"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."