Judson was shaking his head.

“He didn’t need any message—­and he didn’t get any.  I’d put it up this way:  after that rail-joint was sprung open, they’d go back up the old spur on the hand-car, wouldn’t they?  And on the way they’d be pretty sure to hear Cranford when he whistled for Little Butte.  That’d let ’em know what was due to happen, right then and there.  After that, it’d be easy enough.  All Flemister had to do was to rout out his miners over his own telephones, jump onto the hand-car again, and come back in time to show up to you.”

Lidgerwood was frowning thoughtfully.

“Then both of them must have come back; or, no—­that must have been your third man who tried to flag Cranford down.  Judson, I’ve got to know who that third man is.  He has complicated things so that I don’t dare move, even against Flemister, until I know more.  We are not at the ultimate bottom of this thing yet.”

“We’re far enough to put the handcuffs onto Mr. Pennington Flemister any time you say,” asserted Judson.  “There was one little thing that I forgot to put in the report:  when you get ready to take that missing switch-engine back, you’ll find it choo-chooin’ away up yonder in Flemister’s new power-house that he’s built out of boards made from Mr. Benson’s bridge-timbers.”

“Is that so?  Did you see the engine?” queried the superintendent quickly.

“No, but I might as well have.  She’s there, all right, and they didn’t care enough to even muffle her exhaust.”

Lidgerwood took a slender gold-banded cigar from his desk-box, and passed the box to the ex-engineer.

“We’ll get Mr. Pennington Flemister—­and before he is very many hours older,” he said definitely.  And then:  “I wish we were a little more certain of the other man.”

Judson bit the end from his cigar, but he forbore to light it.  The Red Desert had not entirely effaced his sense of the respect due to a superintendent riding in his own private car.

“It’s a queer sort of a mix-up, Mr. Lidgerwood,” he said, fingering the cigar tenderly.  “Knowin’ what’s what, as some of us do, you’d say them two’d never get together, unless it was to cut each other’s throats.”

Lidgerwood nodded.  “I’ve heard there was bad blood between them:  it was about that building-and-loan business, wasn’t it?”

“Shucks! no; that was only a drop in the bucket,” said Judson, surprised out of his attitude of rank-and-file deference.  “Hallock was the original owner of the Wire-Silver.  Didn’t you know that?”

“No.”

“He was, and Flemister beat him out of it—­lock, stock, and barrel:  just simply reached out an’ took it.  Then, when he’d done that, he reached out and took Hallock’s wife—­just to make it a clean sweep, was the way he bragged about it.”