double-locked box in the "boot" of the coach--sacred to Wells, Fargo &
Co.'s Express and the Overland Company's treasures--Mr. Wiles perceived
a small, black morocco portemanteau among the parcels. "Ah, you carry
baggage there too?" he said sweetly. "Not often," responded Yuba Bill
shortly. "Ah, this then contains valuables?" "It belongs to that man
whose seat you've got," said Yuba Bill, who, for insulting purposes
of his own, preferred to establish the fiction that Wiles was an
interloper; "and ef he reckons, in a sorter mixed kempeny like this,
to lock up his portmantle, I don't know who's business it is. Who?"
continued Bill, lashing himself into a simulated rage, "who, in blank,
is running this yer team? Hey? Mebbe you think, sittin' up thar on the
box seat, you are. Mebbe you think you kin see round corners with that
thar eye, and kin pull up for teams round corners, on down grades,
a mile ahead?" But here Thatcher, who, with something of Lancelot's
concern for Modred, had a noble pity for all infirmities, interfered so
sternly that Yuba Bill stopped.

On the fourth day they struck a blinding snow-storm, while ascending the
dreary plateau that henceforward for six hundred miles was to be their
roadbed. The horses, after floundering through the drift, gave out
completely on reaching the next station, and the prospects ahead, to
all but the experienced eye, looked doubtful. A few passengers advised
taking to sledges, others a postponement of the journey until the
weather changed. Yuba Bill alone was for pressing forward as they were.
"Two miles more and we're on the high grade, whar the wind is strong
enough to blow you through the windy, and jist peart enough to pack away
over them cliffs every inch of snow that falls. I'll jist skirmish round
in and out o' them drifts on these four wheels whar ye can't drag one
o' them flat-bottomed dry-goods boxes through a drift." Bill had a
California whip's contempt for a sledge. But he was warmly seconded by
Thatcher, who had the next best thing to experience, the instinct
that taught him to read character, and take advantage of another
man's experience. "Them that wants to stop kin do so," said Bill
authoritatively, cutting the Gordian knot; "them as wants to take a
sledge can do so,--thar's one in the barn. Them as wants to go on with
me and the relay will come on." Mr. Wiles selected the sledge and
a driver, a few remained for the next stage, and Thatcher, with two
others,