He experienced no difficulty whatever in finding out all about the Tollivers inside of twenty minutes after his arrival.
They were the last members of a shiftless, indolent family who had lived on the edge of Millville for twenty years.
When the father and mother died the family broke up. The two boys, Buck and Hank, kept bachelor"s hall at the ricketty old ruin of a house on the river until ejected by its owner for non-payment of rent, and then went to the bad generally.
They patched up an abandoned shack over on the bottoms, the postmaster at Millville told Bart, and lived by fishing, hunting and their depredations on orchards and chicken coops.
In one of their nightly forays about a year previous they were captured and fined heavily. They could not pay the fine and were sent to jail for six months.
About the first of June they were released, came back to Millville, found their old shack burned down, and since then, the postmaster understood, had camped out in the woods, giving the town a wide berth--in fact, only occasionally appearing, to buy a little flour, sugar or coffee, or, mostly, tobacco.
n.o.body had seen them for over a week--n.o.body knew anything of a newly-painted red wagon.
It seemed probable, Bart theorized, that if they had made for hiding in any of their familiar woodland haunts, they had reached the same by driving through Millville before daylight, and when n.o.body was astir.
Bart finally found a woodcutter who knew where the Tollivers had had their camping place the week previous. He described the spot and Bart was soon there--a secluded gully about two miles from town.
The place showed evidences of having been used as a camp, but not recently, and Bart went on a general blind hunt.
He traversed the woods for miles, both sides of a dried up rivercourse, and inquired at farmhouses and of occasional pedestrians he met.
It was all of no avail. At three o"clock in the afternoon, tired, bramble-torn and a little discouraged, he sat down by the roadside to rest and think. He began to censure himself for taking the independent course he had pursued.
"I should have telegraphed the company the circ.u.mstances of the burglary, and put the matter in the hands of the Pleasantville police,"
he reflected. "If the trunk had belonged to anybody except Mrs. Colonel Harrington, I would have done so at once. Somebody coming!" he interrupted his soliloquy, as he caught a vague movement through the shrubbery where the road curved.
"No--it"s only a dog."
The animal came into view going a straight, fast course, its head drooping, a broken rope trailing from its neck.
Bart suddenly sprang to his feet, for, studying the animal more closely, something familiar presented itself and he ran out into the middle of the road.
"Come here--good fellow!" he hailed coaxingly, as the animal approached.
But with a slight growl, and eyeing him suspiciously, it made a detour in the road, pa.s.sing him.
"Lem Wacker"s dog--I am sure of that!" explained Bart, naturally excited. "Come, old fellow--here! here! what is his name? I"ve got it--Christmas. Come here, Christmas!"
The dog halted suddenly, faced about, and stared at Bart.
Then, when he repeated the name, it sank to its haunches panting, and, head on one side, regarded him inquiringly.
The animal was a big half-breed mastiff and shepherd dog that Lem Wacker had introduced to his railroad friends with great unction, one Christmas day.
He had claimed it to be a gift from a friend just returned from Europe, who had brought over the famous litter of pups of which it was one.
Wacker had estimated its value at five hundred dollars. Next day he cut the price in half. New Year"s day, being hard up, he confidentially offered to sell it for five dollars.
After that it went begging for fifty cents and trade, and no takers. Lem kicked the poor animal around as "an ornery, no-good brute," and had to keep it tied up on his own premises all of the time to evade paying for a license tag.
Meeting the dog now, gave a new animation to Bart"s thoughts.
The sequence of its appearance, here, ten miles away from home, was easy to pursue. It had broken away from its new owners--Buck and Hank Tolliver--and they were somewhere further up the road.
Christmas was making for home. It was hardly possible that the animal knew Bart, for, although he had seen it several times, he had never spoken to it before. The call of its name, however, had checked the animal, and now as Bart drew a cracker from his pocket and extended it, the dog began to advance slowly and cautiously towards him.
Bart saw the importance of making a friend of the animal. He stood perfectly still, talking in a gentle, persuasive tone.
Christmas came up to him timorously, sniffed all about his feet, and suddenly wagged its tail and put its feet up on him in a friendly manifestation of delight.
Its keen sense of scent had apparently recognized that Bart had been a visitor to the Wacker home that day. It now took the cracker from Bart"s hand, then another, and as Bart sat down again stretched itself placidly and contentedly at his side.
"This looks all right," ruminated Bart speculatively. "If I can only get Christmas to go back the way he came, I feel I have found the right trail."
Bart finally arose, and the dog, too. The animal turned its face east, wagged its tail expectantly, and eagerly studied Bart"s face and movements.
As he took a step up the road the animal"s tail went down, nerveless, and its eyes regarded him beseechingly.
"Come on, old fellow!" hailed Bart encouragingly, patting the dog. It followed him reluctantly. Then he made a rollic of it, jumping the ditch, racing the animal, stopping abruptly, leaping over it, apparently making Christmas forget everything except that it had a friendly companion.
At length Bart induced the dog to go ahead. It led the way with evident reluctance. It would stop and eye Bart with a decidedly serious eye. He urged it forward, and finally it got down to a slow trot, sniffing the road and looking altogether out of harmony with its forced course.
Christmas was about twenty yards ahead of Bart at the end of a two miles" jaunt, when he shied to the extreme edge of the road and drew to his haunches.
Here wagon tracks led into the timber. The road had been used lately, Bart soon discerned.
"Come on, Christmas!" he hailed, branching off into the new obscure roadway.
The dog circled him, but could not be induced to leave the main road.
Bart made a grab for the trailing rope. The animal eluded him, gave him one reproachful look, turned its nose east, and shot off, headed for home like an arrow.
"I"ve lost my ally," murmured Bart, "but I think I have got my clew.
Christmas does not like this road, which looks as if he left his captors somewhere down its length. I"ll try to locate them."
Bart followed the tortuous windings of the narrow road, through brush, over hillocks, down into depressions, and finally into the timber.
He came to a clearing, forcing his way past a border of p.r.i.c.kly bushes, the tops of which seemed freshly broken, as though a wagon had recently pa.s.sed over them.
As he got past them, Bart came to a decisive halt, and stared hard and with a thrill of satisfaction.
Twenty feet away, under a spreading tree, a horse was tethered, and right near it was a red wagon--holding a trunk.
CHAPTER XIX
FOOLING THE ENEMY