Chapter VII: On the Road to Clark’s

It was a good road and a pleasant road and Fanny and Inez enjoyed themselves immensely. There was a halt at Inspiration Point for the grand view and a last look at the beautiful valley. Then the stage lumbered on slowly for it was full and the horses not the fleetest in the world. It had been cloudy for an hour or so, and after a time rain began to fall in a soft, misty shower. This roused Mrs. Prescott, who said Fanny must come inside, while the young man who had at first offered his seat to Inez insisted again that she should take it, while he went outside. The exchange was made and the young girls were riding side by side with their backs to the horses and Inez next to the wheels. The shower lasted but a few minutes before the sun came out so brightly that Inez, whose eyes were not strong, tied over her hat a thick, blue veil which concealed her face entirely. There was no thought of fear among the passengers. The road to Clark’s was considered safe and more than half the distance had been gone over. Mrs. Prescott was asleep in her corner; Fanny and Inez were chatting together as girls will chatter; Nero, tired of jumping at the horses and Inez, was off in the woods chasing a rabbit, and the driver had ceased to be on the watch for any trouble.

“We are gettin’ through all safe,” he said to his companion beside him. “It’s about time for them rascals to show up again, and I didn’t know what might happen.” They were nearing a sharp turn with a ledge of rocks beside it and he was gathering up the reins the better to manage his horses round the curve, when suddenly the word “Halt!” rang out on the air, and a man wearing a mask came from some quarter no one could tell where, he moved so rapidly and with so much assurance. Stepping to the horses’ heads he stopped them and pointing a revolver at the driver, bade him make no effort to go on.

“Little Dick!” was whispered among the terrified passengers, who never thought of disobeying his command, “Hands up, every one of you!”

They all went up, except those of Inez, close to whom the bandit was standing. At the sound of his voice she started violently, and clutched at the veil upon her hat trying to tear it off.

“I am very sorry, my good people, to disturb you, and I assure you none of you will be harmed, nor shall I detain you long if you at once give up whatever valuables you may have on you persons,—money, watches and jewelry. Perhaps I’d better search you myself, as it is not convenient for you to use your hands while you are holding them up. Step out quietly and it will soon be over. These two young ladies first, please. Shall I help you?”

He bowed toward Inez and Fanny, extending one hand to them and with the other covering them with his revolver. Fanny was paralyzed with fear, and half sliding from her seat, tried to hide behind Inez, to whom she said, “Oh, what shall we do?”

Inez made no reply. She had succeeded in tearing the veil from her face, which was white as a corpse, while in her eyes was a look of horror, but not of fear. Turning toward the man inviting her so politely to descend she gave a shriek more appalling than the word “Halt!” had been, and bounding from the stage in front of him, struck his arm so heavy a blow with her fist that his revolver was thrown at a little distance from him and lay upon the ground. Both started for it, but Inez reached it first. Snatching it up she looked steadily into his eyes, which the mask did not conceal.

“Go,” she said, “or I will shoot you like a dog. I always said I would kill any one I found doing this dirty work, and I have found _you_!” Then, to the passengers, who, in their fright, were still holding up their hands, she continued: “Drop your hands! Cowards! to fear this one man! You see I am not afraid of him.”

The man stood as if turned into stone, until she said to him again, “Go, I tell you, before I fire, or Nero sees you. He is here.”

This last was spoken so low that only the brigand heard it, looking round quickly and then back at Inez. Her cheeks were flushed; her eyes were blazing, and her white teeth showed between her parted lips as she advanced toward him like some enraged animal, with the revolver aimed at his head. It seemed as if he wanted to speak, but she gave him no chance, and at her second imperative “Go,” and mention of the dog, he went, not very rapidly at first, but walking like one whose strength had left him.

At this point Nero, who had given up his rabbit, came panting back, surprised, if dogs can be surprised, at what he saw. The passengers had all alighted and were surrounding Inez with warm encomiums for her bravery, Nero seemed to know she was the central figure in the group and gave her a loud, approving bark, which was heard by the bandit, who half turned his head and then quickened his steps to a run. But Nero, who had caught sight of him, was after him with yelps and cries and barks, which the passengers thought meant mischief. Inez knew better, and fierce as was her anger she would, if possible, prevent a recognition which would involve so much.

“Nero,” she tried to call, but her tongue refused to move, and she could only give a low cry of alarm as the dog bounded upon the back of the man, with such force that he was thrown down and his mask fell off.

In a moment he was on his feet, keeping his back to the passengers and beating Nero off, while Inez, who had found her voice, called to him peremptorily to come back, saying to those around her, “We do not wish to see him torn to pieces before our eyes.”

Very unwillingly Nero obeyed and came back just as the bandit disappeared among the trees. Up to this time Inez had stood rigid like one in catalepsy,—the revolver in her hand and her eyes strained to their utmost as she watched the receding figure. Her heart was beating wildly in her throat. There was the roaring sound of “Halt!” in her ears, shutting out every other sound so that she scarcely heard the words of commendation from those around her.

“Inez,” Fanny said, “don’t look so terribly! It is over now. He has gone. Sit down, before you faint.”

“Yes, that is best,” Inez gasped, while many hands were stretched out to keep her from falling, as her eyes closed and her body began to sway.

They put her down upon the grass and Fanny took her head in her lap, while every bag in the coach, which had a restorative in it, was opened, and its contents brought out. Brandy, whisky, camphor, cologne, bay rum, lavender water, witch hazel and hartshorn were tried by turns with no effect. She still lay in a death like faint and they could see the rapid beating of her heart as it rose and fell irregularly.

“Loosen her dress,” some one suggested. They loosened it and she breathed easier, but did not recover and her face was growing purple when the sound of horses’ hoofs was heard and Tom Hardy came leisurely galloping round the curve in the road on the bay mare Inez had driven the previous day.

“What is this? Another hold up?” he said, dismounting quickly and joining the excited group, each one of which began to narrate the particulars in his and her own way.

To those nearest to her Fanny said in a low tone, “He is her lover, and the man who saved the other coach as she has saved us.”

It scarcely took an instant for this to become known to all, and Tom was at once nearly as much an object of interest as Inez, and a way was made for him to go to her.

“Why, it is Inez! How came she here?” he asked in a perfectly steady voice, but his face was white and his hands shook as he knelt by the still unconscious girl, calling her name and rubbing her cold face.

At the sound of his voice she opened her eyes and looked at him with an expression of loathing and despair.

“Oh, Tom, Tom,” she cried, and the anguish in her voice haunted Tom to his dying day.

“I am here, Inez,” he said, very tenderly. “What can I do for you?”

She made no reply, but looked up at Fanny as if asking what she knew or suspected. Fanny suspected nothing, and her tears fell fast and hot upon Inez’s face, which she kissed again and again until a faint color came back to it; the heart beats were less rapid, and she tried to get up. Every one was ready to help her, Tom with the rest, but she motioned them all aside, and standing erect said with an effort to smile, “I have made quite a scene. My strength gave out at last. I am all right now. What became of my hat?”

Three or four hurried to bring it to her, while Tom said to Fanny, “Where is yours?”

It had fallen off in her excitement and lay at some distance from her where it had been stepped on two or three times and badly crushed. Tom picked it up, brushed it very carefully, straightened it as well as he could and then put it on Fanny’s head, saying, as he did so, “I think it is all right.”

He seemed much more cheerful than at first, and patted Nero on the head, saying, “You here, too? I wonder you did not go after the ruffian.”

“He did,” Fanny explained, “and knocked him down and would have torn him to pieces if Inez had not called him off.”

“Why did she do that? She might have let him hold the villain till he was captured. There are surely enough men here to have secured him,” Tom said, speaking so low that Inez did not hear him.

She was leaning against a tree, with Nero at her side. He had seemed suspicious of Tom and declining his advances had gone to Inez, looking at her inquiringly as if asking the cause of the commotion.

“I wish he had held him,” Fanny said, vehemently, “but I wish still more that you had met us earlier and this would not have happened. You ought to have seen Inez when she sprang over the wheel and confronted the robber. She was grand and her eyes were terrible as she marched straight up to him as if she were not a bit afraid. I think she would have fired if he had not turned and ran.”

Tom made no reply except to say, “I wish I had come earlier,” then, addressing Inez he asked if she would go on to Clark’s, or go home.

“I must go home,” she answered quickly. “It is the best place.”

Fanny at once offered to go with her, but Inez declined.

“No, no,” she said. “I want to be alone.”

“How will you go? You cannot walk so far,” someone asked, and Tom replied, “She will take my horse and I shall walk.”

By this time the driver was getting anxious to be off. and the passengers gathered around Inez, bidding her good bye, telling her they should never forget her bravery, and calling her the heroine of the valley, as Tom was the hero.

“Don’t, don’t,” Inez said, putting up both her hands. “Don’t thank me. I didn’t think of saving anybody. I was wild. I was desperate. I—I am not a heroine. Don’t talk about me. Don’t let them put me in the papers. I can’t bear it.”

There was a hard look on her face which softened when Fanny came up to say good bye. Drawing her closely to her Inez sobbed like a child.

“It was so bright yesterday, and this morning I was so happy. It is so dark now, and will be always. Good bye, and God bless you. I don’t believe I shall ever see you again.”

“Yes, you will,” Fanny answered. “We are to spend a few days at Clark’s, and if you do not come there I shall drive over and call on you, and then there is New York in the future.”

Inez shook her head. She knew there was no glad future for her and her tears fell like rain as she watched Fanny getting into the stage, helped by Tom, who lifted his hat very politely as the stage drove off, the passengers looking back and waving hands and handkerchiefs to Inez until the turn in the road hid her from view. Nothing was talked of the rest of the way but the attempt at robbery and Inez’s wonderful courage and presence of mind.

“We ought to do something to show our appreciation; make up a purse, perhaps, if she is poor,” some one suggested, and Fanny quickly interposed, “They are not poor in that way. Money would be out of place. Make her a present which she can always keep.”

This met with general approval, and it was decided that as soon as Fanny returned to San Francisco she should purchase a handsome watch, with Inez’s name and the date of the attempted robbery on the case. The money was to be contributed at Clark’s, where the stage arrived nearly an hour behind its usual time. All the passengers were to continue their journey that day except Fanny and her mother. The latter was in a state of utter prostration and went at once to her room and to bed. During the scene on the road she had sat half fainting in the coach, alighting once when all the rest did and then, seeing she could be of no use, creeping back to her corner and feeling that she was doing her duty when she passed out her golden stoppered salts as her contribution to the many restoratives offered to Inez. Her trip to the Yosemite had not been very pleasant, and she was glad she was so far on her way back to the city which suited her better.

“I shall always feel grateful to that girl,” she said to Fanny, as she was getting into bed. “She saved us from a great unpleasantness. Think of being ordered out of the stage and searched by a masked blackguard with a revolver in your face. He would have found nothing of value about me except a few dollars. The diamonds were safe in your hat. I watched it all the time until it rolled off into the mud. Mr. Hardy picked it up. I did not see him very closely, but thought he seemed a very gentlemanly fellow, who had seen more of the world than that girl he is to marry. I think he could do better.”

Fanny did not hear the last of her mother’s remarks. In her fright and excitement over the robber and Inez she had not given the diamonds a thought until her mother brought them to her mind. Her hat was still on her head and snatching it off she passed her hand over the bows of ribbon in quest of the little linen bag. IT WAS GONE! The strong thread with which it had been sewed to the hat had been wrenched apart from the ribbon and it had slipped out, when or where no one could tell. The diamonds were lost, and the hotel was soon in a state of nearly as great excitement as there had been on the road. Many suggestions were offered, one of which was that when the hat was stepped on by the heavy boots of some of the party, as it evidently had been, the stitches had given way and the bag fallen out. This seemed feasible, and with a gentleman and a guide from the hotel Fanny went back to the scene of the adventure, looking all along the road and going over every inch of ground near the spot where the stage had been stopped. There were footprints of the people and Tom Hardy’s horse and a spot in the spongy soil where Nero had stretched himself at full length, but the diamonds were not there. Very unwillingly Fanny broke the news to her mother, who at once went into hysterics so violent that a physician was called, and all that night Fanny and Celine were kept busy attending to her. It was not the value of the diamonds she deplored so much, she said, although that was great, as the fact that the ear-rings had been in the family so long and were to have been Fanny’s on her wedding day. Fanny, too, was very sorry for her loss, but thought less of it than of Inez, whose face haunted her as she last saw it, so white and drawn, with an expression which puzzled her. She would like to have driven over in the early morning to inquire for her, but her mother was too weak and nervous to be left and she was obliged to wait for the daily stage which she hoped would bring her some news.