“I will go for one,” said Hale quietly.  “I have a horse waiting for me at the station, and can start at once.”

There was an instant of silence.  The stage-coach had left the obscurity of the forest, and by the stronger light Hale could perceive that his companion was examining him with two colorless, lazy eyes.  Presently he said, meeting Hale’s clear glance, but rather as if yielding to a careless reflection,—­

“It might be done with four men.  We oughter raise one man at the station.”  He paused.  “I don’t know ez I’d mind taking a hand myself,” he added, stretching out his legs with a slight yawn.

“Ye can count me in, if you’re goin’, Kernel.  I reckon I’m talkin’ to Kernel Clinch,” said the passenger beside Hale with sudden alacrity.  “I’m Rawlins, of Frisco.  Heerd of ye afore, Kernel, and kinder spotted you jist now from your talk.”

To Hale’s surprise the two men, after awkwardly and perfunctorily grasping each other’s hand, entered at once into a languid conversation on the recent election at Fresno, without the slightest further reference to the pursuit of the robbers.  It was not until the remaining and undenominated passenger turned to Hale, and, regretting that he had immediate business at the Summit, offered to accompany the party if they would wait a couple of hours, that Colonel Clinch briefly returned to the subject.

“Four men will do, and ez we’ll hev to take horses from the station we’ll hev to take the fourth man from there.”

With these words he resumed his uninteresting conversation with the equally uninterested Rawlins, and the undenominated passenger subsided into an admiring and dreamy contemplation of them both.  With all his principle and really high-minded purpose, Hale could not help feeling constrained and annoyed at the sudden subordinate and auxiliary position to which he, the projector of the enterprise, had been reduced.  It was true that he had never offered himself as their leader; it was true that the principle he wished to uphold and the effect he sought to obtain would be equally demonstrated under another; it was true that the execution of his own conception gravitated by some occult impulse to the man who had not sought it, and whom he had always regarded as an incapable.  But all this was so unlike precedent or tradition that, after the fashion of conservative men, he was suspicious of it, and only that his honor was now involved he would have withdrawn from the enterprise.  There was still a chance of reasserting himself at the station, where he was known, and where some authority might be deputed to him.

But even this prospect failed.  The station, half hotel and half stable, contained only the landlord, who was also express agent, and the new volunteer who Clinch had suggested would be found among the stable-men.  The nearest justice of the peace was ten miles away, and Hale had to abandon even his hope of being sworn in as a deputy constable.  This introduction of a common and illiterate ostler into the party on equal terms with himself did not add to his satisfaction, and a remark from Rawlins seemed to complete his embarrassment.