Page:Harry Castlemon - The Steel Horse.djvu/331

 his voice that the new-comer was "as full of mad as he could hold"; so very angry in fact, that he scarcely took two looks at the boys to whom he was talking until after he had laid down his rifle and spread out his arms. When he saw that he was confronting a trio of boys, and not bearded men, he dropped his hands and gave utterance to two emphatic words; but as they were swear-words I don't repeat them.

"Who did you think we were?" inquired Joe, who saw at once that the broad-shouldered backwoodsman had make a mistake.

"I took you for jest what I thought you was—the detective that come up here on one of them two-wheeled wagons and run my pardner to earth like a woodchuck in his hole," said the man, nodding at the bicycles. "But you ain't, be you?"

Of course we are not officers," answered Roy. "We are tourist-wheelmen traveling for pleasure."

"Oh," said the man, in a rather doubtful tone, as if he did not quite understand what the boys were, after all. Then he turned his