Wagons, ambulances, and other vehicles of a nondescript character on good days crowded the road, filling the mountain pass with the cries and oaths of their drivers and the rumbling and rattling of their wheels, and filling Mr.Gilsey's soul with disgust.

But the vehicle of honor was still "Gilsey's stage." It carried the mail and some of the express, had the best team in the mountains, and was known as the "reg'lar." On bad nights the road was a little less crowded.

And it was a bad night that Ferdy Wickersham took for his journey to Gumbolt.
Keith had been elected marshal, but had appointed Dave Dennison his deputy, and on inclement nights Keith still occasionally relieved Tim Gilsey, for in such weather the old man was sometimes too stiff to climb up to his box.
"The way to know people," said the old driver to him, "is to travel on the road with 'em.

There is many a man decent enough to pass for a church deacon; git him on the road, and you see he is a hog, and not of no improved breed at that.

He wants to gobble everything": an observation that Keith had some opportunity to verify.
Terpsichore appeared suddenly to have a good deal of business over in Eden, and had been on the stage several times of late when Keith was driving it, and almost always took the box-seat.