Our coach was a great swinging and swaying stage, of the most sumptuous description—­an imposing cradle on wheels.  It was drawn by six handsome horses, and by the side of the driver sat the “conductor,” the legitimate captain of the craft; for it was his business to take charge and care of the mails, baggage, express matter, and passengers.  We three were the only passengers, this trip.  We sat on the back seat, inside.  About all the rest of the coach was full of mail bags—­for we had three days’ delayed mails with us.  Almost touching our knees, a perpendicular wall of mail matter rose up to the roof.  There was a great pile of it strapped on top of the stage, and both the fore and hind boots were full.  We had twenty-seven hundred pounds of it aboard, the driver said—­“a little for Brigham, and Carson, and ’Frisco, but the heft of it for the Injuns, which is powerful troublesome ’thout they get plenty of truck to read.”  But as he just then got up a fearful convulsion of his countenance which was suggestive of a wink being swallowed by an earthquake, we guessed that his remark was intended to be facetious, and to mean that we would unload the most of our mail matter somewhere on the Plains and leave it to the Indians, or whosoever wanted it.

We changed horses every ten miles, all day long, and fairly flew over the hard, level road.  We jumped out and stretched our legs every time the coach stopped, and so the night found us still vivacious and unfatigued.

After supper a woman got in, who lived about fifty miles further on, and we three had to take turns at sitting outside with the driver and conductor.  Apparently she was not a talkative woman.  She would sit there in the gathering twilight and fasten her steadfast eyes on a mosquito rooting into her arm, and slowly she would raise her other hand till she had got his range, and then she would launch a slap at him that would have jolted a cow; and after that she would sit and contemplate the corpse with tranquil satisfaction—­for she never missed her mosquito; she was a dead shot at short range.  She never removed a carcase, but left them there for bait.  I sat by this grim Sphynx and watched her kill thirty or forty mosquitoes—­watched her, and waited for her to say something, but she never did.  So I finally opened the conversation myself.  I said: 

“The mosquitoes are pretty bad, about here, madam.”

“You bet!”

“What did I understand you to say, madam?”

“You bet!”

Then she cheered up, and faced around and said: 

“Danged if I didn’t begin to think you fellers was deef and dumb.  I did, b’gosh.  Here I’ve sot, and sot, and sot, a-bust’n muskeeters and wonderin’ what was ailin’ ye.  Fust I thot you was deef and dumb, then I thot you was sick or crazy, or suthin’, and then by and by I begin to reckon you was a passel of sickly fools that couldn’t think of nothing to say.  Wher’d ye come from?”