le reason that
few knew anything about it. Randall and his friends made up the amount
that could be carried by the three men. For the first time I learned
that Johnny had companions. They started from our own tent, a little
after sundown. Indeed, they ate their supper with us, while their
beautiful horses, head high, stared out into the growing darkness. One
of the express riders was a slight, dark youth whom I had never seen
before. In the other I was surprised to recognize Old Hickory Pine. He
told me his people had "squatted" not far from Sacramento, but that he
had come up into the hills on summons by Danny Randall. The fact
impressed me anew as to Randall's wide knowledge, for the Pines had not
been long in the country.

The trip went through without incident. Johnny returned four days later
aglow with the joy of that adventurous ride through the dark. Robbers
aside, I acknowledge I should not have liked that job. I am no horseman,
and I confess that at full speed I am always uneasy as to how a
four-hoofed animal is going successfully to plant all four of them. And
these three boys, for they were nothing else, had to gallop the thirty
miles of the road to Sacramento that lay in the mountains before dawn
caught them in the defiles.

Johnny seemed to glory in it, however. Danny Randall had arranged for a
change of horses; and the three express riders liked to dash up at full
speed to the relay station, fling themselves and their treasure bags
from one beast to the other, and be off again with the least possible
expenditure of time. The incoming animal had hardly come to a stand
before the fresh animal was off. There could have been no real occasion
for quite so much haste; but they liked to do it. The trips were made at
irregular intervals; and the riders left camp at odd times. Indeed, no
hour of the twenty-four was unlikely to be that of their start. Each boy
carried fifty pounds of gold dust distributed in four pouches. This was
a heavy weight, but it was compensated for to some extent by the fact
that they rode very light saddles. Thus every trip the enormous sum of
thirty-five thousand dollars went out in charge of the three.

The first half dozen journeys were more or less secret, so that the
express service did not become known to the general public. Then the
news inevitably leaked out. Danny Randall thereupon openly received
shipments and gave receipts at the Bella Union. It seemed to me only a
matter of t