The Steel Horse/Chapter 15
CHAPTER XV.
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 daytime, 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.