two days to
get the county officers out, and it's nobody else's funeral."

"I will go for one," said Hale quietly. "I have a horse waiting for me
at the station, and can start at once."

There was an instant of silence. The stage-coach had left the obscurity
of the forest, and by the stronger light Hale could perceive that his
companion was examining him with two colorless, lazy eyes. Presently
he said, meeting Hale's clear glance, but rather as if yielding to a
careless reflection,--

"It MIGHT be done with four men. We oughter raise one man at the
station." He paused. "I don't know ez I'd mind taking a hand myself," he
added, stretching out his legs with a slight yawn.

"Ye can count ME in, if you're goin', Kernel. I reckon I'm talkin' to
Kernel Clinch," said the passenger beside Hale with sudden alacrity.
"I'm Rawlins, of Frisco. Heerd of ye afore, Kernel, and kinder spotted
you jist now from your talk."

To Hale's surprise the two men, after awkwardly and perfunctorily
grasping each other's hand, entered at once into a languid conversation
on the recent election at Fresno, without the slightest further
reference to the pursuit of the robbers. It was not until the remaining
and undenominated passenger turned to Hale, and, regretting that he had
immediate business at the Summit, offered to accompany the party if they
would wait a couple of hours, that Colonel Clinch briefly returned to
the subject.

"FOUR men will do, and ez we'll hev to take horses from the station
we'll hev to take the fourth man from there."

With these words he resumed his uninteresting conversation with the
equally uninterested Rawlins, and the undenominated passenger subsided
into an admiring and dreamy contemplation of them both. With all his
principle and really high-minded purpose, Hale could not help feeling
constrained and annoyed at the sudden subordinate and auxiliary position
to which he, the projector of the enterprise, had been reduced. It was
true that he had never offered himself as their leader; it was true that
the principle he wished to uphold and the effect he sought to obtain
would be equally demonstrated under another; it was true that the
execution of his own conception gravitated by some occult impulse to
the man who had not sought it, and whom he had always regarded as an
incapable. But all this was so unlike precedent or tradition that, after
the fashion of conservative men, he was suspicious of it, and only that
h