MR. HOLMES'S WARNING.
This was 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
made the 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
outen house 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 to stop 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 believed Matt 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. "Where has 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. Would they
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
water in 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
of spades, 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 a closer
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 they are 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
he and 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 get the 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 been money
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 with his 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 the brook, 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 put your 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.