He looked over at our hero as if for corroboration. Then Tom chimed in.

"Hurley's a bully," he cried. "He was tying me to the post when Joe asked him to leave off. He was polite, was Joe. But Hurley swore and threatened him too. Then he struck at him, and there was a shindy.

My, but Joe stuck to his man and hammered him in fine style! If it hadn't been for the rake handle, Joe would have beat him, big though Hurley is. But he struck Joe over the head, and then I ran for help."

"Seems to me as this here Joe did well," declared Mike curtly. "Wall, now?"

"There ain't much to tell. Tom reached Jim Canning's, and he rang me up. We was all of us along here as quick as possible. Hurley took the rig and drove off, and there ain't a doubt that he's taken a gun with him. He cleared Joe's pockets of every cent--about sixty dollars, he reckons--as well as a letter of some value. But that ain't all.

There's been trouble in the shack. That ere brute set upon his wife and made an end of her."

When the whole tale came to be understood, there was little doubt that the brute Hurley had flown into a furious temper, and had become almost mad with pa.s.sion. His unfortunate wife he had killed with a knock-down blow, while the reader has learned of his subsequent movements.

"Wall?" asked Peter, looking expectantly at Mike.

"You wait a bit, mate," said the other. He dropped his cigarette, lifted his hat solemnly, and entered the shack. There was a severe air on his handsome, sunburned face as he emerged.

"Of course," he said, "we've got to follow; that is, I have. If you gentlemen----"

"You don't need to ax," exclaimed Peter, with added bluntness. "We're here. Ef you want us, we're right alongside you all the time. Murders ain't often done in the settlements, but when they are, then it's every man's job to find the brute as did it. You lift yer little finger, and you've every man Jack willing and ready."

"Thanks," said Mike swiftly, looking about him and proceeding to roll another cigarette. "We'll move slippy; we'll get right back along the tracks this fellow made, and make use of the first telephone. This Hurley didn't have one, so we can't send news from here. If he's taken to the railway, we'll send along either way, and they'll have him quick. But most like he's turned north, in which case we've a pretty business before us. Ready now?"

"You kin guess so," said Peter, clambering on to his horse. "Tom, you ain't afraid to follow?"

That young fellow shook his head vigorously; his eyes were sparkling.

At that moment he looked more of a boy, more resolute than he had done ever since he came to the Hurleys'. "I'm game," he said. "If Joe was game to tackle him alone, I'm right with the lot of you."

"Then you climb right into Jack's rig and take Joe with you. He'll want a bit o' nussing for a while. Reckon, Mike, if this here business is going to take us away north, we'd do well to lay in a stock of ammunition. What say?"

The policeman was in his saddle already and turned his head.

"We'll get all we want from the station," he said. "Let's move."

Waiting to allow Mike to gain some yards start, so that he might follow Hurley's track without difficulty, the others followed in single file, first Peter, and then Jack and his cousin in their rig, with Tom and Joe beside them, while Jim brought up the rear. Half an hour later they struck the railway, running clear and unfenced across the land.

Here Mike turned east, still following the wheel marks left by the rig which Hurley had stolen. About four miles farther along the marks left the railway and ran towards a stretch of wooded country. Perhaps a quarter of a mile within this they came upon the rig itself, deserted, while the horses and Hurley himself were nowhere to be seen. Mike dropped out of his saddle, where Peter joined him. As for Joe, the jolting and the excitement of the chase seemed to have done him a vast amount of good, for his head had ceased to ache, and he was hardly giddy. But for the pain in his scalp and a certain stiffness about his limbs, he might never have come by an injury.

"Unhitched his cattle here and made off with 'em," declared Mike, standing well clear of the rig, and walking slowly round it. "Struck due north, as I guessed he might. He'll be hiding up amongst the woods, and it'll take a tracker to find him. Tell you, Peter, it ain't no manner of use for us to follow right off. We might lose his tracks any moment, then there'd be difficulties. Guess the best thing to do is to camp right here and wait. I'll make back to the railway and 'phone along. Late to-night, perhaps, or to-morrow morning I'll be back agin with you, and then I'll have someone along with me as can follow any track, as can scent out a white man almost. You sit tight right here. Got it?"

"You've hit it true," agreed Peter. "There ain't no manner of sense in plunging on. This country right north is jest a huge forest for miles.

There's swamps, too; then stretches of rock over which a man might ride and never leave a sign that a white man could follow. So we'll camp right here, and you kin get back and fix things. Don't forget that we'll want shooters. I've a revolver and a gun; Jack there and George ain't got a gun between 'em, nor Joe nor Tom. It ain't sense to go after a chap same as Hurley without having the things to meet him with.

He'll shoot, he will."

"Sure," declared Mike, with the directness of one who knew; "he'll shoot on sight. There's a rope waiting fer his neck, and he knows it.

You boys had best understand that right away."

He glanced round at the party, his eyebrows elevated, a question on his lips. But they sent him off promptly, laughing at his caution, eager as ever, whatever the dangers, to follow the miscreant who had killed his wife and wellnigh done the same for our hero.

"Best get the hosses out o' the rigs and let 'em feed," said Peter, who took the lead now that Mike had gone. "Jack, you and George has the cooking things and the grub, so reckon it's up to you to cook us a meal. Jim and me'll scout round a while. We ain't likely to cover the tracks left by Hurley, and it'll be well to follow a goodish bit, so as to make sure he ain't too handy. It wouldn't be kinder nice to get eating and then have a bullet plumping amongst us."

There was bustle about the little clearing for some few minutes. Joe lent a hand to the Baileys, and soon had the horses out of the rig and tied by a long rein to trees, allowing them freedom to graze. By then Tom had gathered sufficient sticks to form a fire, and had helped to take the horses from Jim's rig; for the latter had already departed with Peter. In a little while there was a blaze in the centre of the camp, and Jack had a kettle of water suspended over it with the help of a couple of forked sticks. George produced from a mysterious parcel a lump of meat, and having cut it into dainty slices, skewered them in a long row on a maple stick he had cut and cleaned, and at once began to toast them over the flames.

"Makes you get hold of an appet.i.te, young fellow," he said, winking at Joe. "Now don't it? There's a flavour about open-air cookery that just sets a man's mouth watering. Ever been out camping?"

"Never," admitted Joe. "Ripping, I should say."

"Then you're about right," cried George, his face ruddy beside the flames. "I mind the time when I first came out to Canada. Didn't I just pity Jack back in the Old Country! For I went off with a prospecting party north to see what sort of a line there was for a new railway. It wasn't half as bad as people had painted, for there were few muskegs, as the swamps are called, and fewer mosquitoes. As for food, there wasn't a day pa.s.sed but the Indians along with us brought in beasts of every sort; so we dined handsomely. And camping was a fair treat. Talk about a difference between it and the old life--living in a tiny villa south of London, mugging in a London office, and being half-stifled with winter fogs! There we were in the open day and night, such nights too! Fresh air, fresh food, and heaps of exercise all the time. I just revelled. This steak frizzling here, and the scent it throws out, reminds me of that time."

Joe sniffed eagerly. His headache and even his pains were gone now, while the trouble his wound gave him was infinitesimal. In fact, it was the weight of the blow which Hurley had delivered which brought unconsciousness. The wound was trifling. A thick skull had resisted damage, and now that his brain tissues were recovering from the jar they had received, Joe was almost himself again. He sniffed with eager antic.i.p.ation, and agreed that open-air cooking had its attractions. He went to the far end of the maple switch and, holding out a hand, took it from George.

"You'll make a cook all right," laughed the latter. "Now see that none of the steaks get burned. I'll pop tea into the kettle and get other things ready. Those two will be back before very long; it stands to reason that they won't go very far. Take my advice, Joe; get inside a blanket just as soon as you have had a meal, and sleep. You'll be as fit as a daisy come morning."

About an hour later, when the first brew of tea had been finished, Jim and Peter put in an appearance.

"We kin camp without a thought of danger so far as I kin see," said the latter, throwing himself down by the fire. "That thar Hurley's made tracks slick north, and he ain't going to wait for no one. We followed the trace of his hosses' hoofs fer three mile and more. By the way, they ain't his hosses; they're mine. Jingo! That makes another count up agin him. But I was saying as he's gone north slick as anything.

He'll want no end of catching. Seems to me this chase'll last a week on end, and ef that's to be, I'll make across to the railway after I've had a bite, and get on to the nearest telephone. Then I kin ring up Jack's wife and my own and tell 'em. How's that?"

"Just what was bothering me," cried Jack, who was at that moment burying his teeth in a juicy steak. "I was saying to myself a little while ago that it seemed as if this wouldn't be a one-day affair, and I was bothering to let the wife know. Not that I'm going back till the matter's finished. Not much--this is a duty."

"You've put it fair and square," agreed Peter, with flushing face.

"This here are a duty, sure. Out in the settlements there ain't so many cases of murder and theft. A man soon gets known, seeing as there's so few of us, and mostly in settlements close together; and ef he's a bad man--why, out he goes sooner or later. But bad men mostly gets into the towns. There's a sight of 'em always hanging about the saloons, and so on. Some of 'em make a regular business of watching out fer green 'uns, fellers just out from home; and mostly the rogues strip the poor chaps of every dollar. They're up to all sorts of tricks. Most like they'll pretend to have land to sell, ready-made farms, you might say. The bad man is Canada's curse, jest that and nothing less; and reckon not a few of 'em is the relics of the wasters and the wont-works who was sent out here long ago from the Old Country, to get 'em out of the way or to give 'em a new chance."

"In fact, just the cla.s.s that modern-day Canada is determined not to have," chimed in George. "And one can't blame the Government. In future, jailbirds won't be sent direct to the Dominion instead of to prison, simply because they'll be turned back at the ports; just the same as folks with obvious disease of the lungs will be turned back.

But you can pa.s.s me along another of those steaks, Tom; and don't go on looking at 'em like that. Pitch in at them, my boy. There's enough there and to spare fer everybody."

Tom had indeed been eyeing the frizzling steaks somewhat hungrily, and, if the truth had but been known, it was only from force of habit.

Hurley had been very much the master. His apprentice had put up with short fare and many blows.

"How was it you was put with him, lad?" asked Peter, when he had finished his meal and had lit up a pipe preparatory to his setting out for the railway. "Surely the folks who put you there hadn't met Hurley?"

Tom shook his head emphatically. "They'd never seen him," he said.

"My uncle wished me to come out from England, and saw an advertis.e.m.e.nt offering to take a lad for a premium. He paid the money and I came, only to find that I was a sort of slave."

"Huh!" growled Peter. "Jest what I thought. That's another turn the bad man gets up to. But boys ain't always treated same as that. I've had 'em meself, and know others who've taken lads. The Barnardo Boys'

Home sends a goodish lot out to Canada and places them out on the farms. But, bless you! they ain't finished with 'em by a long bit, and rightly so. There's inspectors who go round and make surprise visits, and if they find that a boy isn't getting fair and square and liberal treatment, why, away he's taken, and put somewhere else. And the result is that we're bringing up in Canada a heap of young chaps who come out jest at the very right age, when they ain't yet learned any farming and when their minds is--wall, now, what are the term?"

"Receptive," cried Jack, who was quite a scholar. "The young, untutored mind is readily receptive."

"Put it like that," agreed Peter, who was a wonderfully talkative and jolly fellow. "The kids learn, and ain't got no bad tricks to unlearn.

Folks has got to set great store by 'em, for they're likely obedient lads, and there's more demands for 'em than there's boys. They get looked after. There ain't no bullyin' and half-starving same as in Tom's case. What's more, farmers is willing and eager to pay 'em wages and keep 'em, and not jest have their work for nothing, and a handsome premium into the bargain. That 'ere Hurley's a bad hat."

He knocked the ashes out of his pipe, leaped to his feet, and swung his leg over his horse. Without troubling to put a saddle on the beast, he hitched the rein free from the tree and went off whistling.

"A good chap," said Jim. "Known Peter this many a year. Good master, eh, Joe?"

"None better," came the prompt answer. "They treat me as if I were a son. He's used to this tracking?"

"He's a good man, you may say," agreed Jim. "But he don't often track men--moose perhaps, and a bear sometimes. This Hurley'll be a different matter."

"Now, Joe, jest you get right off to bed," commanded George, who seemed to take almost a paternal interest in our hero. "By sunrise to-morrow you'll be feeling fine, and you'll thank me."