Allan sat down, his pulses not wholly steady, and told of the strange disappearance of the crew of the extra west, while Mamie listened spell-bound.
“Well, if that doesn’t beat anything I ever heard!” she cried, when he had finished. “What do you suppose happened?”
“I haven’t any idea. Only I’m sure the strikers must have had something to do with it. I’m going to take Stanley out to look the place over in the morning. Maybe we’ll discover something. Stanley is pretty shrewd, you know.”
“But if the strikers had something to do with it,” Mamie protested, “maybe they will be there yet! And you will walk right into them!”
“Well?” laughed Allan. “What if I do? Indeed, I hope I will!”
“Oh, but think what they will do to you!”
“They won’t do anything very bad! We’re not living in the Middle Ages, Mamie. I believe you think we’re going to find the bloody corpses of that train crew out there in a ditch, somewhere!”
“But if they aren’t dead, where are they?”
“Kidnapped. The strikers are taking that method of getting our men away from us.”
Mamie thought it over a minute, and then shook her head.