The fugitive’s surmise was entirely correct. Since early morning the wires had been buzzing with the news of the night; and inasmuch as the railway afforded the most obvious line of escape, every trainman was on the watch for the man whose description had been sown broadcast by the telltale wires. For this cause, and knowing both the fact of the reward and the figure of it, Conductor Harker thought himself in luck. Voltamo was the first station ahead where a constable could be found; and to Voltamo the conductor wired at the first opportunity. Antrim was at his post in the telegraph office, filling the place of the invalided branch despatcher, when the conductor’s message arrived, and he took it upon himself to make sure that the town marshal and two deputies were at the station to meet the train. That done, he waited in a fever of impatience for the event to mature, and when the suspense indoors became unbearable, he gave his place to the day operator and went out to be in at the death. He had not long to wait. The whistle of the coming train was echoing in the upper cañon, and the little knot of loungers which had gathered about the marshal and his deputies broke apart and fell back to give the officers free play. There was a west-bound freight in the upper yard, waiting, with a man at the switch, to pull out after the passenger train should arrive; and the rear trucks of the latter were no more than fairly over the movable rail before it was set for the siding, and the freight began to worm its way out around the double curve. The incoming passenger train slid down the grade to the station with brake shoes smoking, and Conductor Harker swung off and caught himself with a quick little run. “I’ve got him!--alive and kicking. He’s in the forward end of the smoker,” he cried; and in a flash the marshal darted into one end of the car while his deputies cut off the retreat at the other. Something to the surprise of all three, they met in the middle of the car without their quarry. There were not more than a dozen passengers in the seats, and no one of them remotely answered the requirements of the Gasset description. The marshal threw up a window and yelled to the conductor: “Come in here and show us your man!” Harker was with them at the word, but there was blank astoundment in his face. “Suffering Moses! you’ve let him get away!” he gasped. “He was right there in that second seat not more than a minute ago when we pulled down over the switch!” “Well, you can see for yourself he isn’t here now,” quoth the marshal. “You hold the train a minute while we look through the other cars.” The detention was not called for. Voltamo is a locomotive division station, and before the engines were changed the marshal and his aids had searched every possible hiding place in the train. Antrim knew that they had done their duty faithfully, but he was exasperated at the conductor’s apparent neglect.