A trifling incident occurred at Pine-Tree Crossing which did not heighten Yuba Bill’s admiration of the stranger.  As Bill opened the double-locked box in the “boot” of the coach—­sacred to Wells, Fargo & Co.’s Express and the Overland Company’s treasures—­Mr. Wiles perceived a small, black morocco portemanteau among the parcels.  “Ah, you carry baggage there too?” he said sweetly.  “Not often,” responded Yuba Bill shortly.  “Ah, this then contains valuables?” “It belongs to that man whose seat you’ve got,” said Yuba Bill, who, for insulting purposes of his own, preferred to establish the fiction that Wiles was an interloper; “and ef he reckons, in a sorter mixed kempeny like this, to lock up his portmantle, I don’t know who’s business it is.  Who?” continued Bill, lashing himself into a simulated rage, “who, in blank, is running this yer team?  Hey?  Mebbe you think, sittin’ up thar on the box seat, you are.  Mebbe you think you kin see round corners with that thar eye, and kin pull up for teams round corners, on down grades, a mile ahead?” But here Thatcher, who, with something of Lancelot’s concern for Modred, had a noble pity for all infirmities, interfered so sternly that Yuba Bill stopped.

On the fourth day they struck a blinding snow-storm, while ascending the dreary plateau that henceforward for six hundred miles was to be their roadbed.  The horses, after floundering through the drift, gave out completely on reaching the next station, and the prospects ahead, to all but the experienced eye, looked doubtful.  A few passengers advised taking to sledges, others a postponement of the journey until the weather changed.  Yuba Bill alone was for pressing forward as they were.  “Two miles more and we’re on the high grade, whar the wind is strong enough to blow you through the windy, and jist peart enough to pack away over them cliffs every inch of snow that falls.  I’ll jist skirmish round in and out o’ them drifts on these four wheels whar ye can’t drag one o’ them flat-bottomed dry-goods boxes through a drift.”  Bill had a California whip’s contempt for a sledge.  But he was warmly seconded by Thatcher, who had the next best thing to experience, the instinct that taught him to read character, and take advantage of another man’s experience.  “Them that wants to stop kin do so,” said Bill authoritatively, cutting the Gordian knot; “them as wants to take a sledge can do so,—­thar’s one in the barn.  Them as wants to go on with me and the relay will come on.”  Mr. Wiles selected the sledge and a driver, a few remained for the next stage, and Thatcher, with two others, decided to accompany Yuba Bill.  These changes took up some valuable time; and the storm continuing, the stage was run under the shed, the passengers gathering around the station fire; and not until after midnight did Yuba Bill put in the relays.  “I wish you a good journey,” said Wiles, as he drove from the shed as Bill entered.  Bill vouchsafed no reply, but, addressing himself to the driver, said curtly, as if giving an order for the delivery of goods, “Shove him out at Rawlings,” and passed contemptuously around to the tail board of the sled, and returned to the harnessing of his relay.