Show ROBBERS ROAD way back some thirty years agone when the golden bbate was in a condition of lawlessness that has made it the scene of many a romance in fact in that epoch of Cali fornias history which corresponds closely with the middle age period in the history of the world there was a stage route of some extent crossing an inland country which had gained for itself the title of the bobbera bobbers Bob bers boad like many another good old name and landmark its appalling title has passed through a degenerative process and now its origin lives only in i the memory of a few white haired old pioneers the remnants of the brave and doughty settlers who cleave with the tenacity of despair to the tales of yore important business complications necessitated my undertaking a journey to this portion of the state where the depredations of highwaymen resembled the sudden swoop of feudal barons on itinerant hucksters and pilgrims and where S heavy puree changed hands with the celerity which the handkerchief of a puzzled spectator passes from his own pocket into that of the performing prestidigitator though far from a coward and inured to danger as was any one who had made the perilous trip over mountain plain and desert from east to west I 1 confess that it was with anything but pleasurable antic that I 1 took my seat in the vehicle that carried the occasional mail I 1 will digress here to say that my general habits are abstemious while as to tobacco in particular with the exception of the circumstance soon to be related it has never in any form passed my lips but I 1 have found it by no means subversive of success with men to have always on band a small supply of the article which constitutes the nectar and ambrosia of so many and on this occasion as on many others before and since I 1 had with me a pocket caso of cigars and a large piece of what is called by the initiated I 1 believe navy plug an article used for purposes and cocom mended for its strength to the strongest palates the position of the latter in my right hand lower waistcoat pocket is sufficiently important to the sequence of the narrative to warrant my particularity in asserting its exact location my only fellow traveler was a lady to whom I 1 had the felicity of an introduction previous to our departure though the close proximity occasioned by the roughness of the road would have made that an entirely unnecessary formality truth compels me to slate that she was neither young pretty nor otherwise interesting alas for the lovers of romance and as I 1 know that the good lady is now whore no their reverse could possibly affect her I 1 say this the more unrestrainedly to beguile the tedium of our journey and for want of a better subject of conversation 1 devoted my energies to bloodcurdling blood curdling tales of ban dita and highway outrages partly true but largely involved from a fertile imagination and told of three fingered jack and bottle nosed billy of their and cunning and skillfully interlarded inter larded tay s wibb dar innuendos and insinuations of our own peril I 1 told how revel had to be used as effective coercive agents in a variety of instances and always as sufficiently good considerations in the transfer of property how their horses outstripped the wind and permitted them to tabb part in the stoppage of mail coaches miles apart how their suspicion and greed prompted useless outrages in a word I 1 succeeded in filling the wretched woman with the direst forebodings that worked her up to such a pitch of terror that knew no bounds and from thence on every shadow concealed for her some frightful shape whose sole aim and object she was firmly convinced was her destruction and these fears try as I 1 would I 1 was now unable to allay meanwhile our coach sped onward as rapidly as the nature of the road would allow and we were soon plunged in entire darkness the only really valuable thing on roy co voyagers person was a ring of brilliantz brilliants brilli ants of remarkable lustre and purity ivsich would in itself have proved no mean prize to so particular a connoisseur in precious stones as rod mike for this was the euphonious appellation assumed by the chief unlicensed tax collector of those parts was known to be more particularly ticul arly 98 it was darkly hinted that a well known aan francisco jewellen jeweller je weller depended largely on this source for his supply of cut but unset jewels this ring mrs E wore beneath her woolen gloves but affected by my tales of murder and robbery the thing assumed in her eyes the shape of something that would goad men on to the commission of atrocities dreadful even than those I 1 had pictured to conceal the treas ure she knew not first she tried her boot bat she called to mind my story of the party who had been hung up by the heels and so considered that too insecure a hiding place her pocket was equally unsatisfactory though I 1 firmly believe that to the average man the mystery of the exact location of a pocket is one no age will reveal at last impelled thereto by the failure of all other means of concealment she begged that I 1 would find some method of preserving it sot so much on account of its intrinsic value and the fear of losing it as lost tempted thereby our momentarily menta rily expected visitants tants might prosecute a too diligent search for further plunder and finding nothing revenge themselves on us for their disappointment I 1 verily believe that the idea of tossing it out of the stage window passed through her mind she had but just passed the ring to my haid and I 1 involuntarily put my fingers with it into my right lower waistcoat pocket when tha ominous halt and that unmistakably steely click click of weapons sounded in our ears I 1 suppose it must have been the fact of my fingers coming in contact with the tobacco in my pocket that begat within me the inspiration to convey to my mouth the ring and plug together and bite from the latter a piece large enough to satisfy the most quid loving of sailors this I 1 instantly began to masticate after the approved fashion of a backwoods justice my cheek standing out as if affected with an acute attack of the mumps both doors of our conveyance were opened simultaneously and the lady shrieked as revolvers covered us on each side and we were required to descend but very few words passed our assailants were four in number not bad looking fellows on the whole and while one kept his gun in too close proximity to my bead for comfort and another ransacked my pockets and relieved me of the few valuables I 1 carried the same process would have been gone through with in the case of their other victim had her pockets been As it was she yielded up her pocketbook pocket book earrings and personal baggage with the docility of a tame katherine hobeing the orders of her all the while J was expectorating expect orating with the vehemence of an engine vomiting forth smoke but such a habit was too common in those parts to attract attention and my cigars and tobacco had with the rest of my belongings already found their way into tho possession of our searchers perceiving that such documents as I 1 carried were wholly valueless to them and satisfying themselves that I 1 carried no negotiable paper they handed me back a cigar with an earnest admonition to forsake the tobacco habit 0 irony of fate and with the most courteous of apologies to the lady for the inconvenience they had been obliged to inflict mounted and galloped off leaving us not much poorer than they found us on regaining the stage the feel that had begun to creep over me during the saarah finally pre availed and overpowered me and carefully conveying from my mouth to my pocket the filthy mass that concealed a jewel more precious than that supposed to be encased in the bead of the fabled toad I 1 leaned my hoad far out of the window of the vehicle now again on its journey and regardless of everything gave freo vent to my pent up misery ye gods how sick I 1 was my head seemed to be the crater of a volcano and my stomach was the horrid in gerrior which seethed and raged with a fury indescribable the rest of our way was pursued in quiet but to this day I 1 suffer at intervals and fancy only but with a wonderfully natural vividness and poignancy the agony and wretchedness of those few moments that constituted the only heroic deed of my life and I 1 am proud of it yet I 1 have since vowed that no torture a highwayman could inflict could ever equal those occasioned by my first and only chew |