"Don't smoke? That is, you don't smoke cigars. May I offer you a cigarette?"

"I don't smoke at all, colonel."

"Indeed, remarkable! Why, sir, before I was your age I smoked."

"Do you think it good for consumption?" asked Herbert.

"Ha, ha, you have me there! Well, perhaps not. Do you know," said the colonel, changing the conversation, "I feel a great interest in your friend."

"You are very kind."

"'Upon my soul, I do. He is a most interesting young man. Rich, too! I am glad he is rich!"

"He would value health more than money," said Herbert.

"To be sure, to be sure! By the way, you don't know how much property your friend has?"

"No, sir, he never told me," answered Herbert, surprised at the question.

"Keeps such matters close, eh? Now, I don't. I never hesitate to own up to a quarter of a million. Yes, quarter of a million! That's the size of my pile."

"You are fortunate, Col. Warner," said Herbert, sincerely.

"So I am, so I am! Two years hence I shall have half a million, if all goes well. So you won't have a cigar; no? Well, I'll see you later."

"He's a strange man," thought Herbert. "I wonder if his statements can be relied upon." Somehow Herbert doubted it. He was beginning to distrust the colonel.

CHAPTER XXII. A MOUNTAIN STAGE.

We pa.s.s over several days, and change the scene. We left Herbert and Melville in the Palmer House in Chicago, surrounded by stately edifices and surging crowds. Now everything is changed. They are in a mountainous district, where a man might ride twenty miles without seeing a house.

They are, in fact, within the limits of what was then known as the Territory of Colorado. It is not generally known that Colorado contains over a hundred mountain summits over ten thousand feet above the sea level. It is perhaps on account of the general elevation that it is recommended by physicians as a good health resort for all who are troubled with lung complaints.

At the time of which I speak most of the traveling was done by stage.

Now railroads unite the different portions with links of steel, and make traveling less c.u.mbersome and laborious. There was one of the party, however, who did not complain, but rather enjoyed the jolting of the lumbering stage-coach.

Col. Warner was of the party. He professed to feel an extraordinary interest in George Melville, and was anxious to show him the country where he had himself regained his health.

"Lonely, sir!" repeated the colonel, in answer to a remark of George Melville. "Why, sir, it's a populous city compared with what it was in '55, when I was out here. I built myself a cabin in the woods, and once for twelve months I didn't see a white face."

"Were there many Indians, Colonel?" asked Herbert.

"Indians? I should say so. Only twenty miles from my cabin was an Indian village."

"Did they trouble you any?" asked Herbert, curiously.

"Well, they tried to," answered the colonel. "One night as I lay awake I heard stealthy steps outside, and peeping through a crevice between the logs just above the head of my bed--by the way, my bed was the skin of a bear I had myself killed--I could see a string of Utes preparing to besiege me."

"Were you afraid?" asked Herbert, a little mischievously, for he knew pretty well what the colonel would say.

"Afraid!" repeated the colonel, indignantly. "What do you take me for? I have plenty of faults," continued Col. Warner, modestly, "but cowardice isn't one of them. No, sir; I never yet saw the human being, white, black, or red, that I stood in fear of. But, as I was saying, the redskins collected around my cabin, and were preparing to break in the door, when I leveled my revolver and brought down their foremost man.

This threw them into confusion. They retreated a little way, then advanced again with a horrible yell, and I gave myself up for lost. But I got in another shot, bringing down another warrior, this time the son of their chief. The same scene was repeated. Well, to make a long story short, I repulsed them at every advance, and finally when but three were left, they concluded that prudence was the better part of valor, and fled, leaving their dead and wounded behind them."

"How many were there of them?" asked Herbert.

"Well, in the morning when I went out I found seven dead redskins, and two others lying at the point of death."

"That was certainly a thrilling adventure, Colonel," said George Melville, smiling.

"Egad, I should say so."

"I confess I don't care to meet with any such."

"Oh, no danger, no danger!" said the colonel, airily. "That is, comparatively speaking. In fact, the chief danger is of a different sort."

"Of the sleigh upsetting and tipping us out into some of the canyons, I suppose you mean?"

"No, I speak of the gentlemen of the road--road agents as they are generally called."

"You mean highwaymen?"

"Yes."

"Is there much danger of meeting them?" asked Melville.

"Well, there's a chance. They are quite in the habit of attacking stage-coaches, and plundering the pa.s.sengers. Sometimes they make rich hauls."

"That must be rather inconvenient to the pa.s.sengers." said Melville.

"Can't the laws reach these outlaws?"

"They don't seem to. Why, there are men who have been in the business for years, and have never been caught."

"Very true," said a fellow traveler. "There's Jerry Lane, for instance.

He has succeeded thus far in eluding the vigilance of the authorities."

"Yes," said the colonel, "I once saw Lane myself. Indeed he did me the honor of relieving me of five hundred dollars."

"Couldn't you help it?" asked Herbert.

"No; he covered me with his revolver, and if I had drawn mine I shouldn't have lived to take aim at him."

"Were you in a stage at the time?"

"No, I was riding on horseback."