Foster, crossing the platform shakily, grasped the rail and looked down.  There were rocks and small trees immediately beneath him, but farther back a level white belt indicated a frozen river covered by thin snow.  In the middle of this was a dark riband of water where the stream had kept an open channel through the ice.  The bridge was one of the long, wooden trestles, flung across rivers and narrow valleys, that are now being replaced by embankments and iron structures.  Since the frame, as usual, was open and just wide enough to carry the metals, there was nothing to save anybody who fell off the cars from a plunge to the bottom.  Foster thought Daly knew this when he stepped off the platform.  Looking back along the curve of the bridge, he imagined that the thing had happened when they were crossing the unfrozen part of the stream.  He shivered and then glanced round as a man who had followed Pete closely took the object the latter held.

“His necktie,” he remarked.  “If it had been stronger, we’d have had him in handcuffs now.”

“Weel,” said Pete dryly, “it’s no certain I wouldna’ ha’ gone ower the brig wi’ him.”

There was a hoarseness in their voices that hinted at strain, but the man, ordering Foster not to leave the car, hurried away, and soon afterwards the train slackened speed.  Then he came back with another man, and telling Foster and Pete to follow him, got down upon the line.  Curious passengers were alighting and asking questions, but the leader did not object when several followed the party.  They had to walk some distance, and when they reached the end of the trestle it was difficult to get down the rocky bank.

The bottom of the hollow was roughly level, but part was covered with small, stunted trees, many of which had been uprooted and had fallen across each other.  In the open spaces, rocks and boulders rose out of an inch or two of snow.  It was plain that there was no chance of Daly’s alighting uninjured there.  One of the men had brought a train-hand’s lantern, and they followed the curve of the trestle, which rose, black and ominously high, against the moonlight.  It was not very dark among the trees and the beam of the lantern flickered across the rocks and fallen trunks, but they found nothing, and presently came to the ice, where the light was not needed.

Nothing broke the smooth white surface, and the party stopped at the edge of the water, which looked black and sullen as it rolled past, streaked by lines of foam.  There was a belt of ice on the other side, but it was bare.

“Must have gone plumb into the river,” said one.  “We’d see him if he’d come down where it’s frozen.”

“Unless he was able to crawl up the bank,” somebody suggested.

“I guess that’s impossible,” another replied, scraping the snow away with his boot.  “See here, it’s hardly two inches deep; nothing to soften the blow.  Besides, anybody falling through the trestle would strike some of the cross-braces or stringers.”