Treasure and Trouble Therewith | Page 2

energy in
the universal torpor. From it came the rhythmic beat of flying hoofs
and the jingle of harness. It was the Rocky Bar stage, up from Shilo
through Plymouth, across the Mother Lode and then in a steep,
straining grade on to Antelope and Rocky Bar, camps nestling in the
mountain gorges. It was making time now against the slow climb later,
the four horses racing, the reins loose on their backs.

There was only one passenger; the others had been dropped at towns
along the route. He sat on the front seat beside Jim Bailey the driver,
his feet on a pine box and a rifle across his knees. He and Jim Bailey
knew each other well, for he had often come that way, always with his
box and his rifle. He was Wells Fargo's messenger and his name was
Danny Leonard. In the box at his feet were twelve thousand dollars in
coin to be delivered that night to the Greenhide Mine at Antelope.
With nothing of interest in sight, talk between them was desultory. Jim
Bailey thought they'd take on some men at Plymouth when they
stopped there to victual up. The messenger, squinting at the swimming
yellow distance, yawned and said it might be a good thing, nobody
knew when Knapp and Garland would get busy again. They'd failed in
the holdup of the Rockville stage last spring and it was about time to
hear from them--the road after you passed Plymouth was pretty
lonesome. Jim Bailey snorted contemptuously and spat over the
wheel--he guessed Knapp and Garland weren't liable to bother him.
After this the conversation dropped. The stifling heat, the whirling dust
clouds broken by whiffs of air, dry as from a kiln and impregnated with
the pungent scent of the tarweed, made the men drowsy. Jim Bailey
nodded, the reins drawing slack between his fingers. Leonard slipped
the rifle from his knees to the floor and relaxed against the back of the
seat. Through half-shut lids he watched the whitened crests of the
Sierra brushed on the turquoise sky.
The horses clattered down a gulley and galloped across a wooden
bridge that spanned a dead watercourse. The ascent was steep and they
took it at a rush, backs humped, necks stretched, hoofs clattering
among loosened stones.
A sudden breeze carried their dust ahead, and for a moment the
prospect was obscured, the trees that filled the gulley, bunched at the
summit into a thicket, just discernible in foggy outline. The horses had
gained the level, Jim Bailey, who knew the road in his sleep, had
cheered them with a familiar chirrup, when the leaders stopped,
recoiling in a clatter of slackened harness on the wheelers. The stage
came to a halt so violent that Jim Bailey lurched forward against the

splashboard, the reins jerked out of his hands. He did not know what
had happened, could see nothing but the horses' backs, jammed
together, lines and traces slapping about their flanks.
Afterward, describing it at Mormons Landing, he laid it all to the dust.
In that first moment of surprise he hadn't made out the men, and
anyway who'd have expected it--on the open road in the full of the
afternoon? You couldn't put any blame on him, sprawled on his knees,
the whole thing coming so quick. When he picked himself up he looked
into the muzzle of a revolver and saw behind it a head, only the eyes
showing between the hat brim and a gunny sack tied round the lower
part of the face.
After that it all went so swift you couldn't hardly tell. He didn't even
then know there were two of them--heard the feller at the wheel say,
"Hands up," and thought that was all there was to it--when the one at
the horses' heads fired. Leonard had given an oath and reached for his
gun, and right with that the report came, and Leonard heaved up with a
sort of grunt, and then settled and was still. The other feller came along
down through the dust, and Jim Bailey, paralyzed, with his hands up,
knew Knapp and Garland had got him at last.
The one at the wheel kept him covered while the other pulled out the
box. He could see him plain, all but his face, a big powerful chap,
shoulders on him like a prize fighter's, and freckled hands covered with
red hair. He got the box out with a jerk and dropped it, and then,
snatching up a stick, struck the near wheeler a blow on the flank and
jumped back into the bushes.
The horses started, mad, like they were locoed; it was a wonder the
stage wasn't upset, racing this way and that, up the bank and down on
the other side.