It was clear that it would not do to depend on the jailer, and Joe took the matter in his own hands.
“Come along, Reggie,” he cried. “The first thing is to get downtown and give the alarm. Then we’ll set the telegraph and the telephone going and organize a searching party. He can’t have gotten so very far away, and the chances are that we’ll get him yet. Come along.”
They hurried down to the office of the chief of police and told their story. The fire bell was rung, a thing that was done only in the case of a fire or an escape from jail, to put the people on their guard. The news spread like wildfire through the town. From telephone headquarters they called up every town within a radius of twenty miles and described the fugitive. Joe hurriedly called a number of his friends together, and in a few minutes automobiles and sleighs were dashing along every road that led out from town. They inquired at every farmhouse, questioned every passing traveler, fairly combed the surrounding country. All that day and far into the night they worked like troopers, only to return at last weary and defeated.
Talham Tabbs had vanished as completely as though the earth had swallowed him up!
[CHAPTER XII]
THE CALL TO BATTLE
It was a week later and Joe was returning from the post-office where he had stopped for the late afternoon mail.
Reggie had left the day before, although Joe had urged him to remain longer. But a clue had come from another State that, slender as it was, seemed to offer some chance of running down the elusive Tabbs, and Reggie had felt that he ought to follow it up.
“It’s too bad, old man,” Joe had said to him, as he stood on the station platform bidding the dudish young man goodby, “to have come so near to finding your man and yet just miss him.”