The old lady trembled, and felt for her pocketbook, and raised her vail.  The colonel looked into her face, slammed the stage-door, and, sitting down on the hub of one of the wheels, stared vacantly into space.

“Nothin’?” queried Perkins, in a whisper, and with a face full of genuine sympathy.

“No—­yes,” said the colonel, dreamily.  “That is, untie em and let the stage go ahead,” he continued, springing to his feet. “I’ll hurry back to the cabin.”

[Illustration]

And the colonel dashed into the bushes, and left his followers so paralyzed with astonishment, that Old Black afterward remarked that, “ef ther’d ben anybody to hold the hosses, he could hev cleaned out the hull crowd with his whip.”

The passengers, now relieved of their weapons, were unbound, and allowed to re-enter the stage, and the door was slammed, upon which Old Black picked up his reins as coolly as if he had merely laid them down at the station while horses were being changed; then he cracked his whip, and the stage rolled off, while the colonel’s party hastened back to their hut, fondly inspecting as they went certain flasks they had obtained while transacting their business with the occupants of the stage.

Great was the surprise of the road-agents as they entered their hut, for there stood the colonel in a clean white shirt, and in a suit of clothing made up from the limited spare wardrobes of the other members of the gang.

But the suspicious Cranks speedily subordinated his wonder to his prudence, as, laying on the table a watch, two pistols, a pocket-book, and a heavy purse, he exclaimed: 

“Come, colonel, bizness before pleasure; let’s divide an’ scatter.  Ef anybody should hear ‘bout it, an’ find our trail, an’ ketch us with the traps in our possession, they might—­”

“Divide yerselves!” said the colonel, with abruptness and a great oath. “I don’t want none of it.”

“Colonel,” said Perkins, removing his own domino, and looking anxiously into the leader’s face, “be you sick?  Here’s some bully brandy I found in one of the passengers’ pockets.”

“I hain’t nothin’,” replied the colonel.  “I’m a-goin’, an’ I’m a-retirin’ from this bizness for ever.”

“Ain’t a-goin’ to turn evidence?” cried Cranks, grasping the pistol on the table.

“I’m a-goin’ to make a lead-mine of you ef you don’t take that back!” roared the colonel, with a bound, which caused Cranks to drop his pistol, and retire precipitately backward, apologizing as he went.  “I’m goin’ to tend to my own bizness, and that’s enough to keep any man busy.  Somebody lend me fifty, till I see him again?”

Perkins pressed the money into the colonel’s hand, and within two minutes the colonel was on Tipsie’s back, and galloping on in the direction the stage had taken.

He overtook it, he passed it, and still he galloped on.