ne this, the two men stood
up on the box, and with an anxiety they tried to conceal from each other
looked down the canyon for the lagging pedestrians.

"I hope Miss Cantire hasn't been stampeded from the track by any skeer
like that," said the mail agent dubiously.

"Not she! She's got too much grit and sabe for that, unless that drummer
hez caught up with her and unloaded his yarn about that kyard."

They were the last words the men spoke. For two rifle shots cracked from
the thicket beside the road; two shots aimed with such deliberateness
and precision that the two men, mortally stricken, collapsed where they
stood, hanging for a brief moment over the dashboard before they rolled
over on the horses' backs. Nor did they remain there long, for the next
moment they were seized by half a dozen shadowy figures and with the
horses and their cut traces dragged into the thicket. A half dozen and
then a dozen other shadows flitted and swarmed over, in, and through the
coach, reinforced by still more, until the whole vehicle seemed to be
possessed, covered, and hidden by them, swaying and moving with their
weight, like helpless carrion beneath a pack of ravenous wolves. Yet
even while this seething congregation was at its greatest, at some
unknown signal it as suddenly dispersed, vanished, and disappeared,
leaving the coach empty--vacant and void of all that had given it life,
weight, animation, and purpose--a mere skeleton on the roadside. The
afternoon wind blew through its open doors and ravaged rack and box as
if it had been the wreck of weeks instead of minutes, and the level rays
of the setting sun flashed and blazed into its windows as though fire
had been added to the ruin. But even this presently faded, leaving the
abandoned coach a rigid, lifeless spectre on the twilight plain.

An hour later there was the sound of hurrying hoofs and jingling
accoutrements, and out of the plain swept a squad of cavalrymen bearing
down upon the deserted vehicle. For a few moments they, too, seemed to
surround and possess it, even as the other shadows had done, penetrating
the woods and thicket beside it. And then as suddenly at some signal
they swept forward furiously in the track of the destroying shadows.

Miss Cantire took full advantage of the suggestion "not to hurry" in her
walk, with certain feminine ideas of its latitude. She gathered a few
wild flowers and some berries in the underwood, inspected some birds'
nests with