The big master-mechanic shook his head.
"Hardly, you'd think. I reckon we're up a stump, Jimmie. That siding is part of an old 'Y' at the mouth of a gulch that runs back into the mountains for maybe a dozen miles or so. They tell me the 'Y' was put in for the Timber Mountain Lumber outfit when they used the gulch mouth for their shipping point. They had one of their saw-mills up in the gulch somewhere, but the business died out when they got the timber all cut off."
This time I was the one who did the cat-and-grasshopper act.
"Tell me this, Mart," I put in quickly. "The Timber Mountain company is one of the Red Tower monopolies: did it have a railroad track up that gulch connecting with our 'Y'?"
"Why, yes; I reckon so. I'm not right sure that there ain't one there yet. But if there is, it's been disconnected from the 'Y'. I'm sure of that, because I went in on that 'Y' one day with the wrecker."
You'd think this would have settled it. But I hung on like a dog to a root.
"Say, Mart," I insisted, "this 'Y' siding we're talking about is just around where the Ten-Sixteen ought to have met the Mail; so far as we can tell by this map it's the only place where it could have met it. And the old gulch track would have been a mighty good hiding-place for the stolen engine!"
"There ain't any track there," said Kirgan, shaking his head; "or, leastwise, if there is, it hasn't any rail connection with our siding, just as I'm tellin' you. We'll have to look farther along."
Somehow, I couldn't get it out of my head but that I was right. Our guesses all went as straight as a string to that 'Y' siding ten miles west of Banta, and I was sure that if I had been talking to Mr. Van Britt I could have convinced him. But Kirgan was awfully hard-headed.
"It's supper time," he said, after we had mulled a while longer over the map. "To-morrow, if you like, we'll take an engine and run down there. But we ain't goin' to find anything. I can tell you that, right now."