Page:Harry Castlemon - The Steel Horse.djvu/306

 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.