“Oh, the company missed him the next day. But he was what is known as a boomer brakeman, and they just thought he had stepped out without drawing his pay. They do that once in a while—those boomers. But later on they got to checking up on things, and the conductor remembered that he hadn’t seen this man since the night at the bridge. Ransome is the division point, you see; so he didn’t have much farther to go. The reason they watered that stock here was because there were better facilities than at Ransome.”
“Well, that’s kinda queer,” said Kelsey.
“I saw him go out to flag,” said Hashknife. “I remember that freight conductor blamed the passenger crew for runnin’ past the flag. They said they never seen it.”
“Well, what do you suppose happened to him?” queried Kelsey.
“Search me,” said the depot agent. “All I know is what I heard over the wire.”
Hashknife left the sheriff and found Sleepy and Honey. He told them what the depot agent had said. A few minutes later they were heading for the railroad bridge, going through the country where Hashknife and Sleepy had walked the night of the bridge-fire. They tied their horses to the right-of-way fence, crawled through and climbed up to the track level.
The railroad had been graded along the side of the hill, so that the opposite side dropped off about twenty or thirty feet, where the brush grew thick along the fence. Hashknife estimated where the rear end of the cattle-train would have been, and they walked back along the track to the first curve.
Just beyond that there was considerable seepage of water on the lower side, where grew a profusion of tules and cat-tails, mingled with wild-roses and willows. The bank was rather abrupt along here and heavy brush grew between the track and the upper fence.
Hashknife slid cautiously down this bank, hooking his heels into the broken rock. There was more water, covered with a greenish slime.
“Hook yore heels, cowboy,” laughed Sleepy. “One little mistake, and you take a green-water bath.”