some large interests they had there. He made the prospects so dazzling that she laughingly suggested that he had better put a little of her money in there for her. She had quite a snug sum that the Wentworths had given her.
"Why do not you ask Norman to invest it?" he inquired, with a laugh.
"Oh, I don't know. He says bonds are the proper investment for women."
"He rather underestimates your sex, some of them," said Wickersham. And as he watched the color come in her cheeks, he added: "I tell you what I will do: I will put in fifty thousand for you on condition that you never mention it to a soul."
"I promise," she said half gratefully, and they shook hands on it.
That evening he informed his father that he would go South. "I'll get those lands easy enough," he said.
A few days later Ferdy Wickersham got off the train at Ridgely, now quite a flourishing little health-resort, and in danger of becoming a fashionable one, and that afternoon he drove over to Squire Rawson's.
A number of changes had taken place in the old white-pillared house since Ferdy had been an inmate. New furniture of black walnut supplanted, at least on the first floor, the old horsehair sofa and split-bottomed chairs and pine tables; a new plush sofa and a new piano glistened in the parlor; large mirrors with dazzling frames hung on the low walls, and a Brussels carpet as shiny as a bed of tulips, and as stiff as the stubble of a newly cut hay-field, was on the floor.
But great as were these changes, they were not as great as that which had taken place in the young person for whom they had been made.
When Ferdy Wickersham drove up to the door, there was a cry and a scurry within, as Phrony Tripper, after a glance out toward the gate, dashed up the stairs.
When Miss Euphronia Tripper, after a half-hour or more of careful and palpitating work before her mirror, descended the old straight stairway, she was a very different person from the round-faced, plump school-girl whom Ferdy, as a lad, had flirted with under the apple-trees three or four years before. She was quite as different as was the new piano with its deep tones from the rattling old instrument that jingled and clanged out of tune, or as the cool, self-contained, handsome young man in faultless attire was from the slim, uppish boy who used to strum on it. It was a very pretty and blushing young country maiden who now entered quite accidentally the parlor where sat Mr. Ferdy Wickersham in calm and indifferent discourse with her grandfather on the crops, on cattle, and on the effect of the new railroad on products and prices.
Several sessions at a boarding-school of some pretension, with ambition which had been awakened years before under the apple-trees, had given Miss Phrony the full number of accomplishments that are to be gained by such means. The years had also changed the round, school-girl plumpness into a slim yet strong figure; and as she entered the parlor,--quite casually, be it repeated,--with a large basket of flowers held carelessly in one hand and a great hat shading her face, the blushes that sprang to her cheeks at the wholly unexpected discovery of a visitor quite astonished Wickersham.
"By Jove! who would have believed it!" he said to himself.
Within two minutes after she had taken her seat on the sofa near Wickersham, that young envoy had conceived a plan which had vaguely suggested itself as a possibility during his journey South. Here was an ally to his hand; he could not doubt it; and if he failed to win he would deserve to lose.
The old squire had no sooner left the room than the visitor laid the first lines for his attack.
Why was she surprised to see him? He had large interests in the mountains, and could she doubt that if he was within a thousand miles he would come by to see her?
The mantling cheeks and dancing eyes showed that this took effect.
"Oh, you came down on business? That was all! I know," she said.
Wickersham looked her in the eyes.
Business was only a convenient excuse. Old Halbrook could have attended to the business; but he preferred to come himself. Possibly she could guess the reason? He looked handsome and sincere enough as he leant over and gazed in her face to have beguiled a wiser person than Phrony.
She, of course, had not the least idea.
Then he must tell her. To do this he found it necessary to sit on the sofa close to her. What he told her made her blush very rosy again, and stammer a little as she declared her disbelief in all he said, and was sure there were the prettiest girls in the world in New York, and that he had never thought of her a moment. And no, she would not listen to him--she did not believe a word he said; and--yes, of course, she was glad to see any old friend; and no, he should not go. He must stay with them. They expected him to do so.
So Ferdy sent to Ridgely for his bags, and spent several days at Squire Rawson's, and put in the best work he was capable of during that time. He even had the satisfaction of seeing Phrony treat coldly and send away one or two country bumpkins who rode up in all the bravery of long broad-cloth coats and kid gloves.
But if at the end of this time the young man could congratulate himself on success in one quarter, he knew that he was balked in the other. Phrony Tripper was heels over head in love with him; but her grandfather, though easy and pliable enough to all outward seeming, was in a land-deal as dull as a ditcher. Wickersham spread out before him maps and plats showing that he owned surveys which overlapped those under which the old man claimed.
"Don't you see my patents are older than yours?"
"Looks so," said the old man, calmly. "But patents is somethin' like folks: they may be too old."
The young man tried another line.
The land was of no special value, he told him; he only wanted to quiet their titles, etc. But the squire not only refused to sell an acre at the prices offered him, he would place no other price whatever on it.
In fact, he did not want to sell. He had bought the land for mountain pasture, and he didn't know about these railroads and mines and such like. Phrony would have it after his death, and she could do what she wished with it after he was dead and gone.
"He is a fool!" thought Wickersham, and set Phrony to work on him; but the old fellow was obdurate. He kissed Phrony for her wheedling, but told her that women-folks didn't understand about business. So Wickersham had to leave without getting the lands.
* * * * *
The influx of strangers was so great now at Gumbolt that there was a stream of vehicles running between a point some miles beyond Eden, which the railroad had reached, and Gumbolt. Wagons, ambulances, and other vehicles of a nondescript character on good days crowded the road, filling the mountain pass with the cries and oaths of their drivers and the rumbling and rattling of their wheels, and filling Mr. Gilsey's soul with disgust. But the vehicle of honor was still "Gilsey's stage." It carried the mail and some of the express, had the best team in the mountains, and was known as the "reg'lar." On bad nights the road was a little less crowded. And it was a bad night that Ferdy Wickersham took for his journey to Gumbolt.
Keith had been elected marshal, but had appointed Dave Dennison his deputy, and on inclement nights Keith still occasionally relieved Tim Gilsey, for in such weather the old man was sometimes too stiff to climb up to his box.
"The way to know people," said the old driver to him, "is to travel on the road with 'em. There is many a man decent enough to pass for a church deacon; git him on the road, and you see he is a hog, and not of no improved breed at that. He wants to gobble everything": an observation that Keith had some opportunity to verify.
Terpsichore appeared suddenly to have a good deal of business over in Eden, and had been on the stage several times of late when Keith was driving it, and almost always took the box-seat. This had occurred often enough for some of his acquaintances in Gumbolt to rally him about it.
"You will have to look out for Mr. Bluffy again," they said. "He's run J. Quincy off the track, and he's still in the ring. He's layin' low; but that's the time to watch a mountain cat. He's on your track."
Mr. Plume, who was always very friendly with Keith, declared that it was not Bluffy, but Keith, who had run him off the track. "It's a case where virtue has had its reward," he said to Keith. "You have overthrown more than your enemy, Orlando. You have captured the prize we were all trying for. Take the goods the gods provide, and while you live, live. The epicurean is the only true philosopher. Come over and have a cocktail? No? Do you happen to have a dollar about your old clothes? I have not forgotten that I owe you a little account; but you are the only man of soul in this--Gehenna except myself, and I'd rather owe you ten dollars than any other man living."
Keith's manner more than his words shut up most of his teasers. Nothing would shut up J. Quincy Plume.
Keith always treated Terpsichore with all the politeness he would have shown to any lady. He knew that she was now his friend, and he had conceived a sincere liking for her. She was shy and very quiet when a passenger on his stage, ready to do anything he asked, obedient to any suggestion he gave her.
It happened that, the night Wickersham chose for his trip to Gumbolt, Keith had relieved old Gilsey, and he found her at the Eden end of the route among his passengers. She had just arrived from Gumbolt by another vehicle and was now going straight back. As Keith came around, the young woman was evidently preparing to take the box-seat. He was conscious of a feeling of embarrassment, which was not diminished by the fact that Jake Dennison, his old pupil, was also going over. Jake as well as Dave was now living at Gumbolt. Jake was in all the splendor of a black coat and a gilded watch-chain, for he had been down to the Ridge to see Miss Euphronia Tripper.
It had been a misty day, and toward evening the mist had changed into a drizzle.
Keith said to Terpsichore, with some annoyance:
"You had better go inside. It's going to be a bad night."
A slight change came over her face, and she hesitated. But when he insisted, she said quietly, "Very well."
As the passengers were about to take their seats in the coach, a young man enveloped in a heavy ulster came hurriedly out of the hotel, followed by a servant with several bags in his hands, and pushed hastily into the group, who were preparing to enter the coach in a more leisurely fashion. His hat partly concealed his face, but something about him called up memories to Keith that were not wholly pleasant. When he reached the coach door Jake Dennison and another man were just on the point of helping in one of the women. The young man squeezed in between them.
"I beg your pardon," he said.
The two men stood aside at the polite tone, and the other stepped into the stage and took the back seat, where he proceeded to make himself comfortable in a corner. This, perhaps, might have passed but for the presence of the women. Woman at this mountain Eden was at a premium, as she was in the first.
Jake Dennison and his friend both asserted promptly that there was no trouble about three of the ladies getting back seats, and Jake, putting his head in at the door, said briefly:
"Young man, there are several ladies out here. You will have to give up that seat."
As there was no response to this, he put his head in again.
"Didn't you hear? I say there are some ladies out here. You will have to take another seat."
To this the occupant of the stage replied that he had paid for his seat; but there were plenty of other seats that they could have. This was repeated on the outside, and thereupon one of the women said she supposed they would have to take one of the other seats.
Women do not know the power of surrender. This surrender had no sooner been made than every man outside was her champion.
"You will ride on that back seat to Gumbolt to-night, or I'll ride in Jim Digger's hearse. I am layin' for him anyhow." The voice was Jake Dennison's.
"And I'll ride with him. Stand aside, Jake, and let me git in there. I'll yank him out," said his friend.
But Jake was not prepared to yield to any one the honor of "yanking." Jake had just been down to Squire Rawson's, and this young man was none other than Mr. Ferdy Wickersham. He had been there, too.
Jake had left with vengeance in his heart, and this was his opportunity. He was just entering the stage head foremost, when the occupant of the coveted seat decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and announced that he would give up the seat, thereby saving Keith the necessity of intervening, which he was about to do.
The ejected tenant was so disgruntled that he got out of the stage, and, without taking any further notice of the occupants, called up to know if there was a seat outside.
"Yes. Let me give you a hand," said Gordon, leaning down and helping him up. "How are you?"
Wickersham looked at him quickly as he reached the boot.
"Hello! You here?" The rest of his sentence was a malediction on the barbarians in the coach below and a general consignment of them all to a much warmer place than the boot of the Gumbolt stage.
"What are you doing here?" Wickersham asked.
"I am driving the stage."
"Regularly?" There was something in the tone and look that made Keith wish to say no, but he said doggedly:
"I have done it regularly, and was glad to get the opportunity."
He was conscious of a certain change in Wickersham's manner toward him.
As they drove along he asked Wickersham about Norman and his people, but the other answered rather curtly.
Norman had married.
"Yes." Keith had heard that. "He married Miss Caldwell, didn't he? She was a very pretty girl."
"What do you know about here?" Wickersham asked. His tone struck Keith.
"Oh, I met her once. I suppose they are very much in love with each other?"
Wickersham gave a short laugh. "In love with Norman! Women don't fall in love with a lump of ice."
"I do not think he is a lump of ice," said Keith, firmly.
Wickersham did not answer at first, then he said sharply:
"Well, she's worth a thousand of him. She married him for his money. Certainly not for his brains."
"Norman has brains--as much as any one I know," defended Keith.
"You think so!"
Keith remembered a certain five minutes out behind the stables at Elphinstone.
He wanted to ask Wickersham about another girl who was uppermost in his thoughts, but something restrained him. He could not bear to hear her name on his lips. By a curious coincidence, Wickersham suddenly said: "You used to teach at old Rawson's. Did you ever meet a girl named Yorke--Alice Yorke? She was down this way once."
Keith said that he had met "Miss Yorke." He had met her at Ridgely Springs and also in New York. He was glad that it was dark, and that Wickersham could not see his face. "A very pretty girl," he hazarded as a leader, now that the subject was broached.
"Yes, rather. Going abroad--title-hunting."
"I don't expect Miss Yorke cares about a title," said Keith, stiffly.
"Mamma does. Failing that, she wants old Lancaster and perquisites."
"Who does? Why, Mr. Lancaster is old enough to be her father!"
"Pile's old, too," said Wickersham, dryly.
"She doesn't care about that either," said Keith, shortly.
"Oh, doesn't she! You know her mother?"
"No; I don't believe she does. Whatever her mother is, she is a fine, high-minded girl."
Ferdy gave a laugh which might have meant anything. It made Keith hot all over. Keith, fearing to trust himself further, changed the subject and asked after the Rawsons, Wickersham having mentioned that he had been staying with them.
"Phrony is back at home, I believes She has been off to school. I hear she is very much improved?"
"I don't know; I didn't notice her particularly," said Wickersham, indifferently.
"She is very pretty. Jake Dennison thinks so," laughed Keith.
"Jake Dennison? Who is he?"
"He's an old scholar of mine. He is inside now on the front seat; one of your friends."
"Oh, that's the fellow! I thought I had seen him before. Well, he had better try some other stock, I guess. He may find that cornered. She is not going to take a clod like that."
Wickersham went off into a train of reflection.
"I say, Keith," he began unexpectedly, "maybe, you can help me about a matter, and if so I will make it worth your while."
"About what matter?" asked Keith, wondering.
"Why, about that old dolt Rawson's land. You see, the governor has got himself rather concerned. When he got this property up here in the mountains and started to build the railroad, some of these people here got wind of it. That fool, Rhodes, talked about it too much, and they bought up the lands around the old man's property. They think the governor has got to buy 'em out. Old Rawson is the head of 'em. The governor sent Halbrook down to get it; but Halbrook is a fool, too. He let him know he wanted to buy him out, and, of course, he raised. You and he used to be very thick. He was talking of you the other night."
"He and I are great friends. I have a great regard for him, and a much higher opinion of his sense than you appear to have. He is a very shrewd man."
"Shrewd the deuce! He's an old blockhead. He has stumbled into the possession of some property which I am ready to pay him a fair price for. He took it for a cow-pasture. It isn't worth anything. It would only be a convenience to us to have it and prevent a row in the future, perhaps. That is the only reason I want it. Besides, his title to it ain't worth a ----, anyhow. We have patents that antedate his. You can tell him that the land is not worth anything. I will give you a good sum if you get him to name a price at, say, fifty per cent. on what he gave for it. I know what he gave for it. You can tell him it ain't worth anything to him and that his title is faulty."
"No, I could not," said Keith, shortly.
"Why not?"
"Because I think it is very valuable and his title perfect. And he knows it."
Wickersham glanced at him in the dusk.
"It isn't valuable at all," he said after a pause. "I will give you a good fee if you will get through a deal for it at any price we may agree on. Come!"
"No," said Keith; "not for all the money you own. My advice to you is to go to Squire Rawson and either offer to take him in with you to the value of his lands, or else make him a direct offer for what those lands are really worth. He knows as much about the value of those lands as you or Mr. Halbrook or any one else knows. Take my word for it."
"Rats!" ejaculated Wickersham, briefly. "I tell you what," he added presently: "if he don't sell us that land he'll never get a cent out of it. No one else will ever take it. We have him cornered. We've got the land above him, and the water, too, and, what is more, his title is not worth a damn!"
"Well, that is his lookout. I expect you will find him able to take care of himself."
Wickersham gave a grunt, then he asked Keith suddenly:
"Do you know a man named Plume over there at Gumbolt?"
"Yes," said Keith; "he runs the paper there."
"Yes; that's he. What sort of a man is he?"
Keith gave a brief estimate of Mr. Plume: "You will see him and can judge for yourself."
"I always do," said Wickersham, briefly. "Know anybody can work him? The governor and he fell out some time ago, but I want to get hold of him."
Keith thought he knew one who might influence Mr. Plume; but he did not mention the name or sex.
"Who is that woman inside?" demanded Wickersham. "I mean the young one, with the eyes."
"They call her Terpsichore. She keeps the dance-hall."
"Friend of yours?"
"Yes." Keith spoke shortly.
The stage presently began to descend Hellstreak Hill, which Keith mentioned as the scene of the robbery which old Tim Gilsey had told him of. As it swung down the long descent, with the lights of the lamps flashing on the big tree-tops, and with the roar of the rushing water below them coming up as it boiled over the rocks, Wickersham conceived a higher opinion of Keith than he had had before, and he mentally resolved that the next time he came over that road he would make the trip in the daytime. They had just crossed the little creek which dashed over the rocks toward the river, and had begun to ascend another hill, when Wickersham, who had been talking about his drag, was pleased to have Keith offer him the reins. He took them with some pride, and Keith dived down into the boot. When he sat up again he had a pistol in his hand.
"It was just about here that that 'hold-up' occurred."
"Suppose they should try to hold you up now, what would you do?" asked Wickersham.
"Oh, I don't think there is any danger now," said Keith. "I have driven over here at all hours and in all weathers. We are getting too civilized for that now, and most of the express comes over in a special wagon. It's only the mail and small packages that come on this stage."
"But if they should?" demanded Wickersham.
"Well, I suppose I'd whip up my horses and cut for it," said Keith.
"I wouldn't," asserted Wickersham. "I'd like to see any man make me run when I have a gun in my pocket."
Suddenly, as if in answer to his boast, there was a flash in the road, and the report of a pistol under the very noses of the leaders, which made them swerve aside with a rattling of the swingle-bars, and twist the stage sharply over to the side of the road. At the same instant a dark figure was seen in the dim light which the lamp threw on the road, close beside one of the horses, and a voice was heard:
"I've got you now, ---- you!"
It was all so sudden that Wickersham had not time to think. It seemed to him like a scene in a play rather than a reality. He instinctively shortened the reins and pulled up the frightened horses. Keith seized the reins with one band and snatched at the whip with the other; but it was too late. Wickersham, hardly conscious of what he was doing, was clutching the reins with all his might, trying to control the leaders, whilst pandemonium broke out inside, cries from the women and oaths from the men.
There was another volley of oaths and another flash, and Wickersham felt a sharp little burn on the arm next Keith.
"Hold on!" he shouted. "For God's sake, don't shoot! Hold on! Stop the horses!"
[Illustration: Sprang over the edge of the road into the thick bushes below.]
At the same moment Keith disappeared over the wheel. He had fallen or sprung from his seat.
"The ---- coward!" thought Wickersham. "He is running."
The next second there was a report of a pistol close beside the stage, and the man in the road at the horses' heads fired again. Another report, and Keith dashed forward into the light of the lantern and charged straight at the robber, who fired once more, and then, when Keith was within ten feet of him, turned and sprang over the edge of the road into the thick bushes below. Keith sprang straight after him, and the two went crashing through the underbrush, down the steep side of the hill.
The inmates of the stage poured out into the road, all talking together, and Wickersham, with the aid of Jake Dennison, succeeded in quieting the horses. The noise of the flight and the pursuit had now grown more distant, but once more several shots were heard, deep down in the woods, and then even they ceased.
It had all happened so quickly that the passengers had seen nothing. They demanded of Wickersham how many robbers there were. They were divided in their opinion as to the probable outcome. The men declared that Keith had probably got the robber if he had not been killed himself at the last fire.
Terpsichore was in a passion of rage because the men had not jumped out instantly to Keith's rescue, and one of them had held her in the stage and prevented her from poking her head out to see the fight. In the light of the lantern Wickersham observed that she was handsome. He watched her with interest. There was something of the tiger in her lithe movement. She declared that she was going down into the woods herself to find Keith. She was sure he had been killed.
The men protested against this, and Jake Dennison and another man started to the rescue, whilst a grizzled, weather-beaten fellow caught and held her.
"Why, my darlint, I couldn't let you go down there. Why, you'd ruin your new bonnet," he said.
The young woman snatched the bonnet from her head and slung it in his face.
"You coward! Do you think I care for a bonnet when the best man in Gumbolt may be dying down in them woods?"
With a cuff on the ear as the man burst out laughing and put his hand on her to soothe her, she turned and darted over the bank into the woods. Fortunately for the rest of her apparel, which must have suffered as much as the dishevelled bonnet,--which the grizzled miner had picked up and now held in his hand as carefully as if it were one of the birds which ornamented it,--some one was heard climbing up through the bushes toward the road a little distance ahead.
The men stepped forward and waited, each one with his hand in the neighborhood of his belt, whilst the women instinctively fell to the rear. The next moment Keith appeared over the edge of the road. As he stepped into the light it was seen that his face was bleeding and that his left arm hung limp at his side.
The men called to Terpy to come back: that Keith was there. A moment later she emerged from the bushes and clambered up the bank.
"Did you get him?" was the first question she asked.
"No." Keith gave the girl a swift glance, and turning quietly, he asked one of the men to help him off with his coat. In the light of the lamp he had a curious expression on his white face.
"Terpy was that skeered about you, she swore she was goin' down there to help you," said the miner who still held the hat.
A box on the ear from the young woman stopped whatever further observation he was going to make.
"Shut up. Don't you see he's hurt?" She pushed away the man who was helping Keith off with his coat, and took his place.
No one who had seen her as she relieved Keith of the coat and with dexterous fingers, which might have been a trained nurse's, cut away the bloody shirt-sleeve, would have dreamed that she was the virago who, a few moments before, had been raging in the road, swearing like a trooper, and cuffing men's ears.
When the sleeve was removed it was found that Keith's arm was broken just above the elbow, and the blood was pouring from two small wounds. Terpy levied imperiously on the other passengers for handkerchiefs; then, not waiting for their contributions, suddenly lifting her skirt, whipped off a white petticoat, and tore it into strips. She soon had the arm bound up, showing real skill in her surgery. Once she whispered a word in his ear--a single name. Keith remained silent, but she read his answer, and went on with her work with a grim look on her face. Then Keith mounted his box against the remonstrances of every one, and the passengers having reentered the stage, Wickersham drove on into Gumbolt. His manner was more respectful to Keith than it had ever been before.
Within a half-hour after their arrival the sheriff and his party, with Dave Dennison at the head of the posse, were on their horses, headed for the scene of the "hold-up." Dave could have had half of Gumbolt for posse had he desired it. They attempted to get some information from Keith as to the appearance of the robber; but Keith failed to give any description by which one man might have been distinguished from the rest of the male sex.
"Could they expect a man to take particular notice of how another looked under such circumstances? He looked like a pretty big man."
Wickersham was able to give a more explicit description.
The pursuers returned a little after sunrise next morning without having found the robber. _