“I wanted you folks to know,” said Hunk Smith, leaning from the box-seat, “that that talk of Pop’s was all foolishness.  You’re as safe on this trail as in a Pullman palace-car.  That was just his way.  Pop will have his joke.  You just go to sleep now, if you can, and trust to me.  I’ll get you there by eleven o’clock or break a trace.  Breakin’ a trace is all the danger there is, anyway,” he added, cheerfully, “so don’t fret.”

Miss Post could not resist saying to Mrs. Truesdall:  “I told you he was joking.”

The stage had proceeded for two hours.  Sometimes it dropped with locked wheels down sheer walls of clay, again it was dragged, careening drunkenly, out of fathomless pits.  It pitched and tossed, slid and galloped, danced grotesquely from one wheel to another, from one stone to another, recoiled out of ruts, butted against rocks, and swept down and out of swollen streams that gurgled between the spokes.

“If ever I leave Fort Crockett,” gasped Mrs. Truesdall between jolts, “I shall either wait until they build a railroad or walk.”

They had all but left the hills, and were approaching the level prairie.  That they might see the better the flaps had been rolled up, and the soft dry air came freely through the open sides.  The mules were straining over the last hill.  On either side only a few of the buttes were still visible.  They stood out in the moonlight as cleanly cut as the bows of great battleships.  The trail at last was level.  Mrs. Truesdall’s eyes closed.  Her head fell forward.  But Miss Post, weary as she was in body, could not sleep.  To her the night-ride was full of strange and wonderful mysteries.  Gratefully she drank in the dry scent of the prairie-grass, and, holding by the frame of the window, leaned far out over the wheel.  As she did so, a man sprang into the trail from behind a wall of rock, and shouted hoarsely.  He was covered to his knees with a black mantle.  His face was hidden by a blood-red mask.

“Throw up your hands!” he commanded.  There was a sharp creaking as the brakes locked, and from the driver’s seat an amazed oath.  The stage stopped with a violent jerk, and Mrs. Truesdall pitched gently forward toward her niece.

“I really believe I was asleep, Helen,” she murmured.  “What are we waiting for?”

“I think we are held up,” said Miss Post.

The stage had halted beyond the wall of rock, and Miss Post looked behind it, but no other men were visible, only a horse with his bridle drawn around a stone.  The man in the mask advanced upon the stage, holding a weapon at arm’s-length.  In the moonlight it flashed and glittered evilly.  The man was but a few feet from Miss Post, and the light fell full upon her.  Of him she could see only two black eyes that flashed as evilly as his weapon.  For a period of suspense, which seemed cruelly prolonged, the man stood motionless, then he lowered his weapon.  When he opened his lips the mask stuck to them, and his words came from behind it, broken and smothered.  “Sorry to trouble you, miss,” the mask said, “but I want that man beside you to get out.”