"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."