Having now no alternative to distract him, he held to his original plan and was soon speeding westward toward the Kansan experiment-station. For two full days of twenty-four hours each he fought as only a determined man and a good traveller could fight to cover a distance which should have been traversed in something less than half of the time. Washouts, blocked tracks, missed connections, all these got in the way; and it was not until late in the afternoon of the third day out from Terre Haute that he was set down at the small station which serves the needs of the Kansas university town.
Having had himself conveyed quickly to the university, which was given as the address of the Miss Sanborn whose name stood second in his list, he learned how shrewd a blow his implacable ill-luck had dealt him in making him the victim of so many delays. Miss Sanborn, it appeared, had been fitting herself at the denominational school to go out as a missionary. And some twelve hours before his arrival she had started on her long journey to the antipodes, going by way of San Francisco and the Pacific Mail.
Another man might have taken the more easily reached addresses in the list, leaving the appalling world-tour for the last. But the doggedness which had hitherto been Broffin's best bid for genius in his profession asserted itself as a ruling passion. Twenty minutes after having been given his body-blow by the dean of the theological school he had examined some specimens of Miss Sanborn's handwriting, had compared them with the unsigned letter, and was back at the little railroad station burning the wires to Kansas City in an attempt to find out the exact sailing date of the missionary's steamer from San Francisco.
When the answer came he found that his margin of time was something of the narrowest, but it was still a margin. By taking the first overland train which could be reached and boarded, he might, barring more of the ill-luck, arrive at San Francisco in time to overtake the young woman whose handwriting was so like, and yet in some respects quite strikingly unlike, that of the writer of the letter to Mr. Galbraith.
Under such conditions the long journey to the Pacific Coast was begun, continued, and, in due course of time, ended. As if it had exhausted itself in the middle passage, ill-luck held aloof, and Broffin's overland train was promptly on time when it rolled into its terminal at Oakland. An hour later he had crossed the bay and was in communication with the steamship people. Though it was within a few hours of the China steamer's sailing date, Miss Sanborn had not yet made her appearance, and once more, though the subject this time was wholly innocent, Broffin swore fluently.
Notwithstanding, after all these intermediate buffetings, it was only the ultimate disappointment which was reserved for the man who had come two thousand miles out of his way for a five-minute talk with a young woman. Almost at the last moment he found her, and in the same moment was made to realize that the similarity in handwriting was only a similarity. Miss Sanborn had been a passenger on the Belle Julie, boarding the steamboat at New Orleans and debarking at St. Louis. But she had known nothing of the Bayou State Security robbery until she had read of it in the newspapers; and one glance into the steadfast blue eyes that met his without flinching convinced Broffin that once more he had fired and missed.
Number Two in the list of seven being thus laboriously eliminated, Broffin, to be utterly consistent, should have boarded the first train for Minnesota. But inasmuch as three of the remaining five addresses were west of the Missouri River, he sacrificed consistency to common-sense, halting at a little town in the Colorado mountains, again at Pueblo, and a third time at Hastings, Nebraska only to find at each stopping-place that the ultimate disappointment had preceded and was waiting for him.
With his list cancelled down to two names, he resumed the eastward flight from the Nebraska town and was again beset by the devil of indecision. The two place-names remaining were Wahaska and a small coal-mining town in southern Iowa. Measuring again by railroad hours, he found that the Iowa town was the nearer; but, on the other hand, there were good connections from Omaha to Wahaska, and a rather poor one to the coal mines. Once more Broffin took the gambler's chance, spinning the coin in his hat, heads for Iowa and tails for Minnesota. It came heads; and the following day recorded the sixth in the string of failures.
Leaving What Cheer in the caboose of a coal train, with only the train's crew for company, and a hard bench for a bed, the man-hunter was already thrilling to the exultant view-halloo in the chase. By the light of the flickering caboose lamp he drew his pencil through the Iowa failure. The one uncancelled name was now something more than a chance; it was a certainty.
"I've got you for fair, girlie, this time!" he triumphed, and since he did it audibly, the coal-train conductor laughed and wanted to be told the color of her eyes and hair.