WHO FIRED THE FOUR SHOTS?
It is hardly necessary to assure the reader that the young
game-warden's heart was not in the task he had set himself. He believed
that his father and Dan had come upon a bevy of Mr. Warren's imported
birds and fired both barrels of their guns into it; and, as they were
both good wing-shots, it was not probable that very many of the birds
had escaped unhurt. Joe's business was to intercept them if he could,
and to report them, regardless of consequences, if he found anything
except squirrels in their game-bags.
"But I don't expect to find the least evidence against them," said Joe,
to himself, "and there's where they are going to take advantage of
me. What is to hinder them from doing as much shooting as they please
at one end of the wood-lot, while I am skirmishing around the other
end? They know well enough that the sound of their guns will draw my
attention, and as soon as they have killed the birds they'll gather
them up and dig out before I can stop them. It seems as though every
business has its drawbacks."
And the longer Joe lived the firmer grew this opinion.
Half an hour's rapid walking took the young game-warden past his
father's wood-pile, which now stood a good chance of staying where
it was until it mingled with the mold beneath it, and down a little
declivity to the brink of the gorge in which Tom Hallet had located the
robbers' cave. Although he made constant use of his eyes and ears, he
could not see or hear anything of the poachers, and neither were there
any suspicious sounds behind him to indicate that Mr. Brown and his
guide had kept on to Mr. Hallet's woods "to scare up another so-called
game-warden."
"This is the way it is going to be all winter," said Joe, to himself.
"Anybody who feels like it can slip in here, shoot all the birds he
wants and slip out again before I can get a sight at him. There's
Brierly, now; and that's his employer, looking out from behind that big
tree on the right. They have followed me to see what I would do if I
found father and Dan shooting Mr. Warren's birds."
While Joe was walking along the brink of the gorge, wondering if it
would pay to scramble down one side of it and up the other, when he was
sure that he couldn't catch the poachers if he did, he suddenly became
aware that he was an object of interest to a couple of persons who were
so anxious to avoid discovery that they kept themselves concealed--all
except their heads, and them they concealed, too, when they saw that
Joe was looking in their direction.
But Joe was wide of the mark when he declared that they were Mr. Brown
and his guide, who were watching his movements in the hope of finding
some grounds for complaint against him.
The concealed parties were watching him, it is true, but for a
different purpose, and instead of seeing any reason for finding fault
with him, they told each other that Mr. Warren's game-warden was wide
awake, and that the fellow who shot any birds on those grounds would
have to be lively in getting away with them, or Joe would catch him
sure.
When they saw the latter looking at them, they moved out from behind
their respective trees, and stood forth in full view. They were Tom
Hallet and his friend Bob Emerson.
"Look here!" shouted Joe, who little dreamed what it was that brought
the two boys on his grounds, and so far from their own quarters. "These
woods are posted, and you can't get out of them too quick."
"You don't say so!" replied Tom. "Come up here and talk to us. You've
had visitors already, haven't you? Who fired those four shots a while
ago, and what did they shoot at?"
Joe slowly mounted to the top of the hill, and shook hands with Tom and
Bob, before he made any reply to these questions. Then he said:
"I have had visits from two parties. One of them I saw, and the other
I didn't see, and they were the fellows who did the shooting. They are
on the other side of the gulf, most likely, and when I saw you dodging
behind trees, I was trying to make up my mind whether or not I ought to
cross over and hunt them out."
"What's the use of going to all that trouble?" exclaimed Tom. "I don't
believe they got any birds; but if they did, they made all haste to
pick them up and run with them. You say you saw the other party. Who
were they? Did they have any birds?"
Joe answered the last question first.
"I took particular pains to see that their game-bags were empty," said
he. "The guide was Brierly, and he called his employer Mr. Brown. He's
no sportsman, whoever he is; he's a butcher," added Joe, who then went
on to give the particulars of the interview, and to rejoice in the fact
that Mr. Brown was several dollars out of pocket, having been confiding
enough to pay Brierly in advance for the day's sport he thought he was
going to have among the imported game that had just been "turned down"
in Mr. Warren's woods and Hallet's.
"Hallet's!" exclaimed Tom. "Did they have the impudence to go over
there after you left them."
"Mr. Brown suggested it, but I didn't see them go anywhere," was Joe's
reply. "I warned them that they would find two game-wardens there
instead of one, adding that if they wanted to know whether I had told
the truth regarding myself they had better question you."
"Let's go back and see what they are up to," suggested Bob. "I
say, Joe," he added suddenly, but not without a certain hesitation
and constraint of manner that was too plain to escape the young
game-warden's attention, "while you were walking along the gulf, you
didn't--er--you didn't see anything at all suspicious, did you?"
"I didn't see anything but trees and bushes."
"And you didn't hear anything either, I suppose?" continued Bob.
"Not a sound. Why do you ask?"
"Oh--er--the idea just occurred to me, that's all."
"Do you think that the men who fired those guns are hiding in the
gulf?" exclaimed Joe. "Perhaps I had better go down there and see."
This proposition called forth so emphatic a protest from both the boys,
that Joe did not know what to make of it. They declared with one voice
that such an idea had never occurred to them--that the poachers were
safe out of harm's way long ago, and, besides, it would be putting
himself to altogether too much trouble.
He'd find it awful hard work to make his way through the thick bushes
and briars that covered the steep sides of that gorge, and long before
he reached the bottom, he would wish he had let the job out. They knew
all about it, for they had tried it.
With this piece of advice the boys bade Joe good-by, and hastened away
in search of Brierly and his employer.
"Do you think Joe suspects anything?" asked Tom, as soon as Mr.
Warren's game-warden had been left out of hearing. "I thought he
looked at us as if he had a vague idea that we had other reasons than
those we gave for telling him to keep out of the gulf."
"That's my opinion," answered Bob; and his companion took note of the
fact that his voice trembled when he spoke. "I hold to my belief that
those guns were fired by Silas Morgan and some one he has taken into
his confidence. But of this I am certain: Silas went after that money
this morning, and shot at the man who ran us out of the gulf yesterday."
"You still think it was a man, and not a wild beast that yelled at us?"
said Tom.
"I know it as well as if I had been at his side when he did it,"
replied Bob, positively. "And, Tom, if Silas and his friend have shot
somebody-- Great Scott! If I ever take a hand in any more jokes of that
sort, I hope I shall be shot myself."
"Seems to me, that Tom and Bob don't take any too much interest in
their business," thought the young game-warden, as he started down
the mountain toward his cabin. "The gorge runs through Mr. Hallet's
wood-lot, and if those boys are going to confine their scouting to
the covers on the lower side of it, I don't see how they are going to
protect the birds. Well, it shan't stop me. As soon as I get around to
it, I am going to cut a path down one side and up the other, and after
that I shall cross over every day to take a look at things."
Joe was hungry when he reached his cabin, and then he found that there
was one thing that had been forgotten--a clock.
He had already laid out a regular routine of work--setting aside
certain things that were to be done at certain hours of the day or
evening; but how was he going to follow it without the aid of a
timepiece?
A few minutes reflection showed him a way out of his quandary. Among
the other relics of better days that were to be found in his father's
cabin was an old-fashioned bull's-eye watch which had not seen the
light of day for many a long year.
Joe wasn't sure that it would run, but it wouldn't cost him anything
more than a two-hours' walk to find out, and he decided that he would
go down and ask his mother for it as soon as he had eaten his dinner.
"I can't set my house to rights to-day anyhow," thought he, "because I
have wasted too much time in looking for father and Dan; but I'll have
it all in order to-morrow, unless some other law-breakers call me up
the mountain, and the day after that, I'll begin on my routine, and
stick to it as long as I am here."
If you had been there, reader, to take a look around Joe's cabin,
you would have told yourself that there was another and still more
important thing that had been forgotten--a cooking-stove.
But Joe didn't miss it, for never in his life had he seen a meal
prepared over a stove. He would not have known how to use one if he
had had it; but give him a bed of coals in a fire-place, or on the
mountain-side, and he could get up as good a dinner as any hungry boy
would care to have set before him.
He had everything in the way of pots, pans and kettles that he could
possibly find use for, but on this particular day he did not call many
of them into service--nothing, in fact, but the pot in which he made
his tea, and the frying-pan in which he cooked two generous slices of
bacon.
He found potatoes in one of the baskets and a huge loaf of bread in
another, and with the aid of these he made a very good dinner.
Then he shouldered his rifle (knowing the thieving propensities of the
majority of the poachers who infested the mountains, he could not think
of leaving so valuable a piece of property behind him), locked the door
and set out for home.