in plainsman fashion Ma held her silence.
The chatter of the telegraph key from the front of the depot brought his mind back to the task at hand and, tilting back his chair, he retraced his trail from Richfield, searching for whatever it was he surely had missed. The train just wasn't on the tracks between Spaulding and Richfield, even though it couldn't be anywhere else. It couldn't have gotten by Ma, here, or Dick Boley in Richfield.
Then a new possibility leaped into Danner's mind and hope flickered alive. Usually quite a few boxcars stood idle in the yard at Richfield. There was a slight possibility that the missing train could have been returned to the yards the same night without passing Dick Boley at the depot. Half the cars might have been left in plain sight, unnoticed for a day or two, and the locomotive and other cars could have been hidden in the loading lean-to at Browder's elevator. Then a day or two later they could have been moved east or west as a special train without arousing much suspicion. It would have been risky, but it just possibly could have been done. Danner brought the front legs of his chair down solidly and stood up.
'Ma,' he called, and she and Melinda both whirled around, startled. 'Ma, have any unscheduled trains gone through here since the wheat special vanished?'
Ma lowered her head in thought for a moment, wiping her hands on her apron. Then she shook her head. 'Nope. No specials or unscheduled movements since I got back.'
Danner paced twice around the table, then faced Wainright. 'Is it all right if I use the telegraph key to Richfield?'
Wainright nodded uncertainly before interest settled in his features. 'Have you figured out something?'
'Maybe.' Danner moved swiftly to the front of the depot. He tapped his message to Richfield, asking the same question he'd asked Ma. The day man gave him an immediate negative reply, and said he was sending the office boy to check with the night telegrapher, Dick Boley.
Danner sat at the key, staring at it. He became aware of the others watching, but paid them no attention. Ten minutes slipped by before the key came alive again. Danner straightened, then relaxed. It was the Junction City operator reporting the arrival of the morning eastbound. A gust of wind rocked the window glass in front of Danner. The ticking of the huge wall clock seemed to pound in the stillness.
Then the louder ticking of the telegraph key caught Danner's attention. The Richfield telegrapher tapped out the message with professional preciseness: NIGHT OPERATOR RICHARD BOLEY REPORTS NO SPECIALS OR UNSCHEDULED FREIGHTS SINCE WHEAT SPECIAL DISAPPEARED.
Danner acknowledged. Melinda sighed audibly. His head lowered in thought, Danner moved in a half-circle, then stopped in mid-stride.
'Ma, what was that you said when I asked you about unscheduled trains?'
'I said I hadn't seen any.'
'No, no,' Danner gestured impatiently. 'You said something about 'since you got back.' What did you mean by that?'
'Oh, that.' Ma hitched up the waist of her skirt. 'Something polluted my well out back and give me a bellyache. I had to go into Richfield and see the doctor. Mr. Wainright sent out a relief man for twenty-four hours. I was gone—'
'The night the train disappeared,' Danner finished for her grimly. When she nodded, Danner turned on Wainright with a deceptive mildness.
'Who was here that night?'
Defiance pinched the mouth of Wainright. 'I sent an experienced operator out here—one I had hired the day before. He once worked for Colonel Richfield and—'
'Carp,' Danner interrupted. 'You hired Lou Carp and sent him out here?' When Wainright nodded, Danner groaned softly. 'Then that train did get by here after all. I should have guessed it sooner.'
'You're grasping at straws.' Wainright was bristling. 'That man was highly recommended by Mr. Browder.'
'So that's how Browder worked it,' Danner mused as if to himself. 'A little something in the well to get rid of Ma, then getting you to replace her with a known thief who'd—'
'You're just making wild guesses without any foundation,' Wainright charged. 'There's no evidence—'
'Did you check Carp's employment record before you agreed to hire him?'
'Of course, but—'
'Then you must have seen the notation that he was fired for petty theft.'
'Fired on
Danner dismissed the subject with an impatient gesture and moved over to the window to stare sightlessly across the tracks, his thoughts racing. That train certainly didn't get through Junction City and there were only five spur lines joining the main line between Spaulding and Junction City. Swiftly he checked them off— Casey, Wolf, Gerty and Goose Creek, each a small community with a telegraph key in the town marshal's office—and the fifth was the line to the old abandoned Strom elevator. The latter was it, Danner knew instantly.
But to be certain, he tapped out messages to the four town marshals, asking if the tracks to their communities had been used at any time since the wheat special disappeared. The Gerty and Wolf marshals replied quickly, both with negatives. The marshal at Goose Creek reported the track to his community had been used every other night for about half an hour by a westbound freight clearing the track for the late passenger train. No answer came from Casey. The marshal had business elsewhere at the moment, apparently. Five minutes went by before Danner repeated the message to Casey, with the same lack of results.
The waiting grated on his nerves and Danner quit the chair to move restlessly about the room. The others grew impatient also, shifting around, but hardly ever taking their eyes off him. Only Ma knew what he was up to; Melinda and Wainright could only guess, and not very accurately, for they didn't understand the coded messages. But Wainright appeared thoughtful now, as if he might be considering the possibility of Danner's being right. But Wainright would take a lot of convincing—a locomotive and thirty boxcars worth of convincing.
A quarter-hour after his first message, Danner tried the key again. This time he got an immediate response. Two empty boxcars brought to Casey eleven days before had been loaded with wheat, then picked up by a regular freight train three days before. Otherwise, the spur line hadn't been used since the wheat train had vanished.
With his hand still on the key, Danner considered the remaining possibilities. Only one made any sense now. The train had to be at the old Strom elevator, a natural place for such a scheme. There could be no other answer. Danner turned to Ma Grim.
'Get a message off to Sheriff Brant,' he told her. 'Tell him the missing train is at the old Strom elevator and he should get a posse there as soon as possible. I'll go on ahead and look it over, but I'll try to avoid contact with anyone until he gets there.'
'Are you sure it's there?' Ma bellowed.
'It has to be,' Danner nodded. Then he faced Wainright. 'You and Melinda wait here until—'
'No, no.' Wainright shook his head. 'I'm going all the way on this.'
'And so am I,' Melinda said, breaking a long silence. Throughout all the arguments of the morning she'd remained silent. Even now she was sparing with words, but the determination on her face was unmistakable. Danner lifted the Colts from his holster and slipped a shell into the normally empty chamber under the hammer.
'I'm a professional at this sort of thing. You're not. You'll only be a handicap to me.'
'You can't stop us,' Wainright insisted.
'Perhaps not,' Danner said. 'But has it ever occurred to you that Miss Richfield could get hurt, and that in trying to protect her we might get ourselves in a tight spot?'
The implied indication that he didn't mind Wainright coming along had its desired effect.
'Perhaps she should stay here,' Wainright conceded.
'I'm going,' Melinda replied with a steely softness.
Danner shrugged in resignation. She was just too much like the Colonel.
