"Why, curse your little rat-face!" burst out Robert Macklin, and, stepping in, he leaned forward with a perfect straight left.
Certainly his long vacation from boxing had not ruined his eye or stiffened his muscles. With delight he felt all the big sinews about his shoulders come into play. Straight and true the big fist drove into the face of the smaller man, but Robert Macklin found that he had punched a hole in thin air. It was as if the very wind of the blow had brushed the head of Ronicky Doone to one side, and at the same time he seemed to sway and stagger forward.
A hard lean fist struck Robert Macklin's body. As he gasped and doubled up, clubbing his right fist to land the blow behind the ear of Ronicky Doone, the latter bent back, stepped in and, rising on the toes of both feet, whipped a perfect uppercut that, in ring parlance, rang the bell.
The result was that Robert Macklin, his mouth agape and his eyes dull, stood wobbling slowly from side to side.
"Here!" called Ronicky to his companion at the door. "Grab him on one side, and I'll take the other. He's out on his feet. Get him to that chair." With Gregg's assistance he dragged the bulk of the man there. Macklin was still stunned.
Presently the dull eyes cleared and filled immediately with horror.
Big Robert Macklin sank limply back in the chair.
"I've no money," he said. "I swear I haven't a cent in the place. It's in the bank, but if a check will—"
"We don't want your money this trip," said Ronicky. "We want talk, Macklin. A lot of talk and a lot of true talk. Understand? It's about that girl. I saw you grin when you saw the picture; you remember her well enough. Now start talking, and remember this, if you lie, I'll come back here and find out and use this on you."
The eyes of Robert Macklin started from his head, as his gaze concentrated on the black muzzle of the gun. He moistened his white lips and managed to gasp: "Everything I know, of course. Ill tell you everything, word for word. She—she—her name I mean—"
"You're doing fine," said Ronicky. "Keep it up, and you keep away, Bill. When you come at him with that hungry look he thinks you're going to eat him up. Fire away, Macklin."
"What first?"
"What's she look like?"
"Soft brown hair, blue eyes, her mouth—"
"Is a little big. That's all right. You don't have to be polite and lie. We want the truth. How big is she?"
"About five feet and five inches, must weigh around a hundred and thirty pounds."
"You sure are an expert on the ladies, Macklin, and I'll bet you didn't miss her name?"
"Her name?"
"Don't tell me you missed out on that!"
"No. It was—Just a minute!"
"Take your time."
"Caroline."
"Take your time now, Macklin, you're doing fine. Don't get confused.
Get the last name right. It's the most important to us."
"I have it, I'm sure. The whole name is Caroline Smith."
There was a groan from Ronicky Doone and another from Bill Gregg.
"That's a fine name to use for trailing a person. Did she say anything more, anything about where she expected to be living in New York?"
"I don't remember any more," said Macklin sullenly, for the spot where Ronicky's fist landed on his jaw was beginning to ache. "I didn't sit down and have any chats with her. She just spoke to me once in a while when I did something for her. I suppose you fellows have some crooked work on hand for her?"
"We're bringing her good news," said Ronicky calmly. "Now see if you can't remember where she said she lived in New York." And he gave added point to his question by pressing the muzzle of the revolver a little closer to the throat of the Pullman conductor. The latter blinked and swallowed hard.
"The only thing I remember her saying was that she could see the East
River from her window, I think."
"And that's all you know?"
"Yes, not a thing more about her to save my life."
"Maybe what you know has saved it," said Ronicky darkly.
His victim eyed him with sullen malevolence. "Maybe there'll be a new trick or two in this game before it's finished. I'll never forget you, Doone, and you, Gregg."
"You haven't a thing in the world on us," replied Ronicky.
"I have the fact that you carry concealed weapons."
"Only this time."
"Always! Fellows like you are as lonesome without a gun as they are without a skin."
Ronicky turned at the door and laughed back at the gloomy face, and then they were gone down the steps and into the street.
Chapter Six
The New York Trail
On the train to New York that night they carefully summed up their prospects and what they had gained.
"We started at pretty near nothing," said Ronicky. He was a professional optimist. "We had a picture of a girl, and we knew she was on a certain train bound East, three or four weeks ago. That's all we knew. Now we know her name is Caroline Smith, and that she lives where she can see the East River out of her back window. I guess that narrows it down pretty close, doesn't it, Bill?"
"Close?" asked Bill. "Close, did you say?" "Well, we know the trail," said Ronicky cheerily. "All we've got to do is to locate the shack that stands beside that trail. For old mountain men like us that ought to be nothing. What sort of a stream is this East River, though?"
Bill Gregg looked at his companion in disgust. He had become so used to regarding Doone as entirely infallible that it amazed and disheartened him to find that there was one topic so large about which Ronicky knew nothing. Perhaps the whole base for the good cheer of Ronicky was his ignorance of everything except the mountain desert.
"A river's a river," went on Ronicky blandly. "And it's got a town beside it, and in the town there's a house that looks over the water. Why, Bill, she's as good as found!"
"New York runs about a dozen miles along the shore of that river," groaned Bill Gregg.
"A dozen miles!" gasped Ronicky. He turned in his seat and stared at his companion. "Bill, you sure are making a man-sized joke. There ain't that much city in the world. A dozen miles of houses, one right next to the other?"
"Yep, and one on top of the other. And that ain't all. Start about the center of that town and swing a twenty-mile line around it, and the end of the line will be passing through houses most of the way."
Ronicky Doone glared at him in positive alarm. "Well," he said, "that's different."
"It sure is. I guess we've come on a wild-goose chase, Ronicky, hunting for a girl named Smith that lives on the bank of the East River!" He laughed bitterly.
"How come you know so much about New York?" asked Ronicky, eager to turn the subject of conversation until he could think of something to cheer his friend.
"Books," said Bill Gregg.
After that there was a long lull in the conversation. That night neither of them slept long, for every rattle and sway of the train was telling them that they were rocking along toward an impossible task. Even the cheer of Ronicky had broken down the next morning, and, though breakfast in the diner restored some of his confidence, he was not the