“Why, what’s the matter with you fellers anyhow?” David demanded. “One of you grabs leather and the other a gun as if you thought you were about to be held up and was ready to shoot on sight.”

The driver and the express messenger grinned at each other and the latter rested his shotgun between his legs and as he reached for tobacco remarked, “Reckon you ain’t heard the news, pardner. It’s just two days ago since this same stage was stuck up almost on this exact spot. Right down there at the next bend, in fact, a hundred yards from here. I wasn’t along, but Bill here had no chance to put up a fight. Road agent got away with the treasure box.”

“Well, I’ll be hanged!” David exclaimed as if incredulous. “Who’d of thought it! Reckon that’s the first holdup around here for as much as ten years, ain’t it? How much did the feller get away with?”

“Only one package with seventy-five hundred dollars in it,” the messenger answered. “But the worst of it is the sheriffs don’t seem to have any idea at all who did it. They came up here within two hours, scouted around down there at the point, picked up the robber’s trail and followed it clean up to the bare top of the ridge, got another little patch of it a half mile farther along and followed it down into the road and there it was lost. The feller was simply turning back toward Wallula Camp and for all that anybody knows may be there right now.”

“Didn’t bother the passengers, eh?” David asked thoughtfully.

“Wasn’t any, same as now,” the driver informed him. “And this gink was wise enough, too, so that he didn’t bother the United States mail. Didn’t want Uncle Samuel on his train along with the express company’s men and the regular officers, I reckon. But—by gosh! He knew how! Just like old times, it was! And me takin’ no chances, either. You can bet your head on that!”

“I can, Bill! I can!” David agreed, with a sarcasm that was wasted on the knight of the ribbons. “But what I stopped you for was to get you to mail this package of letters for me when you get down to the other end. Reason I happened to come here was that it’s just about seventeen miles less than carrying them into Wallula.”

The messenger reached down and took the letters, the driver remarked that he must be “gittin’ along” and then as he released the brake called over his shoulder facetiously, “If we get stuck up I’ll hand these over too. Reckon they ain’t worth as much as that seventy-five-hundred-dollar package the stick-up got and that had been shipped by 

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