“It would have been sure death to have trusted myself near that station, but I think I’d have risked it just to have seen Bill’s face when you told him!  Just think of it!  Bill, who was a match for anybody!  Bill, who was never caught napping!  Bill, who only wanted supreme control of things to wipe me off the face of the earth!  Bill, who knew how everything was done, and could stop it if he chose, and then to have been robbed twice in one evening by my gang!  Yes, sir!  Yuba Bill and his rotten old coach were gone through twice inside half an hour by the gang!”

“Then you knew of it too?” said Brice, in uneasy astonishment.

“Afterwards, my young friend—­like Yuba Bill—­afterwards.”  He stopped; his whole expression changed.  “It was done by two sneaking hounds,” he said sharply; “one whom I suspected before, and one, a new hand, a pal of his.  They were detached to watch the coach and be satisfied that the greenbacks were aboard, for it isn’t my style to ‘hold up’ except for something special.  They were to take seats on the coach as far as Ringwood Station, three miles below where we held you up, and to get out there and pass the word to us that it was all right.  They didn’t; that made us a little extra careful, seeing something was wrong, but never suspecting them.  We found out afterwards that they got one of my scouts to cut down that tree, saying it was my orders and a part of our game, calculating in the stoppage and confusion to collar the swag and get off with it.  Without knowing it, you played into their hands by going into Tarbox’s cabin.”

“But how did you know this?” interrupted Brice, in wonder.

“They forgot one thing,” continued Snapshot Harry grimly.  “They forgot that half an hour before and half an hour after a stage is stopped we have that road patrolled, every foot of it.  While I was opening the box in the brush, the two fools, sneaking along the road, came slap upon one of my patrols, and then tried to run for it.  One was dropped, but before he was plugged full of holes and hung up on a tree, he confessed, and said the other man who escaped had the greenbacks.”

Brice’s face fell.  “Then they are lost,” he said bitterly.

“Not unless he eats them—­as he may want to do before I’m done on him, for he must either starve or come out.  That road is still watched by my men from Tarbox’s cabin to the bridge.  He’s there somewhere, and can’t get forward or backward.  Look!” he said, rising and going to the door.  “That road,” he pointed to the stage road,—­a narrow ledge flanked on one side by a precipitous mountain wall, and on the other by an equally precipitate descent,—­“is his limit and tether, and he can’t escape on either side.”

“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?”