The latter faithfully warned them of all the bad places that were to be found in the road when its author passed that way two yearsbefore, but it was silent on the subject of some things that were more to be feared than sticks, stones, and corduroy bridges. They encountered two of them about three o'clock that afternoon, when they thought they ought to be within a mile or two of Glen's Falls. Joe Wayring, who was leading the way, was the first to discover them. They were vagabond dogs which came slowly out of the thick bushes on one side of the road, dragging after them something that proved to be the carcass of a freshly slaughtered sheep.
Now if there was anything in the world that Joe was afraid of it was an ugly dog; and that these brutes were ugly as well as bold (if they hadn't been bold they would not have killed that sheep in broad daylight) was quickly made apparent. The minute Joe came within sight of them he sounded his bell, whereupon the dogs dropped their prey and raised their heads; but instead of taking themselves off, as my master thought they would, they stood their ground, snarling and showing their white, gleaming fangs as a welcome to the advancing wheelman.
"By gracious! They want a fight!" exclaimed Joe.
"All right. They can have it," replied Roy. "Sheep-killing dogs have no rights that any one is bound to respect, and these villains have been caught in the act."
"Down with them," cried Arthur, whipping his ready rifle from its case before his wheel fairly came to a standstill. "We've more right to the road than they have, and if they won't let us go by—"
"Don't do anything hasty," interrupted Joe. "Think of the reputation of the people to whom these brutes undoubtedly belong, and bear in mind that we've got to go through Glen's Falls or turn back."
"We haven't come almost fifty miles over the worst road in the United States to be turned back now," answered Roy. "Did anybody ever see uglier looking things, I wonder?" he added, as the two yellow, stump-tailed dogs, with their dripping lips raised, and their short ears laid back close to their heads, crouched upon the body of the sheep like panthers preparing for a spring. "Let's seewhat effect a stone will have upon their courage."
By this time the young wheelmen had dismounted; they had to, for the savage beasts had possession of the road. There was room enough on one side to run by them, and Joe and his friends would have made the attempt if they had had any reason to suppose that the dogs would remain close to the sheep while they were doing it; but that would be taking too much risk. If the dogs jumped at them while they were going by, no matter whether they succeeded in laying hold of one of their number or not, they would be pretty certain to throw somebody from his saddle, and then there would be trouble. The unfortunate sheep's throat looked as though it had been cut with a knife, and that proved that their long teeth were sharp. Joe and Arthur were not in favor of beginning a fight with the dogs, hoping that if they were left alone they would drag the sheep across the road and into the woods on the other side; but before they could say or do anything to prevent it, Roy Sheldon made one of his sure, left-hand shots; a heavy stonetook one of the canine vagabonds plumb in the mouth and tumbled him over backward.
"Whoop-pee! That was a bully shot, Jakey," yelled Roy, recalling some of the incidents of the first battle he and his chums had with Matt Coyle and his family. "Throw another, Jakey. Great Scott! They're coming for us."
That was plain enough to boys who could see as well as Joe and Arthur could. The stone certainly had an effect upon them, for they no longer stood on the defensive. They charged at once, the stricken brute leading the way, and his companion keeping close at his heels. I tell you the sight they presented was enough to frighten anybody, unless his nerves were made of steel, as mine were, but we did not run. I couldn't without help, and Joe and his chums wouldn't. In less time than it takes to tell it one of the charging brutes was knocked flat by a second stone from Roy's unerring hand, and the other fell with a bullet in his brain, shot fairly in the eye by Arthur Hastings's pocket rifle. But the death of his companion and the crack of the cartridge didnot take the fight out of the surviving dog. Almost stunned as he was, he sprang up again in an instant, only to be floored by Joe Wayring. A second later Arthur's little rifle spoke again, and this time the dog did not get up. He was as dead as the sheep he had helped pull out of the bushes.
The Death of Matt Coyle's Dogs.
"This is rather ahead of my time," said Joe, who was the first to speak. "I never dreamed that domestic dogs could be so savage. Why, a couple of wild-cats or panthers couldn't have made a worse fight, nor frightened me more," he added, lifting his cap and wiping the big drops of perspiration from his forehead. "I hope this is the last of it, but I'm afraid it isn't."
Before Joe's friends had time to ask him what he meant, or to recover from the nervousness into which they had been thrown by the sudden onset of the sheep-killers, they heard a great crashing in the bushes, which were so thick on both sides of the road that one could not see any object in them at the distance of ten feet, and a heavy voice called out:
"So you've come again, have you? Threeon you this time 'stead of one. All right. I'll be there directly. I'm coming jest as fast as the bresh'll let me."
"There comes the owner of these dogs," said Joe. "Now we are in for it sure."
"Who cares?" replied Roy. "If he thinks we are going to stand still and let his ferocious dogs eat us up, he don't know us; that's all."
Meanwhile the noise in the bushes grew louder, and now a tall, heavily built man forced his way out and stepped into the middle of the road.
"Come again, have you?" was the way in which he greeted the boys. "And brung two fellers with you to help. Wal, you'll need 'em all. Take me, if you want to. See!" he went on rapidly, laying his rifle upon the ground and standing erect with his arms spread out as if to show that he had no other weapon about him. "I'll put my shooting-iron outen my hands and ask you again to take me if you have come here for that purpose. I double-dare you to lay a finger on me. Come now!"
A blind man could have told by the tones ofhis voice that the new-comer was "as full of mad as he could hold"; so very angry in fact, that he scarcely took two looks at the boys to whom he was talking until after he had laid down his rifle and spread out his arms. When he saw that he was confronting a trio of boys, and not bearded men, he dropped his hands and gave utterance to two emphatic words; but as they were swear-words I don't repeat them.
"Who did you think we were?" inquired Joe, who saw at once that the broad-shouldered backwoodsman had make a mistake.
"I took you for jest what I thought you was—the detective that come up here on one of them two-wheeled wagons and run my pardner to earth like a woodchuck in his hole," said the man, nodding at the bicycles. "But you ain't, be you?"
"Of course we are not officers," answered Roy. "We are tourist-wheelmen traveling for pleasure."
"Oh," said the man, in a rather doubtful tone, as if he did not quite understand what the boys were, after all. Then he turned hishead over his shoulder and shouted at the woods: "It is all right, boys, and you can come along without shooting. You see," he went on, as another crashing in the bushes told Joe and his friends that there were more men coming, "I seen you from my place up there on the mounting when you crossed over the brook below, and I was kinder laying for you. Understand? These here fellers are pardners of mine," he continued, as two stalwart woodsmen presented themselves to view. "They was laying back there in the bresh where they had a fair squint at you; if you'd a put a finger on to me when I dropped my rifle and told you to come on, some of you would have been deader now than them dogs you plumped over. What did you do it with? I heared something pop like a gun-cap, and over them dogs went."
Arthur Hastings handed over his rifle because he held it in plain sight, and did not think it would be prudent to do anything else. The man seemed to grow friendly as soon as he was satisfied that the boys were not detectives who had come to the mountains for the purposeof arresting him, and Arthur was afraid that if anything were done to excite his rage, he might become as savage as the dogs from whose fangs he and his chums had been saved by his good shooting.
The man took the pocket rifle with many exclamations of wonder and amusement, and while he and his "pardners" were giving it a good looking-over, Arthur and his friends improved the opportunity to take an equally close survey of the mountaineers; but there was some apprehension mingled with their curiosity, for they knew, as well as they knew anything, that they were in the presence of some of the Buster band. The first one who showed himself was Dave Daily, the leader of the band, who had been in hiding for a year or so to escape arrest.
"That's a mighty cute little trick of a gun," said the latter, when he handed back the pocket rifle. "But you wouldn't like to bet a dollar that she can beat my deer-killer at the distance of a hundred yards, would you? No, I don't reckon you would, because you would be certain sure to lose your dollar. Do youknow who's talking to you?" he added, abruptly.
Joe replied that they not only knew his name, but that they had heard something about him down at Dorchester; and then he wondered why the man did not say something about the dogs that were lying in plain sight. Did they belong to him, and was he going to raise a fuss with his friend Arthur for shooting them? If he did, there would be but one way out of the scrape, and that was to pay the man every cent he chose to demand for the worthless brutes.
"I'll bet you didn't hear nothing good about us down Dorchester way," said Daily, for it was he. "But I'll tell you what is a fact: We're not the terrible chaps that some folks would try to make you think we are. So long as everybody minds their own business and lets us alone, so long do we mind our business and let other folks be. Set down a while," he added, growing communicative, "and I'll tell you jest how the fuss commenced in the first place."
There was nothing for it but to comply withthis request, for Daily did not look or speak like a man who would take "no" for an answer unless he felt like it. So the boys leaned their wheels against convenient trees, seated themselves by Daily's side under the shade of another, while his two friends stretched their heavy frames upon the leaves close by, and the leader went on with his story.
"Us and our folks was raised right here in this neck of woods, we've always lived here, and we don't know no other country outside," said he. "We never had no fuss with nobody so long as we was let alone. We cultivated our little craps, shot our meat in the woods when we wanted it, ketched our trout in the brooks, sot lines through the ice for pickerel in winter, went to school when we wanted to, and were happy like the Injuns was before the white man come to this country and drove them out. First thing we knew, some fellers down in Washington, wherever that is, kicked up a war with somebody else, and sent word to our folks that they'd got to come and help fight it out. Well, they wouldn't do it, ourfolks wouldn't, because it wasn't their fight, they hadn't no hand in getting it up, they didn't care which one whipped, and so they said they'd stay to home. Then what does them big fellers in Washington do but send an officer of some sort up here to take down the names of all of us, except the little boys, so't they could be drafted into the army. Our folks told him he wasn't wanted here and that he'd better go home, but he wouldn't, and so they run him out and everybody like him who came here afterwards."
"In short, you resisted the draft," said Joe.
"You're right we did, and we'll do it again," said Daily, in savage tones. "Whenever we raise a fight amongst ourselves, we stick to it till one or t'other gets licked; but we don't take up outsiders' quarrels. Well, that was where the fuss commenced, and for as much as four years our folks had to keep hid in the mountings so't them drafting officers couldn't get a hold of 'em. When the war was over we thought we should have peace and be let alone like we was before; but wewasn't. Some smart Alecks, who had been elected to go to the Capital, and who had never been up here, passed a law—without once asking us, mind you—that deer shouldn't be killed at such and such times; that trout mustn't be ketched only jest when they said so; and that if we didn't give some heed to them laws, they would take us up and put us in jail. Well, they tried it, and how did they come out? Tell me that, will you?"
"At the little end of the horn," said one of the "pardners," who had thus far kept silent.
"You're right they did, Spence; at the little end of the horn," exclaimed Daily. "And that's the way everybody will come out who takes it upon himself to make laws for us. We're free Amerikin citizens and we mean to keep so. We don't ask no outsiders to make laws for us, because we can take care of ourselves. We kept right along jest as we had always been doing, shooting deer whenever we wanted the meat (violating the law they called it), and one night Zeb Harris and me was took outen our beds and slapped into the jail downat Machias. You see we didn't have no jail up here at Glen's Falls, because we never needed such a thing. We knew well enough who it was that complained of us, for our friends kept us posted; so I writ him a little letter telling him what Zeb and me allowed to do as soon as we got out. We did get out pretty quick, and somehow everything happened to him jest as we said it would. While I was in jail I writ to the papers about it, so't the folks outside could know how we had been treated and trod upon, and all my pieces was published jest as I writ 'em. Don't believe it, do you?" said Daily, thrusting his hand into an inside pocket and pulling out a greasy note-book. "I want you to understand that I can write as well as anybody, even if I haven't had much schooling, and when it comes to poetry, I don't give in to no living man on top of the broad earth. Look at that, and see if you can beat it with all your education."
As Daily said this he placed in Roy Sheldon's hands a clipping from a newspaper, with the request that he would "read her out loud so't everybody could hear it." The boyfound that it was going to be a task to read it at all, for the paper had been so often and so roughly handled that in some places the words were quite obliterated. The poem, if that was the right name for the chief law-breaker's effusion, was nearly a column in length, and it required no little effort on Roy's part to make out the first two verses of it. They ran as follows:
"it was in the town of glens falsas you shal understandthair lived a crowd of young menthay was cald the buster bandand thay was accused of mennya bad deed let them be gilty or notbut thay hunted deer the year roundand for the wardens made it hotthair was one young man among themthe wardens all knew weland by this felows riflthair was menny a fine deer felhe hunted upon an old streami would have you all to knowand sed that that was one placethe wardens dast not go"
"What was the reason the wardens dared not go there?" inquired Arthur, when Roy handed back the paper declaring that the letters were so dim he could not make senseout of the rest of it. "What were they afraid of?"
"Of me. I was up there," answered Daily, who seemed to think he had done something very brave when he concealed himself in the woods and sent word back to the settlement that he would fire upon the first officer who came along his trail to arrest him. "I tell you it wasn't healthy around where I was about that time for anybody but me and my friends. If you don't believe it, read that."
With the words another choice bit of composition was thrust into Roy's hand. It proved to be a warning to one of the recently appointed wardens that the Buster band, having "commenced the fun" by burning the house of the man who had dared to enter complaint against Dave Daily and his friend Zeb Harris, would keep it up by visiting the home of the warden if he did not at once throw up his office and let unlawful deer-hunters alone. There was still a third clipping which proved of more interest to the boys than either of the others, for it related to the detective who had come to Glen's Falls on his wheel. It wasaddressed to the very man whose house they had intended to make their headquarters during their stay at the Falls. It ran thus:
"Mr. Jon Homes:—if you keep that black whiskered felow with the nee britches about your house any longer you will have roast pig to and in short order we know he is a detektive be cause he has been talking with one of our boys who he thinks is a spy on us in the pay of what you call the law and order sosiation but thair ant no spies amongst our crowd i want you to understand git rid of him for if you dont you will be burnt out before a week goes by we have started the fun and we will keep it up we mean bisness git rid of him and your all rite if you dont down she comes by the time you git this we shal have taken some of your stock as proof that we mean bisiness, from a frind remember."
"Mr. Jon Homes:—if you keep that black whiskered felow with the nee britches about your house any longer you will have roast pig to and in short order we know he is a detektive be cause he has been talking with one of our boys who he thinks is a spy on us in the pay of what you call the law and order sosiation but thair ant no spies amongst our crowd i want you to understand git rid of him for if you dont you will be burnt out before a week goes by we have started the fun and we will keep it up we mean bisness git rid of him and your all rite if you dont down she comes by the time you git this we shal have taken some of your stock as proof that we mean bisiness, from a frind remember."
By the time Roy Sheldon had finished reading this precious document he and his two friends were so angry that they could scarcely refrain from telling Dave Daily what they thought of so mean and cowardly a villain as these productions of his proved him to be. Joe Wayring showed very plainly that hehad had quite enough of this nonsense. He got upon his feet, brushed the leaves from his clothes, and remarked that it was high time he and his chums were moving.
"What's your hurry?" inquired Dave. "You can't find no better company than we be anywhere about the Falls. Where do you stop when you get there, seeing there ain't no hotel to put up at?"
"We're not going to put up at the Falls," replied Joe. "We shall stop there just long enough to buy a glass of milk or beg a drink of water of somebody, and then we shall take to the road for a ten-mile run before dark."
"Those dogs over there," said Roy, jerking his head toward the prostrate animals, "disputed the right of way with us, and when I tried to drive them out of the road they came at us with such fury that we had to shoot them in self-defense. I hope they don't belong to any of you?"
Roy said this, not because he cared a straw who owned the worthless curs, but for the reason that he felt some curiosity to know whyDaily and his companions were so very indifferent regarding them and their fate. He had looked for a row the minute the men saw the bodies of the four-footed vagabonds; but instead of that, the woodsmen had not referred to the matter since they asked to see the weapon with which the shooting was done.
"No; the dogs don't belong to none of us nor the sheep, neither," answered Daily. "Do you see them letters on the critter's head all mixed up together? That's Holmes's mark, and them dogs or any others are welcome to kill all the sheep he's got, for all we care. We don't like him none too well, for he harbored that detective till we told him to shove him out, and he would be one of the wardens if he wasn't afraid. Matt'll be staving blind mad when he hears of it, and mebbe you'd best keep outen his way when you get started, for he'll make you pay ten times what the critters was fairly worth. He sets a heap of store by them, for he brought 'em up here for watch-dogs to tell him when there was anybody coming to his shanty."
"Did you sayMattwould be mad?" asked Joe, with a strange look on his face. "Matt who? What is his other name?"
"His whole name is Matt Coyle," replied Daily.
CHAPTER XV.
MR. HOLMES'S WARNING.
Thiswas a surprise, and for some reasons it was a most disagreeable one. Of course Joe Wayring and his chums were not sorry that their old enemy, Matt Coyle, had escaped with his life when the canvas canoe was snagged and sunk in Indian River, but they were sorry that they had stumbled upon him in this unexpected way. Beyond a doubt Matt's failure to make himself master of the six thousand dollars that had been stolen from the Irvington bank, taken in connection with the loss of all his worldly goods and the imprisonment of his wife and boys, had had an effect upon him, and if such a thing were possible, Matt hated Joe and his friends with greatly increased hatred. The fact that the boys were in no way to blame for his misfortunes would not make the least difference to Matt Coyle. His bad luck began on the very day he madethe acquaintance of the Wayring family, he looked upon Joe as his evil genius, and the young wheelmen knew well enough that unless they got out of the Glen's Falls neighborhood before Matt learned they were there, they would surely find themselves in trouble of some sort.
"His whole name is Matt Coyle," repeated Daily. "He was the best guide, boatman and hunter down the Injun Lake way, but for some reason or other the rest of the men who were in that business didn't take to him, and so they clubbed together and drove him out. That wouldn't have been so very hard on Matt, for Ameriky is a tolerable big country and there's plenty of places for a guide and hunter to go; but they had to go and smash up everything he had so't he couldn't stay. They even took all his money and his rifle and clothes away from him, and turned him out to starve. He made his way up here by accident, and he's been living with us ever since. He's a good chap, and when he told me his story, I said to him that if I was in his place, I wouldn't sleep sound till every man and boy who had had a hand in mistreating me was burned outenhouse and home. Why, he lost six thousand dollars in hard money, Matt did; all the savings of years of honest work."
"But he knows a way to get it all back and more too," said one of Dave's partners. "We expect him home with some of the boys to-day, and when he comes we'll all be rich."
"Spence, you talk too much for a little man," said Dave, sternly. "Matt won't take it kind of you telling all his secrets. He warned us all not to say anything about it."
"Fellows, we must be going," exclaimed Joe. "I know that everything these men have to say is full of interest, but listening to stories will not take us to our journey's end. By the way, how far is the railroad from here? I mean the one that runs through Dorchester?"
"Fifteen miles, or such a matter," answered Daily. "But you couldn't never get there. The woods is so thick you couldn't take them wagons through. Your best plan is to stick to the road. Where did you say you was going to stop to-night?"
"If we stay here much longer we'll have tostop in town," replied Joe. "We don't want to do that, so we shall keep going and get as close to a level country as we can before the dark overtakes us. Good-by."
This was a moment that all the boys had been looking forward to with many misgivings. Would Daily and his men permit them to leave when they got ready? was a question that had often shaped itself in their minds, and which would now be answered in a very few seconds. To their immense relief the men who had been ready to shoot them half an hour before, showed no disposition to molest them or their property. They might be thieves and law-breakers, but they were not highwaymen. They said "So-long" very cordially, and saw the boys mount and ride away.
"Now here's a mess, or will be if we don't make the best time we know how before night comes," said Arthur, when the first turn in the road took them out of sight of Dave Daily and his friends. "I don't know when I have been more astounded than I was when that outlaw pronounced Matt Coyle's name."
"Didn't that juryman say that he believedMatt would some day turn up alive and as full of mischief as ever?" said Roy Sheldon. "And didn't we say that the Glen's Falls neighborhood would be just the place for him if he were on deck? Well, he's here. He must have had a time of it tramping all the way from Sherwin's Pond through the woods. But then I suppose he is used to such things."
"He is at home wherever night overtakes him," said Arthur. "But I shouldn't think he would stick to the woods when there were so many roads handy."
"Wouldn't he want to keep out of sight of the officers who were looking for the money he was known to have in his possession? So those six thousand dollars were the fruits of his honest toil, were they? And Matt was the best guide, boatman, and hunter in the Indian Lake country? That's news to me."
"It's news to all of us," answered Joe; "but, to my notion, there's worse behind it. Where has Matt been with those men who are going to make the Buster band rich when they return?"
"That's so," exclaimed Arthur. "Wherehas he? I noticed you inquired the distance to the railroad, and that made me think you were disturbed by the same suspicions I was. Do you believe Matt and his crowd were down there, and that they had anything to do with the rock we found on the track?"
"I don't know what else to think," replied Joe. "It was the way those men acted rather than what they said that aroused my suspicions. Matt has been rich once, that is to say, he has had the handling of more money than he will ever make by his own labor, and isn't it natural to suppose that when he lost it he set his wits at work to conjure up some plan to get more? A man who will do the things Matt Coyle has done and threatened, will do worse if he gets the chance. It's time that fellow was shut up. The next time he tries to wreck a train he may be successful."
This was all the boys had to say on the subject, but it was easy enough to see that they had resolved to put an officer on the squatter's track at the first opportunity. But then there was Tom Bigden, with whose doings I was by this time pretty well acquainted. Wouldthey want him disgraced by the revelations Matt would be sure to make if he were brought before a court to be tried for his crimes? As Roy Sheldon afterward remarked, a big load would have been taken off Tom Bigden's shoulders if Matt Coyle had never been born.
As soon as Daily and his men had been left out of sight Arthur Hastings began making the pace; and he made it so rapid that scarcely twenty minutes elapsed before they passed through an open gate and drew up before the back door of Mr. Holmes's house. They knew it when they saw it; and as they looked at all the evidences of thrift and comfort with which it was surrounded, they wished most heartily that Daily and all the rest of the Buster band might be brought to justice and that speedily.
"Boys, we'll not put this fine property in jeopardy by stopping here," said Joe, in a low tone. "We'd be worse than heathen if we did, and Mr. Holmes ought to kick us off the place for hinting at such a thing. Good-evening, sir," he added, touching his cap to a gray-headed man in his shirt sleeves who just then came around the corner with a bucket of waterin his hand. "Have you a pitcher of milk to spare, and can you give us a good big lunch to eat along the way?"
"Oh, yes, I can do that," replied the man, whose countenance grew clouded when he saw the boys getting off their wheels, but brightened again at once when he learned that they did not intend to ask him for lodgings. "Plenty of milk and provender to spare, but no beds made up."
"Mr. Holmes, we understand you perfectly," Joe hastened to reply. "We know just how you are situated, we sympathize with you, and we wouldn't stay in your house to-night if we knew your doors were open to us. We met Daily up the road a piece."
"You did?" exclaimed Mr. Holmes. "And did you tell him you were going to stop here?"
"We simply told him we should stop somewhere in town long enough to buy a glass of milk or beg a drink of water, and he raised no objection to it. I think you ought to know that Matt Coyle's dogs have been on the warpath again, and you have lost another sheep. Daily said it was in your mark."
"That's too bad; too bad," said the old man, who had long ago ceased to hope for better times. "If they keep on they will kill all my stock. The members of the Buster band don't always go into the woods after meat now. The pastures are handier, and a sheep, calf, or nice young heifer is easier to shoot than deer. We can't prove anything against them, and are afraid to prosecute if we could."
"Those dogs will never kill any more sheep for you," said Roy. "They wouldn't give us the road and we shot them. They're deader than herrings."
I noticed that Roy always said "we" when speaking of this little circumstance. If anything unpleasant grew out of it, he did not mean that his friend Arthur should bear all the blame or take all the punishment. Mr. Holmes's face grew bright again, but he showed a little anxiety when he asked:
"Did Daily see you do it, or does he know anything about it? Then I am surprised that he didn't make you pay for the dogs. Say," he went on, in a more guarded tone, "where are you going to stop to night?"
Joe answered that they intended to camp in the woods, and hoped he could furnish them grub enough for supper and breakfast the next morning.
"Of course I'll do that," said Mr. Holmes. "But take my advice and don't light a fire. The owner of the dogs you shot is a savage. He gets around at night as well as in the day-time, and since he came here last fall, he has put more mischief into the Buster band than they ever had in them before, and that was quite unnecessary. They never thought of shooting stock for their own use before he went among them, but they often do it now. They seem to take delight in breaking open every door that is fastened of nights, no matter whether they want to steal anything or not. I'd give something to know positively what that man Coyle intended to do with the spades, crowbar and axes he took out of my tool-house the other night."
"What do you think he meant to do with them?" inquired Arthur, who thought from the way the man spoke that he had his suspicions.
"I'm almost afraid to speak it out loud, for it don't seem possible that any man can be so wicked," replied Mr. Holmes. "The lawless acts of the Buster band have driven nearly everything away from us, but we've got the post-office left, and last night I got my weekly papers out of it. In one of them I read that a terrible railroad accident had been averted by the coolness and courage of a wheelman who rode across a trestle in the dark to warn the engineer of an approaching train that there was a rock on the track."
"He rode over a trestle in the dark?" exclaimed Roy, who, impatient as he was to hear what else Mr. Holmes had to say, could not resist the temptation to torment Joe Wayring. "Now that's what I call pluck."
"That is what the papers call it too," said Mr. Holmes. "Well, when the trainmen came to look into things they found that that rock didn't get upon the track by accident, but had been dug out of its bed on the top of the bluff and rolled there. Since then that bluff has been examined by detectives in the employ of the railroad, who found there a couple ofspades, an axe and a crowbar all marked J.H. Those are the initials of my name, and they are on every tool I've got. They're in New London now, and if I thought anything would come of it, I would run down and look at them. If they are mine, that man Coyle was the leader of the gang who tried to wreck the train. At least he stole the tools, and I say he is the leader because the Buster band never would have thought of such a thing if he had not put it into their heads."
"How do you know he stole your tools?" asked Roy, in some excitement.
"Because I saw the prints of his feet in front of the door of the shop. They're as big as all out-doors, and his shoes are so nearly torn to pieces that it is a wonder to me how he can keep them on. Mebbe it's a little thing to build so much upon, but I know I am right," said the old man, earnestly. "If you could see that track once you would recognize it again the minute you saw it."
Now, when it was too late to make amends for the oversight, Roy Sheldon proceeded to take himself severely to task for not making acloser examination of those big footprints he had seen about the rock. If Matt Coyle's track was there he could have picked it out from among the rest, for hadn't he and his companions taken a good look at it on the night Mr. Swan "surrounded" Matt's camp, and Matt crept up in their rear and stole all their boats? That "hoof" of his, as Mr. Swan called it, had "given the squatter away" on one occasion, and seemed in a fair way to do it again. Evidence that Matt was one of those who had tried to wreck the train was accumulating with encouraging rapidity. No doubt he and his gang had expected to bring a rich harvest out of that gulf after the sleeping passengers had been plunged into it, and that was what Daily's companion meant by saying that Matt would make them all wealthy when he came back. But what would they say when they learned that he had not brought a cent with him?
"Of course it is not my place to offer advice, Mr. Holmes," said Arthur, at length, "but I really think it would be a good plan for you to go to the city and look at those tools. If theyare yours you can say so, and may be the means of breaking up this nest of ruffians. There'll be a detective sent up."
"But I don't want one sent here," exclaimed Mr. Holmes. "I'd be afraid to have him around, for the minute he went away I'd lose everything I've got."
"He need not come near you," replied Arthur.
"And he need not come on a wheel, either," added Joe. "If he does, he may get some innocent tourist into trouble. Let him be a tramp or a fugitive from justice, if you please."
"That's the idea," interrupted the old man, excitedly. "Young fellow, your head's level. That would be his game, if he would only consent to play it, for fugitives and tramps are the ones the Buster band always receive with open arms."
"That is what I thought. Well, they have a good one now, and what's more, they must like him, for Daily said Matt was a fine fellow; or something like that," soliloquized Joe. He did not utter the words aloud, for he wasn't sure it would be prudent to tell Mr. Holmes that heand his two friends were better acquainted with Matt Coyle than anybody in the Glen's Falls country. If they could help it, the boys did not mean to tell who they were or where they came from, for fear that the information might reach Matt's ears in a roundabout way. He was glad when Roy said:
"Haven't we stayed here about long enough? If we want this to be our last night in the mountains we had better take to the road again."
"I guess you had," replied Mr. Holmes, reluctantly. "I never was guilty of so inhospitable an act before, except when I showed Daily's letter to the detective who was stopping with me and asked him what I had better do about it, and I would not be guilty of it now if I could do as I pleased. Remember my advice and go to bed in the dark; for if you don't I am afraid you will have visitors before morning."
The boys promised to bear the matter in mind, at the same time assuring the old man that it was no hardship for them to sleep out of doors, and Mr. Holmes hurried away to getthe pitcher of milk and have a supper and breakfast put up for them. Being apprehensive that some of the Buster band might be on the watch, hoping to collect some damaging evidence against the farmer that would warrant them in burning his house, Joe Wayring and his friends did not once venture across the threshold, although often urged, but ate a lunch and drank their fill of milk while sitting on the back steps. When the boys offered to pay for being so royally entertained, Mr. Holmes would not listen to it. By putting it out of the power of those sheep-killing dogs to do any more mischief, they had done him and all the rest of the law-abiding men in the settlement a kindness, and he wished they could stay there for a week so that he and his neighbors might show them how grateful they were for it. If any citizen of that region had shot those dogs, he would have been homeless before another week had passed over his head.
"I hope that Matt will not think that a citizen did do it, and proceed to wreak vengeance upon some one against whom he happens to hold a grudge," said Roy, as they moved swiftly out of the gate and turned down the road. "I still think that if Mr. Holmes and a few determined men would wake up and go about it in earnest, they could put an end to this reign of terror. I can't see why they don't try it."
But there was one thing that Roy and his friends did not know, and Mr. Holmes had forgotten to speak of it. There was not a single building in Glen's Falls that had a dollar's worth of insurance upon it. The risks had all been canceled at the breaking out of the war of the Rebellion, and there had been none taken there since. This was one thing that made Mr. Holmes and his neighbors so very timid.
The town of Glen's Falls was a dreary looking spot, as the boys found when they came to ride through it. There was a forest of fine shade-trees on each side of the wide principal thoroughfare, but there was grass instead of walks under them, and the buildings behind were rapidly falling to pieces. The evidences of former prosperity that met their eyes on every hand proved that there had once beenmoney and brains in the place, and that it would have amounted to something before this time if Dave Daily and the rest of the Buster band had been out of the way. They slaked their thirst at a pump on the corner of a cross-road and continued on their way without meeting a single person. If it had not been for an occasional head they saw through the windows of some of the houses they passed, they would have said that the town was deserted.
Their guide-book told them that the road that led from Glen's Falls through the mountains to the low country beyond was so plain it could not be missed, and perhaps it was when the man who wrote the book passed that way on his wheel; but it was not so now. Roads there were in abundance, and they all ran down hill in the direction the boys wanted to go; but they were filled with obstructions, and no particular one of them showed more signs of travel than another.
"I'd like to see the fellow who says he had a mile of the best of coasting along this road try his hand at it now," said Roy, seating himself on a log and cooling his flushed face withhis cap while he waited for one or the other of his friends to go ahead and take the lead. "I'm tired out, and if I was sure it would be quite safe to do so, I should be in favor of going into camp."
"I don't believe he ever came along this road," said Joe. "We've got a little out of our reckoning, that's all."
"And not only are there no cows near by to give us a drink of milk, but we wouldn't dare go after it if there were, for fear of that villain Matt Coyle," groaned Roy. "Doesn't it beat you how that fellow keeps turning up?"
"And at the very time he isn't wanted," chimed in Arthur. "If you want to stop, all right; but don't let's stop here. I think it would be safer to go into the bushes and hide. I don't much like the idea of passing the night without a fire, but I confess that what Mr. Holmes said frightened me. I wish we might get a hundred miles away before Matt comes home and hears that his watch-dogs have been shot."
The others wished so too, but they hadn't energy enough to go any farther that night,and besides the appearance of the road ahead of them was discouraging. It ran down a steep bank until it was lost among the trees and bushes as its foot, and probably there was another bank just as rough and steep on the other side of the brook which ran through the gully. They made the descent, and there they found a stream of water so sparkling and cold that the sight of it was more than they could resist. They carried their wheels into the bushes, making as little trail as possible, and at the distance of ten or fifteen yards from the road found a camping place; or, rather, a thicket that would be a nice spot for a camp when some of its interior was cut away so that they could spread their blankets. They did not use their camp-axes for fear that the noise they would necessarily make in chopping away the brush would serve as a guide to some one they did not care to see. They worked silently with their knives, and at the end of half an hour had as comfortable a camp as a tired boy would wish to see, if there had only been a cheerful fire to light it. They ate their supper in the dark, took a refreshing bath in thebrook, and then lay down with their blankets about them and their loaded pocket rifles close at hand. This was the first time they had found it necessary to adopt this precaution, and they hoped it would be the last.
About an hour after my master's regular breathing told me that he had fallen fast asleep, I was startled by hearing voices a little distance away. I could not tell which direction they came from, but I knew they were men's voices, and that they were angrily discussing some point on which there seemed to be a difference of opinion. I was still more startled when Arthur Hastings raised himself upon his elbow, shook Joe Wayring roughly by the shoulder, and whispered in his ear:
"Wake up, here. Matt Coyle's coming."
"Where?" asked Joe, who was wide awake in an instant.
"Coming along the very road we'd had to go up if we'd climbed the hill on the other side of the brook," replied Arthur. "Do you hear that? They're stopping for a drink. Reach over and give Roy a shove. Be careful to putyour hand on his mouth for he is apt to speak out when he is suddenly aroused."
Be careful maneuvering on Joe's part Roy was awakened without betraying his presence to the men, who had by this time halted at the brook, and then the three boys sat up on their blankets and listened.
CHAPTER XVI.
TWO NARROW ESCAPES.
"Itellyou I feel so savage that I could bite a nail in two an' not half try," were the first words that came to the ears of the listening wheelmen. They were preceded by a long-drawn sigh of satisfaction, such as a thirsty boy sometimes utters when he has taken a hearty drink of water. "Seems to me that I can't turn in no direction no way but I find them oneasy chaps at my heels to pester the life out of me. They're to blame for me losin' them six thousand dollars of mine that I worked hard fur, dog-gone 'em."
How the boys trembled when that harsh voice grated on their ears. It was Matt Coyle's, sure enough. They had heard it so often that there could be no mistake about it.
"They was the ones that blocked this little game of mine, an' sent me an' the fellers hum empty-handed when we thought to come backrich," Matt went on, growing angrier and raising his voice to a higher key as he proceeded. "I seen 'em as plain as daylight; an' now I come hum to find that they've been here an' shot them two dogs that I was dependin' on to keep the constable away from my shanty. Did anybody ever hear of sich pizen luck?"
"If you saw them there at the rock, what was the reason you did not drive them off so't the train could run into it?" inquired another familiar voice,—in point of fact, the voice of Dave Daily. The boys were surprised to know that he was there, and wondered if he had come out to meet Matt and put him on their trail. If he had, what was his object in doing it? Did he want to see them punished for shooting those savage dogs, or did he want to have them robbed?
"You say you and your crowd worked hard to get that rock down the bluff and onto the track, and yet you sot there in the bresh and let one single boy turn you from your purpose, which was to bust up the train," continued Daily. "He must have been alone,for you say yourself that one of his friends went one way and t'other went t'other to tell the engineer to watch out. Why didn't you go down and pitch him into the ravine?"
"What would have been the good of doin' that, seein' that Joe an' Arthur had already went off?" demanded the squatter, with some show of spirit. "An' don't I tell you that he had a pistol or something in his hand."
Daily uttered an exclamation of impatience.
"'Twasn't a pistol nor nothing of the sort," said he. "It was a little pop-gun that wouldn't hit the side of a barn nor shoot through a piece of card-board. Before I would say that I was scared by a little thing like that I would go off and hide myself; wouldn't you, Spence?"
"Them pop-guns was big enough an' ugly enough to kill them two dogs of mine, an' I ain't got no call to face sich we'pons," retorted Matt, who, as you know, always took care to look out for number one. "An' here we've been hidin' around in the bresh fur most a week, fearin' the officers, when we might as well come hum to onct. That's anotherthing that makes me mad. I do wish I could get my two hands onto them boys fur a little while, an' you fellers here to help me. I'd larrup 'em so't they wouldn't ever come nigh here agin, I bet you."
"I don't know whether you would or not," replied Daily. "I kinder liked 'em, and as long as they ain't officers—"
"That's so," interrupted Matt. "But they're jest the chaps to put the constables onto your trail an' mine. That's their best holt. Didn't you say that if you was in my place you wouldn't rest easy till everybody who had had a hand in mistreatin' you had been burned outen house an' home? Well, them are three of 'em."
"Now why didn't you say so?" demanded the chief of the Buster band.
"If we'd only knowed that, we'd a kept 'em for you," added Spence's voice. "Wouldn't we, Dave? Now that I come to think of it, the youngsters never told us who they was or where they come from, and we didn't think to ask them."
"They'd a lied to you if you had," saidMatt, and the boys judged by the sound of crunching gravel that he was pacing back and forth across the road like some caged wild animal. "That's the kind of fellers they be; an' now I'll tell you what's a fact: If you don't help me ketch them fellers an' hold 'em so't they can't get away till we get ready to let 'em, this country of your'n will be thick with officers afore two weeks more has gone by. That's the way it was down to Injun Lake."
"And this is what we get by taking you in and feeding you when you was nigh about dead, is it?" exclaimed Daily, in angry tones. "I bet you that the next tramp who comes this way will be kicked out before he has time to tell his story. You've brought some of our boys into trouble by talking them big notions of your'n into their heads, and telling how easy it was to smash a train and get thousands of dollars outen the pocket of the folks—Ugh! I can't bear to think of what fools we made of ourselves by listening to you. Now you clear yourself, before we make an end of you for good."
"I come here 'cause I had to go somewhere,didn't I?" said Matt, in tones that were fully as angry and fierce as Daily's. "I'm sorry enough I done it, for you're not the men I took you for. You're willin' to stand here with your hands in your pockets an' let them rich folks tell you what an' when you shall eat."
"No, we ain't," roared Daily. "We're free Amerikin citizens, and we don't allow nobody to tell us what we shall do."
"Well, then, what makes you talk to me that-a-way?" cried Matt. "I come here to help, an' I've told you of more ways to bother the folks who want to make laws for you than you would have thought of in ten years' time. As fur puttin' that rock on the track, nobody suspicions who done it, an' we laid around in the bresh so't the officers, if any happened to be here, shouldn't see us comin' from t'wards the railroad. I'm free to say that I didn't want to go down to the track alone an' face the we'pon that Sheldon boy had in his hand (I knowed him dark as it was), but I offered to go if any one would go with me; an' they wouldn't. Ask 'em if it ain't so."
This proved to Roy Sheldon's entire satisfaction that he had done the right thing when he pulled his pocket rifle from its case, shoved a cartridge into it, and prepared to defend himself if the train-wreckers thought it best to attack him. It seems that they did watch him and discuss plans for getting him out of their way, but some of the timid ones among them saw the light reflected from the nickel-plated ornaments on his rifle, and could not muster courage enough to show themselves.
"Nobody don't suspicion that we put the rock on the track," repeated Matt, "an' that ain't why the officers will come here. You're the one who done the mischief—you, yourself. As soon as one of them boys began to let on that they knowed who you was, you showed them all the letters an' things you writ for the papers, an' talked to 'em like they was friends of your'n. You will find yourself in trouble all along of that nonsense, if you don't do what I say."
"That puts a different look on the matter," said Daily, in a much milder tone, "and, Matt, I'm sorry I jawed you that-a-way. Factof it is, I couldn't help it. We've been in a power of trouble and trib'lation ever since them rich folks down to Washington sent for us to go and fight their war for 'em, and then went and made laws against shooting deer and ketching trout, and we've got pretty well riled up. What do you think we had best do?"
"Nab them boys fust an' foremost," said the squatter emphatically. "That's the fust thing; then, after I have had my satisfaction outen 'em, by tyin' 'em to a tree an' larrupin' 'em with hickories, like I would have done with that there pizen Joe Wayring if them friends of his'n hadn't come up an' rescooed him—after I've done all that, I'll take a day off an' think what we'll do next. One thing is sartin: them boys must not be let go out of these mountings till their mouths has been shut about the Buster band in some way or 'nuther."
"Ketching of 'em is going to be the hardest part of the whole business," remarked Spence. "They skum along right peart after we let them go, and I b'lieve they are plumb outen the mountings by this time. If they are—"
"But they ain't, I tell you," Matt Coyle interposed. "It don't lay in no steam injun, let alone a bisickle, to get outen these mountings betwixt five o'clock an' dark. They're camped summers between here an' Ogden, an' all we've got to do is to circle round to our usual lookin'-out place an' stay there till we see 'em comin'; then we'll run down an' stop 'em. When I get my hands onto 'em they'd best watch out, fur I feel jest like poundin' 'em plumb to death to pay'em fur stickin' that innercent ole woman of mine in jail. An' the boys too; the very best, honestest an' hardest workin' boys that any pap ever had. They're likewise shut up all along of that pizen Joe Wayring an' his rich friends."
These words were followed by the strangest sounds the boys had ever heard. If they had not known Matt Coyle as well as they did, they would have been sure he was crying.
All this while the men (and there seemed to be a large party of them) had been taking turns drinking at the brook; and having quenched their thirst they started on again with a common impulse, not along the road,but up the stream on whose right-hand bank the boys were encamped. There could be no doubt of it, for there was no longer any crunching of gravel under the heels of their heavy boots, but the bushes snapped and swayed, and the voices came more distinctly to their ears. Matt Coyle was the one who did most of the talking. He did not seem to take his failure to wreck the train so very much to heart, but he bewailed the loss of his dogs, whose good qualities could not be enumerated by any one man, and asked who would warn him now if the officers came to his shanty some dark night to arrest him.
"They are coming this way as sure as the world," whispered Roy, drawing his feet closer to him and placing an elbow on each knee so that he could have a dead rest with his rifle. "Why don't the fools stick to the road? It's easier walking there than it is in the bushes."
"This is no doubt a short cut to their hiding-place," replied Joe. "Stand together, fellows, and we'll show them what we are made of. We'll give them fair warning, andif they are foolish enough to disregard it, they will have to take the consequences."
"That's what's the matter," whispered Arthur, cautiously moving a little closer to his friends. "I'm afraid, but I'll never be tied to a tree and whipped; they can bet on that."
I can not begin to tell you how frightened I was as I stood there and listened to the voices and footsteps of those desperate men who were every minute drawing nearer to our place of concealment. Remember, I was utterly helpless. However good my will may have been, I did not possess the power to do the first thing to aid my master in the fight which I firmly believed would be commenced in less than ten seconds. And bear another thing in mind: If the young wheelmen were found there, and were overpowered and taken captive, the shooting of Matt Coyle's worthless dogs was not the only thing for which they would be punished. They knew Matt's secret. They knew that he and some of his party had tried to wreck a train. They had talked about it where the boys could plainly hear every word they uttered. Of course Matt would know it, if hefound them there in the bushes, and what would he do? How would he go to work to "shut up their mouths," as he had spoken of doing? I assure you this thought was enough to make even my steel nerves shake; and I believe it must have passed through Joe Wayring's mind and frightened him, for I heard him say, in a scarcely audible whisper:
"It's do or die, fellows. That villain will be wild with rage if he learns that we heard all he said to Dave Daily. If the worst must come, be sure of your man before you shoot."
That moment's terrible suspense is something I never shall forget; then the reaction came, and I felt as if I were going to fall in a heap like a piece of wet rope. There was a tolerably well-beaten path along the bank of the brook, but it was on the other side. Dave Daily and his gang of villains followed it, and that was all that saved us. If there had been a spark of fire on our side the brook as big as the end of your finger, I should have had a different story to tell. I was so confused that I could not pay any attention to their conversation, but I counted them as they passedalong in Indian file, and when at last they were out of hearing and Roy Sheldon spoke, I knew his count agreed with mine.
"Thirteen," was all he said; and then he lay down on his blanket and probably looked as nerveless as I felt.
"And at least half of them must have been with Matt," added Arthur Hastings. "I know it took six or seven men to roll that bowlder out of the ditch and place it on the track. Great Scott! Wasn't that a narrow escape!"
"I'd like to know how we shall come out to-morrow," said Joe, anxiously. "That 'looking-out place' that Matt spoke of must command a view of the road along which we will have to go to get to Ogden, and if we do not mind what we are about, Matt will meet and stop us there."
This was another thing the young wheelmen had to worry over, and taken in connection with the vivid recollection of the exciting scene through which they had just passed, it effectually banished sleep from their eyes for the rest of the night. And daylight was along time coming, as it always is when anxiously waited and watched for. They ate breakfast as they had eaten supper—in the dark—and when the birds began singing picked up their wheels and struck out for the road, which they found to be quite as bad as it looked on the previous evening. The first hill they encountered was a hard one, as they knew it was going to be, and when they gained the top they had to go down again on the other side. Of course the woods were about as dark as they could be, and it was anything but pleasant for the leading boy to feel his way while trundling his wheel beside him. But the fear of Matt Coyle's wrath and the hope of passing his "looking-out place" before the sun arose, drove them on, and to such good purpose that, by the time they could see to ride, they found themselves on a smooth, well-traveled highway. They did not stop to ask one another whether or not it was the road they wanted to find. It led away from the mountains, and that was all they cared to know.
"Away we go on our wheels, boys," sangJoe; and suiting the action to the word he sprang into his saddle and set out at a lively pace. "Now, Matt Coyle, come on. It would take a better horse than you ever did or ever will own to stop us."
"But a stick thrown into the road might do the business for us," suggested Roy.
"You don't suppose Matt knows that, do you?" said Arthur. "Does anybody see anything that looks as though it might be used for a lookout station?"
Nobody did. There was nothing to be seen but a cultivated field on the right hand, a thickly wooded hill-side on the left, and a farm house in the distance. True there was a high, bald peak a little to the left of the hill over which the road disappeared, but it was all of ten or fifteen miles away, and a man stationed on its summit would have needed a good glass to make us out. At least that was what Joe Wayring said, and then he dismissed all fears of Matt Coyle from his mind, and made a motion with his hand as if to throw open the breech of his pocket rifle, which he had thus far carried in readiness for any emergency thatmight arise, and remove the cartridge; but, on reflection, he decided to wait a little longer. It was lucky he did so, and that his companions followed his example.
If the Buster band really had a "looking-out place" anywhere within sight of the road I don't know it, but I do know that by taking short cuts through the mountains they managed to reach the highway in advance of us, for when we reached the top of the hill of which I have spoken, and the wheelmen were about to stow the rifles in their cases preparatory to a coast, Matt Coyle and Dave Daily suddenly stepped out of a thicket on one side of the road, and as many more ruffians arose from behind the fence on the other. They were about thirty yards away, and although all except Matt carried guns in their hands, I was relieved to see that there was not a club or stone among them. They supposed that all they had to do was to form across the road, call upon the boys to halt, and they would be obeyed.
"Them's the fellers—the very chaps I've been a-lookin' fur," yelled the squatter, shaking his fists in the air and striking up a war-dance in the middle of the road. "Now I'll have the whole on you, an' there won't be nobody to interfere when I—"
"Full speed, boys," said Joe, in a low tone. "Hold fast to your guns and be ready to stop if anybody gets unhorsed. It's our only chance. Get out of the way," he cried, flourishing his cocked rifle above his head with one hand while he guided me with the other. "Get out of the way or we will run you down. If we strike you, you are dead men."
It never occurred to Matt and Dave to ask each other what would become of the boys themselves if their headlong progress were suddenly stopped, and neither did they linger to try the experiment. The three Columbias fairly whistled through the air; and when Matt saw that his peremptory orders to halt were disregarded, and that we were charging down upon him with apparently irresistible force, he scuttled out of the way with the greatest haste, and Dave Daily, the terrible man who hid in the woods and shot at officers unawares, was not an inch behind him.
"Look out for them pop-guns," he yelled.
"Yes, look out for them," shouted Arthur. "They're death on all sorts of varmints."
In less time than it takes to tell it the danger was over. Moving abreast and going at almost railroad speed we flew down the hill, and the way was clear. I caught just one glimpse of Matt Coyle's scowling and astonished face as we sped by, and that was the first and last time I ever saw him. After that I did not wonder that my master and his friends were resolved to fight to the death and take any risks rather than fall into his power, for if I ever saw an evil face I saw it then. But the man who carried it around with him was a coward, and so was the leader of the Buster band, who was afraid of the pocket rifles. If those handy little weapons had brought their owners into difficulty, they had also assisted in getting them out of it.
Being afraid to apply the brakes the boys regulated their speed with the pedals as well as they could, and when the foot of the hill was reached they stopped and looked behind them. There was no one in sight.
The Run for Safety.
"That was another tight squeak," said Roy, holding fast to his wheel with one hand and fanning himself with the other, as he always did when a halt was made, "and nothing but Matt's ignorance and Dave's brought us through. Well, I don't know that we are to blame if they didn't have sense enough to throw something in the road in front of us."
The excitement for that day was all over now, and I was very glad of it. The road being good and the coasting places frequent, we bowled along at a lively pace, and at four o'clock in the afternoon rode into the village of Ogden, where we halted for the night. One of the loungers on the porch was reading aloud from a weekly paper which had but just arrived with news that was no news to city people by this time. Of course the work of the train-wreckers was given a prominent place, as well as a lengthy notice. As I leaned against the porch and listened, I asked myself what those loungers would have said if some one had told them that the three dusty boys who had just disappeared through the doorway were the ones who brought the efforts of the train-wreckers to naught. Roy and Arthur respected Joe's wishes, and never, in any one's hearing, spoke of what he had done that night.
CHAPTER XVII.
AN UNEXPECTED MEETING.
Fromthe morning Joe Wayring and his friends left Ogden up to the time they wheeled over the old familiar road that led into Mount Airy, not a single thing happened to mar the pleasure of their trip. I do not mean to say that the roads were always good, or that they were never weather-bound; for those petty annoyances fall to the lot of every tourist, he expects them, and knows how to make the best of them. But they found no more train-wreckers along the route, nor were there any Buster bands or Matt Coyles to be afraid of. They spent many a night in camp; their pocket rifles brought them all the young squirrels they cared to eat; they encountered tramps on nearly every mile of the way, and although they never had the least trouble with these social outcasts, they listened to a story from the lips of two of them that interestedthem exceedingly, and proved to Roy Sheldon's entire satisfaction that the clear-sighted Joe Wayring had hit pretty close to the mark when he declared that Roy's presence aboard the White Squall had not been brought about by accident.
Their destination was Plymouth, a little sea-port town situated on a bay of the same name. They spent a day roaming about the wharves, looking at everything there was to be seen, especially the ships, which would hardly have attracted more than a passing notice from them, had it not been for Roy's experience in New London harbor. They went aboard of one, looked all over it, marveled at its strength and more at the power of the winds and waves which could so easily make a wreck of man's best handiwork. They turned up their noses at the dingy forecastle, smelling of tar and bilgewater, and wondered how any one could bring himself to bunk in it during a long voyage.
"I would much rather sleep on a bed of hemlock boughs," said Joe, "and go out in the morning and catch my own breakfast from thesparkling waters of a lake or brook, and serve it up on a piece of clean bark. If I had been in love with the sea when I came here, I would be all over it now."
"It's rough, isn't it?" said Roy, as he and his companions went down the gang-plank to the wharf; and he trembled all over when he thought how near he had come to being carried to distant countries against his will. "The little I saw of a sailor's life while I was on the White Squall convinced me that the officers are more to be dreaded than the forecastle. They can be as brutal as they please when they are out of sight of land, and there's no law to touch them."
"There's law enough," answered Joe, "but the trouble is, a sailor man can't use it. Suppose he has the officers of his vessel arrested for cruelty while he has the rest of the crew at hand to prove it against them. They are put under bonds, but the case is postponed on one pretext or another, and while that is being done, how is Jack going to live? Of course the minute he gets ashore he makes haste to spend his wages, and when his last dollar isgone what recourse has he but to ship for another voyage? Then the case is called, and there being no one to prosecute, the captain and his mates are discharged and go aboard their vessel to play the same game over again."