Little more was said about it, the conversation turning to more congenial topics. About three o’clock, the coach, which had made slow progress, drove up in front of Lorrain’s, eleven miles from town. While Tom Caldwell, the driver, was changing horses, George Ives and Steve Marshland rode up, dismounted, and asked if they could procure a change of horses. Having ascertained that they could not do so, they ordered feed for those they had been riding, Ives in the meantime carefully avoiding Southmayd. The company fell into a desultory conversation, which Ives abruptly terminated by remarking that he had heard from Old Tex. “He is,” said he, “at Cold Spring ranch. I must hasten on and overtake him.” The coach soon departed, and Ives and Marshland immediately ordered their horses, and riding rapidly, passed it a short distance below Lorrain’s. Cold Spring ranch was eight miles farther on the stage route. That Old Tex, who was watching the coach when it left Virginia City, should be there, awaiting the arrival of these two ruffians, occasioned our passengers great uneasiness. They knew almost intuitively that a robbery was in contemplation. When the coach arrived at Cold Spring, the first objects which met their gaze on alighting from it, were the three ruffians Ives, Marshland, and Old Tex in close conversation. After a few moments’ detention, Caldwell drove on to Point of Rocks, where the passengers remained until morning. Leaving at an early hour, they proceeded to Stone’s ranche, and during their brief stay there, Ives, who had been joined by Bob Zachary and William Graves, known as “Whiskey Bill,” made a detour, and passed the coach unperceived. The three gentlemanly solicitors of the road trotted slowly on towards Bannack. They were in complete disguise, each one incased in a blanket of green and blue. “Whiskey Bill” wore a silk hat, at that time, perhaps, the only one in the Territory. His sleeves were rolled above the elbows, and his face concealed behind a black silk handkerchief, through the eyelets in which his ferret eyes shone like a couple of stars, in partial eclipse. The gray horse he bestrode was enveloped in a blanket so completely that only his head, legs, and tail were visible. The horses of his associates were similarly overspread. Ives was masked in a piece of gray blanket, and Zachary with a remnant of hickory shirting. No one, unsuspicious of their presence, however familiar with their persons, would have recognized them. The coach horses moved forward at their usual rapid rate, bringing the passengers in sight of the horsemen a little before eleven o’clock. Their attention was first attracted by the peculiar costume, and the gun which each man held firmly across his saddle-bow. As they approached them more nearly, Southmayd observed to Caldwell, the driver,— “They’re queer-looking beings, Tom, anyhow.” “They’re road agents, Leroy, you may depend upon it,” replied Caldwell.