The Steel Horse/Chapter 14
CHAPTER XIV.
ARTHUR'S READY RIFLE.
KNOWING nothing of the fears that disturbed the minds of the miller and his wife Joe and his friends slept soundly, and after an early breakfast resumed their journey with light hearts; but there was something in Mr. Hudson's manner, more than in his words, when he bade them good-by that made the boys wonder if he had anything on his mind that he was keeping from them.
"You've had the best kind of luck so far and I hope it may continue; but I don't know," said he, kicking a pebble out of the path. "Looks to me as though wheeling through a country that you are not acquainted with, and going among people you don't know anything about, is mighty risky business. If I was your folks, I'd be sort o' uneasy till I saw you safe back."
"I don't know whether we've had the best kind of luck so far or not," said Arthur, as the three lifted their caps to the miller's wife and wheeled away. "What would he say if he knew about Roy's long swim in New London harbor?"
"Or about Joe's wild ride over that trestle?" chimed in Roy. "Of course he had good luck in getting over without a broken head, but it was bad luck that brought him into the scrape."
"Mr. Hudson probably had reference to the dangers of wheeling, and not to anything else," replied Joe. "I wouldn't give a cent to go on a trip of this kind if we did not pass through a strange country and see new faces at every mile of the way. Now for a coast; the first we have had since we struck this lovely road. Look out for heads everybody."
"And for the corduroy bridge at the bottom of the hill," added Arthur, quoting from the guide-book.
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 years before, 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 see what 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 Authur 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 stone took 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 did 
"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? Three on 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 of his 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 his head 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 purpose of 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 you know 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 with this 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, our folks 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 we wasn'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 down at 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 notebook. "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 boy found 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 fals
as you shal understand
thair lived a crowd of young men
thay was cald the buster band
and thay was accused of menny
a bad deed let them be gilty or not
but thay hunted deer the year round
and for the wardens made it hot
thair was one young man among them
the wardens all knew wel
and by this felows rifl
thair was menny a fine deer fel
he hunted upon an old stream
i would have you all to know
and sed that that was one place
the 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 sense out 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 was addressed 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."
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 he had 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 why Daily 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 say Matt would 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.