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Updated: June 24, 2025
"I realized, of course, that we would arrive here too late to connect with the stage if it maintained the customary schedule for its departure," she explained, "but it didn't occur to me that the stage- driver wouldn't wait until our train arrived. I had an idea his schedule was rather elastic." "Stage-drivers have no imagination, to speak of," Bryce assured her.
Shortly after daylight twenty well-armed stage-drivers, stock-tenders and ranchmen were galloping in the direction of the dug-out. Of course I went along with the party, notwithstanding I was very tired and had had hardly any rest at all. We had a brisk ride, and arrived in the immediate vicinity of the thieves' rendezvous at about ten o'clock in the morning.
It appeared that Lemuel Chugg, then writhing in the coils of perverse romance, was among the last of those famous old stage-drivers whose talents combined skill at handling the ribbons with the diplomacy necessary to treat with a masked envoy on the road.
The fellow, thus suddenly sent to the company of worn-out omnibus-horses and swearing stage-drivers on a slippery pavement, turned with an oath, when he recovered himself, made a movement as if to return to the sidewalk and seek satisfaction for the violence, but evidently did not like the looks of his antagonist, when he caught a fair glance of his proportions, and solaced himself with a few more muttered oaths as he dodged across to the other side of Broadway and disappeared in the crowd.
Several mountaineers, teamsters, stage-drivers, etc., drew near and dropped into the tableau and fell to surveying the money with that attractive indifference to formality which is noticeable in the hardy pioneer.
The cultus of the stage-coachman always flourishes highest where there are thieves on the road, and where the guard travels armed, and the stage is not only a link between country and city, and the vehicle of news, but has a faint warfaring aroma, like a man who should be brother to a soldier. California boasts her famous stage-drivers, and among the famous Foss is not forgotten.
But, in the meanwhile, all the life and most of the houses of Calistoga are concentrated upon that street between the railway station and the road. I never heard it called by any name, but I will hazard a guess that it is either Washington or Broadway. It must be remembered that we are here in a land of stage-drivers and highwaymen: a land, in that sense, like England a hundred years ago.
In the course of time, when hauling by steam killed off transportation by horses, the mettlesome tribe of the stage-drivers little by little lost its boisterous ways and its brave customs, went over into other occupations, fell apart and scattered.
Everywhere, threading the throng, hurried boys and men selling miniature flags, red-white-and-blue rosettes, and tricoloured cockades; and everybody was purchasing the national colours the passing crowd had already become bright with badges; the Union colours floated in streamers from the throats or sleeves of pretty girls, glinted in the lapels of dignified old gentlemen, decorated the hats of the stage-drivers and the blinders of their horses.
Besides, Sam's motto was, "Let those laugh who win;" and he seemed to himself to be on the road to heights of happiness beyond the ken of ordinary mortals especially ordinary stage-drivers. "I don't calkelate to drive stage more than a year or two longer," Sam said to Mrs. "I've got a little place down in Amador, and an interest in the Nip-and-tuck gold-mine, besides a few hundreds in bank.
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