CHAPTER XXVII.

Col.  Warner changes front.

It may seem a daring thing for one man to stop a stage full of passengers, and require them to surrender their money and valuables, but this has been done time and again in unsettled portions of the West.  For the most part the stage passengers are taken by surprise, and the road agent is known to be a desperado, ready to murder in cold blood anyone who dares oppose him.

In the present instance, however, the passengers had been warned of their danger and were ready to meet it.

Brown—­for, of course, the masked man was the landlord—­saw four revolvers leveled at him from inside the stage.

“Let go that horse, my friend, or you are a dead man!” said Conrad Stiefel, calmly.  “Two can play at your game.”

Brown was taken by surprise, but he was destined to be still more astonished.

Col.  Warner protruded his head from the window, saying: 

“Yes, my friend, you had better give up your little plan.  It won’t work.”

Such language from his confederate, on whom he fully relied, wholly disconcerted the masked robber.

“Well, I’ll be blowed!” he muttered, staring, in ludicrous perplexity, at his fellow conspirator.

“Yes, my friend,” said the colonel, “I shall really be under the necessity of shooting you myself if you don’t leave us alone.  We are all armed and resolute.  I think you had better defer your little scheme.”

Brown was not quick-witted.  He did not see that his confederate was trying cunningly to avert suspicion from himself, and taking the only course that remained to him.  Of course, he thought he was betrayed, and was, as a natural consequence, exasperated.

He released his hold on the horses, but, fixing his eyes on the colonel fiercely, muttered: 

“Wait till I get a chance at you!  I’ll pay you for this.”

“What an idiot!” thought Warner, shrugging his shoulders.  “Why can’t he see that I am forced to do as I am doing?  I must make things plain to him.”

He spoke a few words rapidly in Spanish, which Brown evidently understood.  His face showed a dawning comprehension of the state of affairs, and he stood aside while the stage drove on.

“What did you say?” asked Conrad Stiefel, suspiciously.

“You heard me, sir,” said the colonel, loftily.  “You owe your rescue from this ruffian to me.  Now, you can understand how much you have misjudged me.”

Conrad Stiefel was not so easily satisfied of this.

“I heard what you said in Mexican, or whatever lingo it is, but I didn’t understand it.”

“Nor I,” said Benson.

“Very well, gentlemen; I am ready to explain.  I told this man that if he ever attempted to molest me I should shoot him in his track.”

“Why didn’t you speak to him in English?” asked Stiefel.