"That settles it," Buck Ogilvy mourned. "He had gum-shoe men on my
trail, after all; they have reported, and the Colonel is as
suspicious as a rhino. He doesn't know anything, but he smells danger
just the same."
"Exactly, Buck. So he is delaying the game until he can learn
something definite." He drummed idly on his desk for several minutes.
Then:
"Buck, can you run a locomotive?"
"With one hand, old man."
"Fine business! Well, I guess we'll put in that crossing to-morrow
night. The switch-engine will be in the roundhouse at Pennington's
mill to-morrow night so we can't steal that; but we can steal the
mogul. I'll just send word up to my woods-boss not to have his train
loaded when the mogul comes up late to-morrow afternoon to haul it
down to our log-landing. He will explain to the engineer and fireman
that our big bull donkey went out and we couldn't get our logs down
to the landing in time to get them loaded that day. Of course, the
engine-crew won't bother to run down to Sequoia for the night--that
is, they won't run the mogul down. They'll just leave her at our log-
landing all night and put up for the night at our camp. However, if
they should be forced, because of their private affairs, to return to
Sequoia, they'll borrow my trackwalker's velocipede.
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