"But the trail?"

"There is but one entrance to it,--the way you came, and that is guarded too. From the time you entered it until you reached the bottom, you were signaled here from point to point! HE would have been dropped! I merely gave YOU a hint of what might have happened to you, if you were up to any little game! You took it like a white man. Come, now! What is your business?"

Thus challenged, Brice plunged with youthful hopefulness into his plan; if, as he voiced it, it seemed to him a little extravagant, he was buoyed up by the frankness of the highwayman, who also had treated the double robbery with a levity that seemed almost as extravagant. He suggested that they should work together to recover the money; that the express company should know that the unprecedented stealthy introduction of robbers in the guise of pa.s.sengers was not Snapshot Harry's method, and he repudiated it as unmanly and unsportsmanlike; and that, by using his superior skill and knowledge of the locality to recover the money and deliver the culprit into the company's hands, he would not only earn the reward that they should offer, but that he would evoke a sentiment that all Californians would understand and respect. The highwayman listened with a tolerant smile, but, to Brice's surprise, this appeal to his vanity touched him less than the prospective punishment of the thief.

"It would serve the d----d hound right," he muttered, "if, instead of being shot like a man, he was made to 'do time' in prison, like the ordinary sneak thief that he is." When Brice had concluded, he said briefly, "The only trouble with your plans, my young friend, is that about twenty-five men have got to consider them, and have THEIR say about it. Every man in my gang is a shareholder in these greenbacks, for I work on the square; and it's for him to say whether he'll give them up for a reward and the good opinion of the express company. Perhaps," he went on, with a peculiar smile, "it's just as well that you tried it on me first! However, I'll sound the boys, and see what comes of it, but not until you're safe off the premises."

"And you'll let me a.s.sist you?" said Brice eagerly.

Snapshot Harry smiled again. "Well, if you come across the d----d thief, and you recognize him and can get the greenbacks from him, I'll pa.s.s over the game to you." He rose and added, apparently by way of farewell, "Perhaps it's just as well that I should give you a guide part of the way to prevent accidents." He went to a door leading to an adjoining room, and called "Flo!"

Brice's heart leaped! If he had forgotten her in the excitement of his interview, he atoned for it by a vivid blush. Her own color was a little heightened as she slipped into the room, but the two managed to look demurely at each other, without a word of recognition.

"This is my niece, Flora," said Snapshot Harry, with a slight wave of the hand that was by no means uncourtly, "and her company will keep you from any impertinent questioning as well as if I were with you. This is Mr. Brice, Flo, who came to see me on business, and has quite forgotten my practical joking."

The girl acknowledged Brice's bow with a shyness very different from her manner of the evening before. Brice felt embarra.s.sed and evidently showed it, for his host, with a smile, put an end to the constraint by shaking the young man's hand heartily, bidding him good-by, and accompanying him to the door.

Once on their way, Mr. Brice's spirits returned. "I told you last night," he said, "that I hoped to meet you the next time with a better introduction. You suggested your uncle's. Well, are you satisfied?"

"But you didn't come to see ME," said the girl mischievously.

"How do you know what my intentions were?" returned the young man gayly, gazing at the girl's charming face with a serious doubt as to the singleness of his own intentions.

"Oh, because I know," she answered, with a toss of her brown head. "I heard what you said to uncle Harry."

Mr. Brice's brow contracted. "Perhaps you saw me, too, when I came," he said, with a slight touch of bitterness as he thought of his reception.

Miss Flo laughed. Brice walked on silently; the girl was heartless and worthy of her education. After a pause she said demurely, "I knew he wouldn't hurt you--but YOU didn't. That's where you showed your grit in walking straight on."

"And I suppose you were greatly amused," he replied scornfully.

The girl lifted her arms a little wearily, as with a half sigh she readjusted her brown braids under her uncle's gray slouch hat, which she had caught up as she pa.s.sed out. "Thar ain't much to laugh at here!" she said. "But it was mighty funny when you tried to put your hat straight, and then found thur was that bullet hole right through the brim! And the way you stared at it--Lordy!"

Her musical laugh was infectious, and swept away his outraged dignity.

He laughed too. At last she said, gazing at his hat, "It won't do for you to go back to your folks wearin' that sort o' thing. Here! Take mine!" With a saucy movement she audaciously lifted his hat from his head, and placed her own upon it.

"But this is your uncle's hat," he remonstrated.

"All the same; he spoiled yours," she laughed, adjusting his hat upon her own head. "But I'll keep yours to remember you by. I'll loop it up by this hole, and it'll look mighty purty. Jes' see!" She plucked a wild rose from a bush by the wayside, and, pa.s.sing the stalk through the bullet hole, pinned the brim against the crown by a thorn. "There," she said, putting on the hat again with a little affectation of coquetry, "how's that?"

Mr. Brice thought it very picturesque and becoming to the graceful head and laughing eyes beneath it, and said so. Then, becoming in his turn audacious, he drew nearer to her side.

"I suppose you know the forfeit of putting on a gentleman's hat?"

Apparently she did, for she suddenly made a warning gesture, and said, "Not here! It would be a bigger forfeit than you'd keer fo'." Before he could reply she turned aside as if quite innocently, and pa.s.sed into the shade of a fringe of buckeyes. He followed quickly. "I didn't mean that," she said; but in the mean time he had kissed the pink tip of her ear under its brown coils. He was, nevertheless, somewhat discomfited by her undisturbed manner and serene face. "Ye don't seem to mind bein'

shot at," she said, with an odd smile, "but it won't do for you to kalkilate that EVERYBODY shoots as keerfully as uncle Harry."

"I don't understand," he replied, struck by her manner.

"Ye ain't very complimentary, or you'd allow that other folks might be wantin' what you took just now, and might consider you was poachin',"

she returned gravely. "My best and strongest holt among those men is that uncle Harry would kill the first one who tried anything like that on--and they know it. That's how I get all the liberty I want here, and can come and go alone as I like."

Brice's face flushed quickly with genuine shame and remorse. "Do forgive me," he said hurriedly. "I didn't think--I'm a brute and a fool!"

"Uncle Harry allowed you was either drunk or a born idiot when you was promenadin' into the valley just now," she said, with a smile.

"And what did you think?" he asked a little uneasily.

"I thought you didn't look like a drinkin' man," she answered audaciously.

Brice bit his lip and walked on silently, at which she cast a sidelong glance under her widely s.p.a.ced heavy lashes and said demurely, "I thought last night it was mighty good for you to stand up for your frien' Yuba Bill, and then, after ye knew who I was, to let the folks see you kinder cottoned to me too. Not in the style o' that land-grabber Heckshill, nor that peart newspaper man, neither. Of course I gave them as good as they sent," she went on, with a little laugh, but Brice could see that her sensitive lip in profile had the tremulous and resentful curve of one who was accustomed to slight and annoyance. Was it possible that this reckless, self-contained girl felt her position keenly?

"I am proud to have your good opinion," he said, with a certain respect mingled with his admiring glance, "even if I have not your uncle's."

"Oh, he likes you well enough, or he wouldn't have hearkened to you a minute," she said quickly. "When you opened out about them greenbacks, I jes' clutched my cheer SO," she ill.u.s.trated her words with a gesture of her hands, and her face actually seemed to grow pale at the recollection,--"and I nigh started up to stop ye; but that idea of Yuba Bill bein' robbed TWICE I think tickled him awful. But it was lucky none o' the gang heard ye or suspected anything. I reckon that's why he sent me with you,--to keep them from d.o.g.g.i.n' you and askin' questions that a straight man like you would be sure to answer. But they daren't come nigh ye as long as I'm with you!" She threw back her head and rose-crested hat with a mock air of protection that, however, had a certain real pride in it.

"I am very glad of that, if it gives me the chance of having your company alone," returned Brice, smiling, "and very grateful to your uncle, whatever were his reasons for making you my guide. But you have already been that to me," and he told her of the footprints. "But for you," he added, with gentle significance, "I should not have been here."

She was silent for a moment, and he could only see the back of her head and its heavy brown coils. After a pause she asked abruptly, "Where's your handkerchief?"

He took it from his pocket; her ingenious uncle's bullet had torn rather than pierced the cambric.

"I thought so," she said, gravely examining it, "but I kin mend it as good as new. I reckon you allow I can't sew," she continued, "but I do heaps of mendin', as the digger squaw and Chinamen we have here do only the coa.r.s.er work. I'll send it back to you, and meanwhiles you keep mine."

She drew a handkerchief from her pocket and handed it to him. To his great surprise it was a delicate one, beautifully embroidered, and utterly incongruous to her station. The idea that flashed upon him, it is to be feared, showed itself momentarily in his hesitation and embarra.s.sment.

She gave a quick laugh. "Don't be frightened. It's bought and paid for.

Uncle Harry don't touch pa.s.sengers' fixin's; that ain't his style.

You oughter know that." Yet in spite of her laugh, he could see the sensitive pout of her lower lip.

"I was only thinking," he said hurriedly and sympathetically, "that it was too fine for me. But I will be proud to keep it as a souvenir of you. It's not too pretty for THAT!"

"Uncle gets me these things. He don't keer what they cost," she went on, ignoring the compliment. "Why, I've got awfully fine gowns up there that I only wear when I go to Marysville oncet in a while."

"Does he take you there?" asked Brice.

"No!" she answered quietly. "Not"--a little defiantly--"that he's afeard, for they can't prove anything against him; no man kin swear to him, and thar ain't an officer that keers to go for him. But he's that shy for ME he don't keer to have me mixed with him."

"But n.o.body recognizes you?"

"Sometimes--but I don't keer for that." She c.o.c.ked her hat a little audaciously, but Brice noticed that her arms afterwards dropped at her side with the same weary gesture he had observed before. "Whenever I go into shops it's always 'Yes, miss,' and 'No, miss,' and 'Certainly, Miss Dimwood.' Oh, they're mighty respectful. I reckon they allow that Snapshot Harry's rifle carries far."

Presently she faced him again, for their conversation had been carried on in profile. There was a critical, searching look in her brown eyes.

"Here I'm talkin' to you as if you were one"--Mr. Brice was positive she was going to say "one of the gang," but she hesitated and concluded, "one of my relations--like cousin Hiram."

"I wish you would think of me as being as true a friend," said the young man earnestly.