“Sure,” nodded Kelsey. “What about it?”
“That night,” resumed the agent, “the rear brakeman of the cattle-train went back to flag the passenger, and he’s never been seen since.”
“What do yuh mean?” Kelsey was evidently puzzled.
“Just what I said. I don’t know how he was passed up. The train was held here quite a while, but the storm was bad, and nobody needed him, I suppose. Down at the bridge both trains were stalled quite a while, and there was no need of whistling in the flag from the cattle-train.
“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.