The men on the embankment were walking slowly, bending far over, their
eyes fixed on the ground. Suddenly one of them stood erect and tossed his
arms in the air and shouted loudly. Other men ran to him, and another far
down the track repeated the shout and the gesture to another far in his
rear; this man took it up, and shouted and waved to a fourth man, and so
they passed the signal back to town. There came, almost immediately three
long, loud whistles from a mill near the station, and the embankment grew
black with people pouring out from town, while the searchers came running
from the fields and woods and underbrush on both sides of the railway.
Briscoe paused for the last time; then he began to walk slowly toward the
embankment.
The track lay level and straight, not dimming in the middle distances, the
rails converging to points, both northwest and southeast, in the clean-
washed air, like examples of perspective in a child's drawing-book. About
seventy miles to the west and north lay Rouen; and, in the same direction,
nearly six miles from where the signal was given, the track was crossed by
a road leading directly south to Six-Cross-Roads.
The embankment had been newly ballasted with sand. What had been
discovered was a broad brown stain on the south slope near the top. There
were smaller stains above and below; none beyond it to left or right; and
there were deep boot-prints in the sand. Men were examining the place
excitedly, talking and gesticulating. It was Lige Willetts who had found
it. His horse was tethered to a fence near by, at the end of a lane
through a cornfield. Jared Wiley, the deputy, was talking to a group near
the stain, explaining.
"You see them two must have knowed about the one-o'clock freight, and that
it was to stop here to take on the empty lumber cars. I don't know how
they knowed it, but they did. It was this way: when they dropped from the
window, they beat through the storm, straight for this side-track. At the
same time Mr. Harkless leaves Briscoes' goin' west. It begins to rain. He
cuts across to the railroad to have a sure footing, and strikin' for the
deepo for shelter--near place as any except Briscoes' where he'd said
good-night already and prob'ly don't wish to go back, 'fear of givin'
trouble or keepin' 'em up--anybody can understand that. He comes along,
and gets to where we are precisely at the time they do, them comin' from
town, him strikin' for it. They run right into each other. That's what
happened. They re-cog-nized him and raised up on him and let him have
it. What they done it with, I don't know; we took everything in that line
off of 'em; prob'ly used railroad iron; and what they done with him
afterwards we don't know; but we will by night. They'll sweat it out of
'em up at Rouen when they get 'em."