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Here might be found a judge or lawyer on his way to court; a sheriff with a handcuffed prisoner; a farmer or two, stopping on the road to market with a cartful of produce; and an occasional teamster, peddler, and stage-driver.
"Now what do you reckon ails him?" asked the blacksmith of the stage-driver, as Harlan went into the village store. "Wouldn't reckon nothin' ailed him to look at him, would you?" queried the driver, in reply. Indeed, no one looking at Mr. Carr would have suspected him of an "ailment."
The stage-driver recovered first, pulled off his mittens, examined his fingers and felt quickly of nose, ears, and chin. He looked sharply at Hillas and nodded. Unceremoniously they stripped off the stranger's gloves; reached for a pan, opened the door, dipped it into the drift and plunged Smith's fingers down in the snow. "Your nose is white, too. Thaw it out."
Phineas Hull was a small, ferret-like, calculating man with a sparse growth of dusty-brown hair and an eyelid, the right one, which was partially paralyzed and drooped heavily, giving him a characterful and yet at times a sinister expression. His partner, Mr. Benoni Stackpole, had been once a stage-driver in Arkansas, and later a horse-trader.
Patten acknowledged the introduction and sat down, turning to ask "how Florrie was today?" Virginia smiled, sensing a rebuke to herself in his manner; to-day on the stage she had made it obvious even to him that if she must speak with a stranger she would vastly prefer the talk of the stage-driver than that of Dr. Caleb Patten.
And the stage proprietor, the stage-driver, and the hostler mull over the problem, and sit down on the woman's hair trunk in front of the tavern to reason with her. The baby joins its voice from the coach window in the clamor of the discussion. The baby prevails.
Wetherell's household were seated at supper in the little kitchen behind the store, the head and shoulders of the stage-driver were thrust in at the window, his face shining from its evening application of soap and water. He was making eyes at Cynthia. "Want to go to Harwich, Will?" he asked. William set his cup down quickly. "You hain't afeard, be you?" he continued.
Taken as a class, however, and compared with other classes as numerous, and not with a few exceptional individuals, the cowboy, like the Rocky Mountain stage-driver, has no superiors anywhere for his own work; and they are fine fellows, these iron-nerved reinsmen and rough-riders.
It remained derelict for a long time, but was at last brought into San Francisco by an old stage-driver and placed on the Overland trail. It gradually worked its way eastward to the Deadwood route, and on this line figured in a number of encounters with Indians. Again were driver and passengers massacred, and again was the coach abandoned.
Thus, throughout the Old West: bad man and frontier officer, Indian fighter, cow-boy, stage-driver, trooper, and faro-dealer, they lived their lives in accordance with bold customs which bridged the gap between savagery and modern civilization. In a strange land they did the best they could; and, bad or good, they came to their ends with a fine unflinching disregard for the supreme adventure.
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