"Where have you started for, anyway?" inquired the conductor, after a little pause.
Joe replied that they had set out from Mount Airy to run across the State, and that when they reached the farther end of their route they would be about three hundred miles from home.
"I suppose your object is to have fun and see the country, isn't it?" said the conductor. "Now of course I don't know anything about wheeling, but I should say that you could not have selected a worse route. You'll see the wildest bit of country there is, but how much fun you'll have I don't know. After you leave Dorchester you'll get into the mountains, and then your road will be all up-hill."
"But the ascent is so gradual that we can
[Pg 290]
 easily accomplish it," said Roy. "Our road-book tells us it is so very gradual that we will hardly know we are going up. We understand that there is plenty of sport in the way of hunting and trout fishing in the neighborhood of Glen's Falls, and we intend to take our first rest there, if we can find any one who is willing to board us for a few days."
"And if we can't do that, we shall camp out," added Joe. "We came prepared to do it."
"I don't know much about hunting and fishing either," said the conductor. "All I do know is railroading; but some of my friends used to spend a month or so about the Glen every year, and always came back with the report that they had had the best kind of a time. But I notice they don't go there any more."
"What's the reason they don't?"
"Doesn't your guide-book warn you that there are some fellows up that way you had better keep clear of?" asked the conductor in reply.
"It doesn't hint at such a thing."
[Pg 291]
"It ought to. How long since it was written?"
"Two years; but it has been revised since then."
"Couldn't it be possible that no change was made in this particular route—I mean the one you are now taking?" inquired the official. "A good many things have happened at the Glen during the last two years. To begin with, the town had over a thousand inhabitants, and now it has hardly a quarter as many. Take 'em as a class, they're a rough set up there. They are lazy and shiftless, hate work as bad as so many tramps, and would be called tramps if it were not for the fact that they have permanent abodes most of the year. The rest of the time they are in the woods shooting game in violation of the law."
"Are there no officers in the vicinity?" asked Arthur.
"Oh, there are officers enough, but they are afraid to do anything toward bringing the law-breakers to justice. You see the latter are in the majority. They steal timber as often as they feel like it, go through every logging
[Pg 292]
 camp they find unguarded, and if you lodge a complaint against one of them, the whole band will turn in to clear him by false swearing, and then they will take satisfaction out of you by burning your mill, barn or house, and by shooting or poisoning your cattle. They're a fine lot, I assure you, and I shouldn't think you would like to go among them."
"What a splendid place that would be for Matt Coyle if he were on deck now!" exclaimed Roy. "Why didn't he hunt up that band—did you say there was a band of them?"
"Yes; and I have heard it is regularly organized, and that when one of them has to stand trial or give bonds to keep the peace with those he has threatened, he gets help from all over the county."
"Why didn't Matt hunt up that band and live among them instead of going to such a place as Indian Lake?" said Roy.
"Perhaps he wouldn't have got any independent guiding in that part of the State," suggested Joe.
"There are, or used to be, plenty of guides
[Pg 293]
 up there," said the conductor, "but I don't suppose they get much to do now. A man who goes into the woods for fun doesn't pick guides from among a lot of fellows who will rob him the first chance they get. Of course there are some nice people about the Glen, and they will be glad to take you in if the Buster band will let them do it."
"What has the Buster band to say about it?" demanded Joe.
"Who are they, and where did they get that name?" added Roy.
"They are the ones I have been telling you about—the lawless people in the Glen's Falls neighborhood," replied the conductor. "They 'bust up' property when things don't go to suit them, and that's the reason they call themselves the Buster band."
"But what's the reason they will not allow any of the nice folks in town to board us if they want to?" asked Arthur.
"Of course I am not sure that they will object to any arrangements you may be able to make with the family whose name I shall presently give you, but I think they will,"
[Pg 294]
 answered the conductor. "You see, Dave Daily, the leader of the band, was indicted for arson, and there's a warrant out for him now. He and a companion were arrested for stealing timber; but they got out of jail somehow (every one says they must have had help from the outside in order to do it), and that night the man who complained of them lost everything he had in the world. Everything that would burn went up in smoke, and his stock was either poisoned or shot. After that Daily and his friend took to the woods, and Daily is there yet, or was the last I heard of him; but the friend was run down by a Middleport officer who went up there for that purpose."
"That was all right," said Joe, when the conductor paused. "I wish he had caught Daily also."
"So do I; but it seems he didn't. What I was going to say is this: That officer went up to Glen's Falls on his wheel."
"Ah! That explains it, and the matter is perfectly clear to me now," said Arthur. "You think that Daily or his friends will think we are officers too, and that they will
[Pg 295]
 tell this man to whom you are going to direct us—what did you say his name is?"
"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
[Pg 296]
 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.
[Pg 297]
"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—"
"We should think you a mighty queer set if we hadn't," Joe interposed. "It's all right. Any decent fellows in the world would do the same, of course, but it happened to come in our way. We are greatly obliged for the information and warning you have given us."
"You will change your route then?" replied the conductor, and the boys thought he looked relieved when he said it. "I was sure you would, when you knew what sort of folks they are in that section of the country. Good-by and good luck to you."
[Pg 298]
When the young wheelmen stepped upon the platform they shook hands with all the trainmen, who wished them a pleasant trip and no end of fun while it lasted, and then leaned their wheels under the eaves of the little building that served as warehouse, operator's office and waiting-room, and looked about them. The light that shone from the conductor's lantern, and from the windows of the horse-car standing upon the branch track, gave them a clear view of their surroundings, which were so cheerless that the boys wondered how any road-book maker could advise wheelmen to come that way, unless he wanted to have them fooled as he had been fooled himself. At least that was the way Arthur Hastings expressed it.
"He probably came through here in the day-time, when old man Kane had a good dinner ready for him, and everything looked different," said Joe. "He wouldn't have had so much to say in favor of Dorchester's boarding-house if he had passed through in the night and been shut out of doors."
"Are we going to let what the conductor said about that Buster band induce us to change
[Pg 299]
 our route?" inquired Roy, who, as soon as the train pulled out and the horse-car disappeared down the branch track, began untying his bundle and taking out his blankets as if it were a settled thing that he and his companions were to camp right where they stood. "That's the question now before the house."
"I stand ready to yield to the majority, but for myself I say 'No,'" answered Joe.
"Hear, hear!" cried Arthur. "But it does look dark now that the lights have gone, don't it? To tell the truth, I wish that detective had not gone up there on his wheel. Somehow it brings to my mind all the stories I have read about the sudden and mysterious disappearance of men who have been foolish enough to wear blue blouses through the regions where the moonshiners hang out. Those interesting people think that every one who dresses in blue must be a revenue officer, and make it a point to shoot him from the bushes without troubling him with any questions."
"That's a cheerful way to talk to homeless boys who have nearly sixty miles of mountain travel before them," said Joe, driving his
[Pg 300]
 knife into the side of the building and hanging his lighted lamp upon it. "That makes things look a little pleasanter, doesn't it? I don't k............