“Oh, no, indeed!  I put in the entire afternoon that day on a hand-car with four of my men to pump it for me, and if there is a foot of the main line, side-tracks, or spurs, west of the Gloria bridge, that I haven’t gone over, I don’t know where it is.  The next night I crossed the Timanyoni and tackled the old prospector again.  I wanted to check him up—­see if he had forgotten any of the little frills and details.  He hadn’t.  On the contrary, he was able to add what seems to me a very important detail.  About an hour after the disappearance of the one-car train with my bridge-timbers, he heard something that he had heard many times before.  He says it was the high-pitched song of a circular saw.  I asked him if he was sure.  He grinned and said he hadn’t been brought up in the Michigan woods without being able to recognize that song wherever he might hear it.”

“Whereupon you went hunting for saw-mills?” asked Lidgerwood.

“That is just what I did, and if there is one within hearing distance of that old man’s cabin on Quartz Creek, I couldn’t find it.  But I am confident that there is one, and that the thieves, whoever they were, lost no time in sawing my bridge-timbers up into board-lumber, and I’ll bet a hen worth fifty dollars against a no-account yellow dog that I have seen those boards a dozen times within the last twenty-four hours, without knowing it.”

“Didn’t see anything of our switch-engine while you were looking for your bridge-timbers and saw-mills and other things, did you?” queried Lidgerwood.

“No,” was the quick reply, “no, but I have a think coming on that, too.  My old prospector says he couldn’t make out very well in the dark, but it seemed to him as if the engine which hauled away our bridge-timbers didn’t have any tender.  How does that strike you?”

Lidgerwood grew thoughtful.  The missing engine was of the “saddle-tank” type, and it had no tender.  It was hard to believe that it could be hidden anywhere on so small a part of the Red Butte Western system as that covered by the comparatively short mileage in Timanyoni Park.  Yet if it had not been dumped into some deep pot-hole in the river, it was unquestionably hidden somewhere.

“Benson, are you sure you went over all the line lying west of the Gloria bridge?” he asked pointedly.

“Every foot of it, up one side and down the other ...  No, hold on, there is that old spur running up on the eastern side of Little Butte; it’s the one that used to serve Flemister’s mine when the workings were on the eastern slope of the butte.  I didn’t go over that spur.  It hasn’t been used for years; as I remember it, the switch connections with the main line have been taken out.”

“You’re wrong about that,” said Lidgerwood definitely.  “McCloskey thought so too, and told me that the frogs and point-rails had been taken out at Silver Switch—­at both of the main-line ends of the ’Y’,—­but the last time I was over the line I noticed that the old switch stands were there, and that the split rails were still in place.”