"That it was Broderick?" laughed Thornton. "You didn't think so, did you, Blackie?"
Blackie drew back and slipped his hand covertly into his coat pocket. Thornton, giving no sign that he had seen, said briefly to Hap Smith:
"You've talked things over with Banker Templeton? And with Comstock?"
"Yes," said Hap Smith, his thick, squat figure growing tense where he sat as though with a sudden nervous bracing within. "Yes."
"And you expected me here? You will give me a free hand?"
"Yes," cried Smith ringingly. "Damn 'em, yes. Go to it, Buck!"
"I can shoot twelve holes through you before you get your hand out of your pocket," he said crisply. "You damned stool-pigeon! Now, suppose you pull your hand out ... _empty_! ... and stick it up high above your head. Think it over, Blackie, before you take any fool chances."
His left hand held Comet's reins gathered up close as he spoke; his right rested lightly on the horn of his saddle. Blackie plainly hesitated; a tinge of red warmed his swarthy cheek; his eyes glittered evilly.... Then suddenly he whipped out his hand, a revolver in it....
But Thornton, for all of the handicap, fired first. His own right hand went its swift, sure way to the gun swinging loose in its holster under his left arm pit; he jabbed it forward even as he swung himself to one side in the saddle, and fired. The revolver slipped from Blackie's hand and clattered down to the bed of the wagon while Blackie, crying out chokingly, his face going white with fear, clutched at his shoulder and gave up the fight.
With scant time allowed in their plans to waste on such as Blackie he was made to lie down in the bottom of the wagon, his wrists bound, his wound very rudely bandaged, his body screened from any chance view by the boxes and mail bags and a handkerchief jammed into his mouth. Within ten minutes Hap Smith was clattering on, his and the guard's mouths and eyes grim and hard, and Thornton had again dropped behind, just out of sight around the first bend in the road.
"And now, my boy," muttered Hap Smith to his friend the guard, "keep both eyes peeled and your trigger-finger free. Hell's goin' to pop in considerable less'n no time."
Nor was the stage driver unduly pessimistic. Half an hour after Blackie had gone down among boxes and bags the lumbering vehicle thundered into one of the many deep gorges through which the narrow road wound. Here was a sharp turn and a bit of steep grade to take on the run if the stage were to keep to schedule time. But suddenly and with a curse from Smith and a sharp exclamation from the guard, Hap slammed on his brake. A newly fallen pine tree, three feet thick, lay across the road.