“For him no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care.”
When the train master, in reply to their eager inquiries, expressed his own surprise, and told them that Magruder should have reached home ten days before, the people for the first time felt that he might have fallen a victim to robbers. Still they doubted. The crime was too great, involved too many lives, and the probability that he had changed routes and was returning by the way of Salt Lake was greater than that he and his large train had been destroyed.
Firm in his belief, Beachy, like a sleuth-hound, continued to follow the track leading to discovery. “They do not know the desperate character of those villains,” he said, as he turned from the crowd to pursue the clew furnished by Jack. His wife, who until this time had feared for his safety at the hands of the town ruffians, now for the first time gave him encouragement.
Falling in company with the men who had just arrived from Bannack, he plied them with inquiries concerning Magruder’s operations there.
“Why,” observed one, “he told me on the morning he left that he should surprise his wife, for he had written her the day before that he would not leave for ten days. ‘She will tell this to all inquirers,’ said he, ‘and the roughs of Lewiston will be thrown off their guard. I shall reach home about the time they think I will leave here.’”
“Would you know any of the stock?” inquired Beachy.
“Yes; there was one large, white-faced sorrel horse belonging to some of the party, that was a very good race-horse. I saw him run one night, when some of the boys were at our camp. I think I should know him. They intended to bring him here, and make a race-horse of him.”
The only horse which Beachy had found in possession of the rancheman corresponded with this description. He placed him in one of a long range of stalls in his stable, in each of which was a horse, and requested his informant to select him, if possible, from the number. When the man came to the sorrel, he said,
“If this horse were two or three sizes larger, I should think he might be the one I saw; but he is too small, and I know nothing of the others.”