"I didn't say," answered the conductor, with a laugh. "But his name is Holmes, and he lives on the road you will have to take to reach the town. I don't know him personally, but my friends who have been there say he keeps the best house, and that he is the best guide for that neck of the woods. Yes; that is what I was thinking of. Some of the band will be sure to see you if you stop there, and they may—mind I don't say they will, but they may—send him word to get rid of you in short order. He'll have to do it, for the board you would be likely to pay him wouldn't recompense him for the loss of his cow, horse, or barn."
"Of course it wouldn't," replied Joe. "We'll state the case to him as plainly as we know how, if we can find him, and if we learn that your suspicions are well-grounded, we'll not ask him to shelter us."
"Well, if this isn't a pretty state of affairs I wouldn't say so," exclaimed Arthur, who was very much disgusted. "They must be a brave lot up there to let a few lawless people keep them so completely under their thumbs."
"But don't you know that they are in the minority?" demanded Joe.
"Yes; and a big one, too," added the conductor.
"If the members of that Buster band don't work, how do they live?" inquired Roy.
"They don't live; they just stay. They all own a little land, and work it enough to raise a few vegetables, like turnips and potatoes, and a little corn. Their meat they get out of the woods. They will steal timber, and then walk up and sell it to the man to whom it belongs, and who is generally the owner of a saw-mill he can't afford to have burned down. They sell their pigs, and by various other shifts make out to keep themselves in tobacco and clothes. And between you and me," added the conductor, sinking his voice to a whisper, "I believe they had something to do with the rock you young gentlemen found on the track."
"Is that the sort of folks they are?" exclaimed Joe.
"Of course I can't prove anything against them, but I bet you that when I make my report, there'll be a detective sent up there to look into the matter. I understand that there are spies in that band now, working in the interests of law and order, and if the detective can only strike one of them, he may learn something. There's Dorchester," he continued, as a long whistle from the engine awoke the echoes of the woods, "and I must say good-by. I don't want you to forget that you have made a friend of every man on the road by—"