CHAPTER XXXII

A BRIDGE OF LOVE

He paused, listening, but all remained quiet without, and he resumed his story.  “There is not much else to it, West.  A little after one o’clock the shadow phoned in from the Union depot that Hobart had just purchased two tickets for Patacne.  We hustled over, but were too late to catch that train, but learned the girl had accompanied him on the trip.  We caught another rattler two hours later, and got off at Patacne, which is about three miles west of here.  It is not much of a job to gather up gossip in a small burg, and, inside of ten minutes, I had extracted all I needed from the station agent.  It seems this outfit was the summer sensation out here.  We hoofed it for reasons of our own, and came around by way of the lake shore, aiming to keep out of sight until after dark.  That is how we discovered that Seminole boat hauled up on the beach, but with no yacht in sight.  One of the fellows with me said Hogan did a boat-sinking job before and got away with it, and that is how I figured that maybe you was at the bottom of Lake Michigan—­see?  Well, we crept up here through the woods, but nothing happened.  Didn’t look as if the place had a soul within a hundred miles of it—­no smoke, no light; not a damn sound.  We laid out and waited, not sure what we were up against.  Finally we jimmied open the back door of this garage, just to find out whether those guys had a car out here, or not.  They had, but we no more than located it when those two fellows came dragging you out of the back door of the house, and flung you in here like a bag of old linen.  We lay still, and let them go back, but we hadn’t any notion whether you was dead or alive—­or whether it was really you; so we crawled up to find out.  That’s the story.  Now what do you think we better do?”

West moved his arms in an effort to restore circulation.

“How many with you?”

“Four altogether—­hard boiled, too—­five with you.  Is there any fight left in you, old man?”

“I’ll say there is; I’d certainly like to get in one clip at ‘Red’ before the fracas is over.”

“That sounds vicious.  Now who is inside?”

“I saw five, and there may be others.  If the crew of the Seminole are here also, that would make quite a bunch.”

“I don’t think they are, Captain.  The station agent said several men bought tickets to Chicago early this afternoon.  It is the real gang we’ve got cornered.  Do you know just who they are?”

“Those I saw were Hobart, ‘Red’ Hogan, the girl, a big fellow they called Mark who was on the yacht—­”

“Mark Sennett; he’s Hogan’s side-kick, and tough as they make ’em.”

“And a wiry little black-haired devil by the name of Dave.”

“Hell, is he in this too? that must be ‘Dago Dave.’  That guy would cut your throat for fifty dollars.  Any others?”