the fools need not be hurt—it is only to march to the music. The man bent one leg and rested upon his knee to readjust the hot, black mask that covered his face. He peered down the road again. The stage must be half up the last slope. It was out of sight, but the snap of the whip came to his ears as a signal.
"Betty," he whispered close to the barrel, and got on his feet. Against the trunk of the dusty oak a man crouched, with his finger on the trigger of a gun. A stage rocked into view with two betting men, a pale little woman, and a Wells Fargo messen ger, who sat on the box.
"Halt."
The horses came back on their haunches, the leaders in air.
Betty's steel-rimmed mouth had covered the crowd.
"Throw out your express box and unload your passengers."
Three men and a woman lined along the roadside with their hands to the sky, and a green, brass-handled box lay in the dust.
"Out with your horses, my hearty, and line up."
The nerve of one man can undo the natural and customary methods of four of his fellows. The driver took his team to the rear of his passengers, and Billy stepped to the front with Betty as steady as became a woman-of-war.
He ran his eye over the men. It would be time to release the woman when danger was past.
"Fall to on that box," Billy directed. He signaled a man of generous mold and ample manner, and the gentleman stood in his tracks.
"Two," said Billy. "One—"
But the man was in the middle of the road, willing and toolless. An axe was dragged from the stage, and he sent the hot fury of his anger into the strokes of the steel.
"Cut the mail pouches," came the next order, and the messenger writhed under cover as he ripped with his knife.
At that moment fell the certain distant sound of approaching horses. Heaven knows there was need of haste, and Billy stood over with curses to emphasize the vigor of his threats.
Sweat fell from the men as he turned to the woman.
"Into the——" Billy began,—and Rudy was looking up at him! Rudy with face like chalk, and the soul of her broken and bleeding.
