Meantime the coach continued its difficult ascent, a difficulty made greater by the singular nervousness of the horses, that only with great trouble and some objurgation from the driver could be prevented from shying from the regular track.

“Now, wot’s gone o’ them critters?” said the irate Foster, straining at the reins until he seemed to lift the leader back into the track again.

“Looks as ef they smelt suthin—­b’ar or Injin ponies,” suggested the mail agent.

“Injin ponies?” repeated Foster scornfully.

“Fac’!  Injin ponies set a hoss crazy—­jest as wild hosses would!”

“Whar’s yer Injin ponies?” demanded Foster incredulously.

“Dunno,” said the mail agent simply.

But here the horses again swerved so madly from some point of the thicket beside them that the coach completely left the track on the right.  Luckily it was a disused trail and the ground fairly good, and Foster gave them their heads, satisfied of his ability to regain the regular road when necessary.  It took some moments for him to recover complete control of the frightened animals, and then their nervousness having abated with their distance from the thicket, and the trail being less steep though more winding than the regular road, he concluded to keep it until he got to the summit, when he would regain the highway once more and await his passengers.  Having done this, the two men stood up on the box, and with an anxiety they tried to conceal from each other looked down the canyon for the lagging pedestrians.

“I hope Miss Cantire hasn’t been stampeded from the track by any skeer like that,” said the mail agent dubiously.

“Not she!  She’s got too much grit and sabe for that, unless that drummer hez caught up with her and unloaded his yarn about that kyard.”

They were the last words the men spoke.  For two rifle shots cracked from the thicket beside the road; two shots aimed with such deliberateness and precision that the two men, mortally stricken, collapsed where they stood, hanging for a brief moment over the dashboard before they rolled over on the horses’ backs.  Nor did they remain there long, for the next moment they were seized by half a dozen shadowy figures and with the horses and their cut traces dragged into the thicket.  A half dozen and then a dozen other shadows flitted and swarmed over, in, and through the coach, reinforced by still more, until the whole vehicle seemed to be possessed, covered, and hidden by them, swaying and moving with their weight, like helpless carrion beneath a pack of ravenous wolves.  Yet even while this seething congregation was at its greatest, at some unknown signal it as suddenly dispersed, vanished, and disappeared, leaving the coach empty—­vacant and void of all that had given it life, weight, animation, and purpose—­a mere skeleton on the roadside.  The afternoon wind blew through its open doors and ravaged rack and box as if it had been the wreck of weeks instead of minutes, and the level rays of the setting sun flashed and blazed into its windows as though fire had been added to the ruin.  But even this presently faded, leaving the abandoned coach a rigid, lifeless spectre on the twilight plain.