“Oh, they’ll be back,” said Jack, confidently. “Allan, anyway. He knows he’s needed here.”
But the cloud had not lifted from Reddy’s face, as he walked away across the yards in the direction of his home.
The afternoon passed, and nothing was heard from either Allan or Stanley; evening fell, and still no sign of them. The disappointed reporters champed and swore and tried to inveigle the story out of some of the other employees of the office, but in vain; and finally, driven to desperation, they concocted such accounts of the affair as their several imaginations were capable of.
One thing they knew. The road’s chief dispatcher and detective were absent. From an absence to a disappearance is but a step, and it was with a certain satisfaction that they played up this feature of the case. At least, they would get even with West for trying to keep the news away from them. They described his career, his appearance, dwelt upon Stanley’s well-known prowess and fearlessness, and drew the conclusion that something extraordinary must have occurred to get the best of him. It made a good story, and the public read and was interested and mystified and wondered languidly how it would all turn out—and passed on to the next sensation.
But in one home, at least, as the weary hours of the night wore on, there was something more than languid interest and wonder. From her snowy bed, Mamie Welsh lay staring up into the darkness, her face flushed and feverish, her eyes red with weeping, striving to suppress the sobs which shook her, so that her mother might not hear and understand.
For she knew, by a sort of clairvoyance, as though his spirit called through space to hers, that Allan West lay somewhere in great peril.
It was dark when Allan struggled back to consciousness,—not dark in the ordinary sense, but pitch dark,—a blackness that oppressed and chilled with the sense of some unknown and unspeakable peril. He lay for a long time without moving, without thinking, just conscious in a dim way that he existed. Gradually he became aware of an all-pervading pain, which finally resolved into an aching head and an aching shoulder and cramped legs and arms. Then, in a flash, life surged in on him and he remembered the old stone house, the barn, the shadow, the blow which he had tried to avoid.
He struggled to get to his feet, only to fall back with a groan of anguish; for his hands were tied behind him and his feet were lashed together. Even had he been free, his whirling, aching head would have chained him down.