"But I don't expect to find the least evidence against them," said Joe, to himself, "and there's where they are going to take advantage of me. What is to hinder them from doing as much shooting as they please at one end of the wood-lot, while I am skirmishing around the other end? They know well enough that the sound of their guns will draw my attention, and as soon as they have killed the birds they'll gather them up and dig out before I can stop them. It seems as though every business has its drawbacks."
And the longer Joe lived the firmer grew this opinion.
Half an hour's rapid walking took the young game-warden past his father's wood-pile, which now stood a good chance of staying where it was until it mingled with the mold beneath it, and down a little declivity to the brink of the gorge in which Tom Hallet had located the robbers' cave. Although he made constant use of his eyes and ears, he could not see or hear anything of the poachers, and neither were there any suspicious sounds behind him to indicate that Mr. Brown and his guide had kept on to Mr. Hallet's woods "to scare up another so-called game-warden."
"This is the way it is going to be all winter," said Joe, to himself. "Anybody who feels like it can slip in here, shoot all the birds he wants and slip out again before I can get a sight at him. There's Brierly, now; and that's his employer, looking out from behind that big tree on the right. They have followed me to see what I would do if I found father and Dan shooting Mr. Warren's birds."
While Joe was walking along the brink of the gorge, wondering if it would pay to scramble down one side of it and up the other, when he was sure that he couldn't catch the poachers if he did, he suddenly became aware that he was an object of interest to a couple of persons who were so anxious to avoid discovery that they kept themselves concealed—all except their heads, and them they concealed, too, when they saw that Joe was looking in their direction.
But Joe was wide of the mark when he declared that they were Mr. Brown and his guide, who were watching his movements in the hope of finding some grounds for complaint against him.
The concealed parties were watching him, it is true, but for a different purpose, and instead of seeing any reason for finding fault with him, they told each other that Mr. Warren's game-warden was wide awake, and that the fellow who shot any birds on those grounds would have to be lively in getting away with them, or Joe would catch him sure.
When they saw the latter looking at them, they moved out from behind their respective trees, and stood forth in full view. They were Tom Hallet and his friend Bob Emerson.
"Look here!" shouted Joe, who little dreamed what it was that brought the two boys on his grounds, and so far from their own quarters. "These woods are posted, and you can't get out of them too quick."
"You don't say so!" replied Tom. "Come up here and talk to us. You've had visitors already, haven't you? Who fired those four shots a while ago, and what did they shoot at?"