About 7 o'clock
Immediately after gathering the principal details of the day 's occurrences , he got the police station on the wire and communicated them to the officer in charge . Drastic measures were resorted to at once . The day shift of uniformed and ununiformed guardians of the law was summoned back to duty , and a posse of available citizens were sworn in . About 7 o'clock a posse of citizen policemen , led by three or four uniformed members of the regular force , began a canvass of the neighborhood to discover information that might suggest a clew as to the whereabouts of the missing girls . Half an hour later a woman informed one of the canvassers that she had seen eight or ten girls enter the yard of the old Buckholz place between 3 and 4 o'clock , but had not noticed whether they went into the house or not . The man to whom this statement was made blew a whistle as an agreed signal to the other searchers that he had important information and soon a score of them were running toward him from all directions . A comparison of notes disclosed the fact that another member of the party of canvassers had received a similar statement from another resident in the neighborhood .