eye! Gewhillikins! Why, darn my skin, the other day when we war watering
at Webster's, he got down and passed in front of the off-leader,--that
yer pinto colt that's bin accustomed to injins, grizzlies, and buffalo,
and I'm bless ef, when her eye tackled his, ef she didn't jist git up
and rar round that I reckoned I'd hev to go down and take them blinders
off from HER eyes and clap on HIS." "But he paid the money, and is
entitled to his seat," persisted Thatcher. "Mebbe he is--in the office
of the Kempeny," growled Yuba Bill; "but it's time some folks knowed
that out in the plains I run this yer team myself."--A fact which was
self-evident to most of the passengers. "I suppose his authority is
as absolute on this dreary waste as a ship captain's in mid ocean,"
exclaimed Thatcher to the baleful-eyed stranger. Mr. Wiles--whom the
reader has recognized--assented with the public side of his face, but
looked vengeance at Yuba Bill with the other, while Thatcher, innocent
of the presence of one of his worst enemies, placated Bill so far as
to restore Wiles to his rights. Wiles thanked him. "Shall I have
the pleasure of your company far?" Wiles asked insinuatingly. "To
Washington," replied Thatcher frankly. "Washington is a gay city during
the session," again suggested the stranger. "I'm going on business,"
said Thatcher bluntly.
A trifling incident occurred at Pine-Tree Crossing which did not
heighten Yuba Bill's admiration of the stranger. As Bill opened the
double-locked box in the "boot" of the coach--sacred to Wells, Fargo &
Co.'s Express and the Overland Company's treasures--Mr. Wiles perceived
a small, black morocco portemanteau among the parcels. "Ah, you carry
baggage there too?" he said sweetly. "Not often," responded Yuba Bill
shortly. "Ah, this then contains valuables?" "It belongs to that man
whose seat you've got," said Yuba Bill, who, for insulting purposes
of his own, preferred to establish the fiction that Wiles was an
interloper; "and ef he reckons, in a sorter mixed kempeny like this,
to lock up his portmantle, I don't know who's business it is. Who?"
|