Title: The Taming of Red Butte Western
Author: Lynde, Francis, 1856-1930
Language: English
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[Illustration: "I'll spend the last dollar of the fortune my father
left me, if needful, in finding that man and hanging him!"]


The Taming of Red Butte Western

by Francis Lynde



_Illustrated_



Charles Scribner's Sons
New York, 1916



1910, BY
Charles Scribner's Sons
Published April, 1910

[ILLUSTRATION: Publishers Stamp]



To

Mr. CHARLES AUGUSTINE STICKLE

My brother--in deed, though not by blood--this tale of his birthland is
affectionately inscribed.



CONTENTS


CHAPTER                             PAGE

I. Collars-and-Cuffs                  3
II. The Red Desert                   24
III. A Little Brother of the Cows    38
IV. At the Rio Gloria                59
V. The Outlaws                       80
VI. Everyman's Share                102
VII. The Killer                     122
VIII. Benson's Bridge-Timbers       141
IX. Judson's Joke                   157
X. Flemister and Others             177
XI. Nemesis                         187
XII. The Pleasurers                 202
XIII. Bitter-Sweet                  224
XIV. Blind Signals                  248
XV. Eleanor Intervenes              260
XVI. The Shadowgraph                270
XVII. The Dipsomaniac               289
XVIII. At Silver Switch             305
XIX. The Challenge                  324
XX. Storm Signals                   346
XXI. The Boss Machinist             369
XXII. The Terror                    380
XXIII. The Crucible                 398



ILLUSTRATIONS


"I'll spend the last dollar of the fortune my
father left me, if needful, in finding that
man and hanging him!"
          _Frontispiece_                      FACING PAGE

His hand was on the latch of the door-yard
gate when a man rose out of the gloom.                138

"Bart's afraid he can't duck without dying."          176

"Well, gentlemen, I'm waiting. Why don't you shoot?"  400

       *       *       *       *       *



The Taming of Red Butte Western

I

COLLARS-AND-CUFFS


The windows of the division head-quarters of the Pacific Southwestern at
Copah look northward over bald, brown mesas, and across the Pannikin to
the eroded cliffs of the Uintah Hills. The prospect, lacking vegetation,
artistic atmosphere, and color, is crude and rather harshly aggressive;
and to Lidgerwood, glooming thoughtfully out upon it through the
weather-worn panes scratched and bedimmed by many desert sandstorms, it
was peculiarly depressing.

"No, Ford; I hate to disappoint you, but I'm not the man you are looking
for," he said, turning back to things present and in suspense, and
speaking as one who would add a reason to unqualified refusal. "I've
been looking over the ground while you were coming on from New York. It
isn't in me to flog the Red Butte Western into a well-behaved division
of the P. S-W."

The grave-eyed man who had borrowed Superintendent Leckhard's
pivot-chair nodded intelligence.

"That is what you have been saying, with variations, for the last
half-hour. Why?"

"Because the job asks for gifts that I don't possess. At the present
moment the Red Butte Western is the most hopelessly demoralized three
hundred miles of railroad west of the Rockies. There is no system, no
discipline, no respect for authority. The men run the road as if it were
a huge joke. Add to these conditions the fact that the Red Desert is a
country where the large-calibred revolver is----"

"Yes, I know all that," interrupted the man in the chair. "The road and
the region need civilizing--need it badly. That is one of the reasons
why I am trying to persuade you to take hold. You are long on
civilization, Howard."

"Not on the kind which has to be inculcated by main strength and a
cheerful disregard for consequences. I'm no scrapper."

To the eye of appraisal, Lidgerwood's personal appearance bore out the
peaceable assertion to the final well-groomed detail. Compactly built
and neatly, brawn and bulk were conspicuously lacking; and the thin,
intellectual face was made to appear still thinner by the pointed cut of
the closely trimmed brown beard. The eyes were alert and not wanting in
steadfastness; but they had a trick of seeming to look beyond, rather
than directly at, the visual object. A physiognomist would have
classified him as a man of studious habit with the leisure to indulge
it, and unconsciously he dressed the part.

In his outspoken moments, which were rare, he was given to railing
against the fate which had made him a round peg in a square hole; a
technical engineer and a man of action, when his earlier tastes and
inclinations had drawn him in other directions. But the temperamental
qualities; the niceties, the exactness, the thoroughness, which, finding
no outlet in an artistic calling, had made him a master in his unchosen
profession, were well known to Mr. Stuart Ford, first vice-president of
the Pacific Southwestern System. And, it was largely for the sake of
these qualities that Ford locked his hands over one knee and spoke as a
man and a comrade.

"Let me tell you, Howard--you've no idea what a savage fight we've had
in New York, absorbing these same demoralized three hundred miles. You
know why we were obliged to have them. If the Transcontinental had
beaten us, it meant that our competitor would build over here from
Jack's Canyon, divide the Copah business with us, and have a line three
hundred miles nearer to the Nevada gold-fields than ours."

"I understand," said Lidgerwood; and the vice-president went on.

"Since the failure of the Red Butte 'pocket' mines, the road and the
country it traverses have been practically given over to the cowmen, the
gulch miners, the rustlers, and the drift from the big camps elsewhere.
In New York and on the Street, Red Butte Western was regarded as an
exploded cartridge--a kite without a tail. It was only a few weeks ago
that it dawned upon our executive committee that this particular kite
without a tail offered us a ready-made jump of three hundred miles
toward Tonopah and Goldfield. We began buying quietly for the control
with the stock at nineteen. Naturally the Transcontinental people caught
on, and in twenty-four hours we were at it, hammer and tongs."

Lidgerwood nodded. "I kept up with it in the newspapers," he cut in.

"The newspapers didn't print the whole story; not by many chapters," was
the qualifying rejoinder. "When the stock had gone to par and beyond,
our own crowd went back on us; and after it had passed the two-hundred
mark, Adair and I were fighting it practically alone. Even President
Brewster lost his nerve. He wanted to make a hedging compromise with the
Transcontinental brokers just before we swung over the summit with the
final five hundred shares we needed."

Again Lidgerwood made the sign of assent.

"Mr. Brewster is a level-headed Westerner. He doubtless knew, to the
dotting of an 'i,' the particular brand of trouble you two expansionists
were so eager to acquire."

"He did. He has a copper property somewhere in the vicinity of Angels,
and he knows the road. He contended that we were buying two streaks of
rust and a right-of-way in the Red Desert. More than that, he asserted
that the executive officer didn't live who could bring order out of the
chaos into which bad management and a peculiarly tough environment had
plunged the Red Butte Western. That's where I had him bested, Howard.
All through the hot fight I kept saying over and over to myself that I
knew the man."

"But you don't know him, Stuart; that is the weak link in the chain."

Lidgerwood turned away to the scratched window-panes and the crude
prospect, blurred now by the gathering shadows of the early evening. In
the yards below, a long freight-train was pulling in from the west, with
a switching-engine chasing it to begin the cutting out of the Copah
locals. Over in the Red Butte yard a road-locomotive, turning on the
table, swept a wide arc with the beam of its electric headlight in the
graying dusk. Through the half-opened door in the despatcher's room came
the diminished chattering of the telegraph instruments; this, with the
outer clamor of trains and engines, made the silence in the private
office more insistent.

When Lidgerwood faced about again after the interval of abstraction
there were fine lines of harassment between his eyes, and his words came
as if speech were costing him a conscious effort.

"If it were merely a matter of technical fitness, I suppose I might go
over to Angels and do what you want done with the three hundred miles of
demoralization. But the Red Butte proposition asks for more; for
something that I can't give it. Stuart, there is a yellow streak in me
that you seem never to have discovered. I am a coward."

The ghost of an incredulous smile wrinkled about the tired eyes of the
big man in the pivot-chair.

"You put it with your usual exactitude," he assented slowly; "I hadn't
discovered it." Then: "You forget that I have known you pretty much all
your life, Howard."

"You haven't known me at all," was the sober reply.

"Oh, yes, I have! Let me recall one of the boyhood pictures that has
never faded. It was just after school, one hot day, in the Illinois
September. Our crowd had gone down to the pond back of the school-house,
and two of us were paddling around on a raft made of sawmill slabs. One
of the two--who always had more dare-deviltry than sense under his skull
thatch--was silly enough to 'rock the boat,' and it went to pieces. You
couldn't swim, Howard, but if you hadn't forgotten that trifling
handicap and wallowed in to pull poor Billy Mimms ashore, I should have
been a murderer."

Lidgerwood shook his head.

"You think you have made your case, but you haven't. What you say is
true enough; I wasn't afraid of drowning--didn't think much about it,
either way, I guess. But what I say is true, also. There are many kinds
of courage, and quite as many kinds of cowardice. I am a coward of men."

"Oh, no, you're not: you only think you are," protested the one who
thought he knew. But Lidgerwood would not let that stand.

"I know I am. Hear me through, and then judge for yourself. What I am
going to tell you I have never told to any living man; but it is your
right to hear it.... I have had the symptoms all my life, Stuart. You
have spoken of the schoolboy days: you may remember how you used to
fight my battles for me. You thought I took the bullying of the bigger
boys because I wasn't strong enough physically to hold up my end. That
wasn't it: it was fear, pure and simple. Are you listening?"

The man in the chair nodded and said, "Go on." He was of those to whom
fear, the fear of what other men might do to him, was as yet a thing
unlearned, and he was trying to attain the point of view of one to whom
it seemed very real.

"It followed me up to manhood, and after a time I found myself
constantly and consciously deferring to it. It was easy enough after the
habit was formed. Twentieth-century civilization is decently peaceable,
and it isn't especially difficult to dodge the personal collisions. I
have succeeded in dodging them, for the greater part, paying the price
in humiliation and self-abasement as I went along. God, Stuart, you
don't know what that means!--the degradation; the hot and cold chills of
self-loathing; the sickening misery of having your own soul turn upon
you to rend and tear you like a rabid dog!"

"No, I don't know what it means," said the other man, moved more than he
cared to admit by the abject confession.

"Of course you don't. Nobody else can know. I am alone in my pit of
wretchedness, Ford ... as one born out of time; apprehending, as well as
you or any one, what is required of a man and a gentleman, and yet
unable to answer when my name is called. I said I had been paying the
price; I am paying it here and now. This is the fourth time I have had
to refuse a good offer that carried with it the fighting chance."

The vice-president's heavy eyebrows slanted in questioning surprise.

"You knew in advance that you were going to turn me down? Yet you came a
thousand miles to meet me here; and you admit that you have gone the
length of looking the ground over."

Lidgerwood's smile was mirthless.

"A regular recurring phase of the disease. It manifests itself in a
determination to break away and do or die in the effort to win a little
self-respect. I can't take the plunge. I know beforehand that I can't
... which brings us down to Copah, the present exigency, and the fact
that you'll have to look farther along for your Red Butte Western
man-queller. The blood isn't in my veins, Stuart. It was left out in the
assembling."

The vice-president was still a young man and he was confronting a
problem that annoyed him. He had been calling himself, and not without
reason, a fair judge of men. Yet here was a man whom he had known
intimately from boyhood, who was but just now revealing a totally
unsuspected quality.

"You say you have been dodging the collisions. How do you know you
wouldn't buck up when the real pinch comes?" he demanded.

"Because the pinch came once--and I didn't buck up. It was over a year
ago, and to this good day I can't think calmly about it. You will
understand when I say that it cost me the love of the one woman in the
world."

The vice-president did understand. Being a married lover himself, he
could measure the depth of the abyss into which Lidgerwood was looking.
His voice was as sympathetic as a woman's when he said: "Go ahead and
ease your mind; tell me about it, if you can, Howard. It's barely
possible that you are not the best judge of your own act."

There was something approaching the abandonment of the shameless in
Lidgerwood's manner when he went on.

"It was in the Montana mountains. I was going in to do a bit of expert
engineering for her father. Incidentally, I was escorting her and her
mother from the railroad terminus to the summer camp in the hills, where
they were to join a coaching party of their friends for the Yellowstone
tour. We had to drive forty miles in a stage, and there were six of
us--the two women and four men. On the way the talk turned upon
stage-robbings and hold-ups. With the chance of the real thing as remote
as a visit from Mars, I could be an ass and a braggart. One of the men,
a salesman for a powder company, gave me the rope wherewith to hang
myself. He argued for non-resistance, and I remember that I grew
sarcastic over the spectacle afforded by a grown man, armed and in
possession of his five senses, permitting himself to be robbed without
attempting to resist. You can guess what followed?"

"I'd rather hear you tell it," said the listener at Superintendent
Leckhard's desk. "Go on."

Lidgerwood waited until the switching-engine, with its pop-valve open
and screaming like a liberated devil of the noise pit, had passed.

"Three miles beyond the supper station we had our hold-up; the
cut-and-dried, melodramatic sort of thing you read about, or used to
read about, in the early days, with a couple of Winchesters poking
through the scrub pines to represent the gang in hiding, and one lone,
crippled desperado to come down to the footlights in the speaking part.
You get the picture?"

"Yes; I've seen the original."

"Of course, it struck every soul of us with the shock of the
incredible--the totally unexpected. It was a rank anachronism,
twenty-five years out of date in that particular locality. Before
anybody realized what was happening, the cripple had us lined up in a
row beside the stage, and I was reaching for the stars quite as
anxiously as the little Jew hat salesman, who was swearing by all the
patriarchs that the twenty-dollar bill in his right-hand pocket was his
entire fortune."

"Naturally," Ford commented. "You needn't rawhide yourself for that.
You've been West often enough and long enough at a time to know the
rules of the game--not to be frivolous when the other fellow has the
drop on you."

"Wait," said Lidgerwood. "One minute later the cripple had sized us up
for what we were. The other three men were not armed. I was, and Miss
El--the young woman knew it. Also the cripple knew it. He tapped the
gun bulging in my pocket and said, in good-natured contempt, 'Watch out
that thing don't go off and hurt you some time when you ain't lookin',
stranger.' Ford, I think I must have been hypnotized. I stood there like
a frozen image, and let that crippled cow-rustler rob those two
women--take the rings from their fingers!"

"Oh, hold on; there's another side to all that, and you know it," the
vice-president began; but Lidgerwood would not listen.

"No," he protested; "don't try to find excuses for me; there were none.
The fellow gave me every chance; turned his back on me as an absolutely
negligible factor while he was going through the others. I'm quick
enough when the crisis doesn't involve a fighting man's chance; and I
can handle a gun, too, when the thing to be shot at isn't a human being.
But to save my soul from everlasting torments I couldn't go through the
simple motions of pulling the pistol from my pocket and dropping that
fellow in his tracks; couldn't and didn't."

"Why, of course you couldn't, after it had got that far along," asserted
Ford. "I doubt if any one could. That little remark about the gun in
your pocket did you up. When a man gets you pacified to the condition
in which he can safely josh you, he has got you going and he knows
it--and knows you know it. You may be twice as hot and bloodthirsty as
you were before, but you are just that much less able to strike back.
It's not a theory; it is a psychological demonstration."

"But the fact remained," said Lidgerwood, sparing himself not at all. "I
was weighed and found wanting; that is the only point worth
considering."

"Well?" queried Ford, when the self-condemned culprit turned again to
the dusk-darkened window, "what came of it?"

"That which was due to come. I was told many times and in many different
ways what the one woman thought of me. For the few days during which she
and her mother waited at her father's mine for the coming of the
Yellowstone party, she used me for a door-mat, as I deserved. That was a
year ago last spring. I haven't seen her since; haven't tried to."

The vice-president reached up and snapped the key of the electric bulb
over the desk, and the lurking shadows in the corners of the room fled
away.

"Sit down," he said shortly; and when Lidgerwood had found a chair:
"You treat it as an incident closed, Howard. Do you mean to go on
leaving it up in the air like that?"

"It was left in the air a year ago last spring. I can't pull it down
now."

"Yes, you can. You haven't exaggerated the conditions on the Red Butte
line an atom. As you say, the operating force is as godless a lot of
outlaws as ever ran trains or ditched them. They all know that the road
has been bought and sold, and that pretty sweeping changes are
impending. They are looking for trouble, and are quite ready to help
make it. If you could discharge them in a body, you couldn't replace
them--the Red Desert having nothing to offer as a dwelling-place for
civilized men; and this they know, too. Howard, I'm telling you right
now that it will require a higher brand of courage to go over to Angels
and manhandle the Red Butte Western as a division of the P. S-W. than it
would to face a dozen highwaymen, if every individual one of the dozen
had the drop on you!"

Lidgerwood left his chair and began to pace the narrow limits of the
private office, five steps and a turn. The noisy switching-engine had
gone clattering and shrieking down the yard again before he said, "You
mean that you are still giving me the chance to make good over yonder
in the Red Desert--after what I have told you?"

"I do; only I'll make it more binding. It was optional with you before;
it's a sheer necessity now. You've _got_ to go."

Again Lidgerwood took time to reflect, tramping the floor, with his head
down and his hands in the pockets of the correct coat. In the end he
yielded, as the vice-president's subjects commonly did.

"I'll go, if you still insist upon it," was the slowly spoken decision.
"There will doubtless be plenty of trouble, and I shall probably show
the yellow streak--for the last time, perhaps. It's the kind of an
outfit to kill a coward for the pure pleasure of it, if I'm not
mistaken."

"Well," said the man in the swing-chair, calmly, "maybe you need a
little killing, Howard. Had you ever thought of that?"

A gray look came into Lidgerwood's face.

"Maybe I do."

A little silence supervened. Then Ford plunged into detail.

"Now that you are fairly committed, sit down and let me give you an idea
of what you'll find at Angels in the way of a head-quarters outfit. Draw
up here and we'll go over the lay-out together."

A busy hour had elapsed, and the gong of the station dining-room below
was adding its raucous clamor to the drumming thunder of the incoming
train from Green Butte, when the vice-president concluded his outline
sketch of the Red Butte Western conditions.

"Of course, you know that you will have a free hand. We have already
cleared the decks for you. As an independent road, the Red Butte line
had the usual executive organization in miniature: Cumberley had the
title of general superintendent, but his authority, when he cared to
assert it, was really that of general manager. Under him, in the
head-quarters staff at Angels, there was an auditor--who also acted as
paymaster, a general freight and passenger agent, and a superintendent
of motive power. Operating the line as a branch of the P. S-W System, we
can simplify the organization. We have consolidated the auditing and
traffic departments with our Colorado-lines head-quarters at Denver. This
will leave you with only the operating, telegraph, train-service, and
engineering departments to handle from Angels. With one exception, your
authority will be absolute; you will hire and discharge as you see fit,
and there will be no appeal from your decision."

"That applies to my own departments--the operating, telegraph,
train-service, and engineering; but how about the motive power?" asked
the new incumbent.

Ford threw down the desk-knife, with which he had been sharpening a
pencil, with a little gesture indicative of displeasure.

"There lies the exception, and I wish it didn't. Gridley, the
master-mechanic, will be nominally under your orders, of course; but if
it should come to blows between you, you couldn't fire him. In the
regular routine he will report to the Colorado-lines superintendent of
motive power at Denver. But in a quarrel with you he could make a still
longer arm and reach the P. S-W. board of directors in New York."

"How is that?" inquired Lidgerwood.

"It's a family affair. He is a widower, and his wife was a sister of the
Van Kensingtons. He got his job through the family influence, and he'll
hold it in the same way. But you are not likely to have any trouble with
him. He is a brute in his own peculiar fashion; but when it comes to
handling shopmen and keeping the engines in service, he can't be beat."

"That is all I shall ask of him," said the new superintendent. "Anything
else?" looking at his watch.

"Yes, there is one other thing. I spoke of Hallock, the man you will
find holding down the head-quarters office at Angels. He was Cumberley's
chief clerk, and long before Cumberley resigned he was the real
superintendent of the Red Butte Western in everything but the title, and
the place on the pay-roll. Naturally he thought he ought to be
considered when we climbed into the saddle, and he has already written
to President Brewster, asking for the promotion in fact. He happens to
be a New Yorker--like Gridley; and, again like Gridley, he has a friend
at court. Magnus knows him, and he recommended him for the
superintendency when Mr. Brewster referred the application to me. I
couldn't agree, and I had to turn him down. I am telling you this so
you'll be easy with him--as easy as you can. I don't know him
personally, but if you can keep him on----"

"I shall be only too glad to keep him, if he knows his business and will
stay," was Lidgerwood's reply. Then, with another glance at his watch,
"Shall we go up-town and get dinner? Afterward you can give me your
notion in the large about the future extension of the road across the
second Timanyoni, and I'll order out the service-car and an engine and
go to my place. A man can die but once; and maybe I shall contrive to
live long enough to set a few stakes for some better fellow to drive.
Let's go."

       *       *       *       *       *

At ten o'clock that night Engine 266, Williams, engineer, and Blackmar,
fireman, was chalked up on the Red Butte Western roundhouse
bulletin-board to go west at midnight with the new superintendent's
service-car, running as a special train.

Svenson, the caller, who brought the order from the Copah
sub-despatcher's office, unloaded his news upon the circle of R.B.W.
engineers, firemen, and roundhouse roustabouts lounging on the benches
in the tool-room and speculating morosely upon the probable changes
which the new management would bring to pass.

"Ve bane got dem new boss, Ay vant to tal you fallers," he drawled.

"Who is he?" demanded Williams, who had been looking on sourly while the
engine-despatcher chalked his name on the board for the night run with
the service-car.

"Ay couldn't tal you his name. Bote he is dem young faller bane goin'
'round hare dees two, t'ree days, lukin' lak preacher out of a yob.
Vouldn'd dat yar you?"

Williams rose up to his full height of six-feet-two, and flung his
hands upward in a gesture that was more expressive than many oaths.

"_Collars-and-Cuffs, by God!_" he said.



II

THE RED DESERT


In the beginning the Red Desert, figuring unpronounceably under its
Navajo name of Tse-nastci--Circle-of-Red-Stones--was shunned alike by
man and beast, and the bravest of the gold-hunters, seeking to penetrate
to the placer ground in the hill gulches between the twin Timanyoni
ranges, made a hundred-mile détour to avoid it.

Later, the discoveries of rich "pocket" deposits in the Red Butte
district lifted the intermontane hill country temporarily to the high
plane of a bonanza field. In the rush that followed, a few prudent ones
chose the longer détour; others, hardier and more temerarious, outfitted
at Copah, and assaulting the hill barrier of the Little Piñons at
Crosswater Gap, faced the jornada through the Land of Thirst.

Of these earliest of the desert caravans, the railroad builders,
following the same trail and pointing toward the same destination in the
gold gulches, found dismal reminders. In the longest of the thirsty
stretches there were clean-picked skeletons, and they were not always
the relics of the patient pack-animals. In which event Chandler, chief
of the Red Butte Western construction, proclaimed himself Eastern-bred
and a tenderfoot by compelling the grade contractors to stop and bury
them.

Why the railroad builders, with Copah for a starting-point and Red Butte
for a terminus, had elected to pitch their head-quarters camp in the
western edge of the desert, no later comer could ever determine. Lost,
also, is the identity of the camp's sponsor who, visioning the things
that were to be, borrowed from the California pioneers and named the
halting-place on the desert's edge "Angels." But for the more material
details Chandler was responsible. It was he who laid out the division
yards on the bald plain at the foot of the first mesa, planting the
"Crow's Nest" head-quarters building on the mesa side of the gridironing
tracks, and scattering the shops and repair plant along the opposite
boundary of the wide right-of-way.

The town had followed the shops, as a sheer necessity. First and always
the railroad nucleus, Angels became in turn, and in addition, the
forwarding station for a copper-mining district in the Timanyoni
foot-hills, and a little later, when a few adventurous cattlemen had
discovered that the sun-cured herbage of the desert borders was
nutritious and fattening, a stock-shipping point. But even in the day of
promise, when the railroad building was at its height and a handful of
promoters were plotting streets and town lots on the second mesa, and
printing glowing tributes--for strictly Eastern distribution--to the dry
atmosphere and the unfailing sunshine, the desert leaven was silently at
work. A few of the railroad men transplanted their families; but apart
from these, Angels was a man's town with elemental appetites, and with
only the coarse fare of the frontier fighting line to satisfy them.

Farther along, the desert came more definitely to its own. The rich Red
Butte "pockets" began to show signs of exhaustion, and the gulch and ore
mining afforded but a precarious alternative to the thousands who had
gone in on the crest of the bonanza wave. Almost as tumultuously as it
had swept into the hill country, the tide of population swept out. For
the gulch hamlets between the Timanyonis there was still an industrial
reason for being; but the railroad languished, and Angels became the
weir to catch and retain many of the leavings, the driftwood stranded in
the slack water of the outgoing tide. With the railroad, the Copperette
Mine, and the "X-bar-Z" pay-days to bring regularly recurring moments of
flushness, and with every alternate door in Mesa Avenue the entrance to
a bar, a dance-hall, a gambling den, or the three in combination, the
elemental appetites grew avid, and the hot breath of the desert fanned
slow fires of brutality that ate the deeper when they penetrated to the
punk heart of the driftwood.

It was during this period of deflagration and dry rot that the Eastern
owners of the railroad lost heart. Since the year of the Red Butte
inrush there had been no dividends; and Chandler, summoned from another
battle with the canyons in the far Northwest, was sent in to make an
expert report on the property. "Sell it for what it will bring," was the
substance of Chandler's advice; but there were no bidders, and from this
time on a masterless railroad was added to the spoils of war--the
inexpiable war of the Red Desert upon its invaders.

At the moment of the moribund railroad's purchase by the Pacific
Southwestern, the desert was encroaching more and more upon the town
planted in its western border. In the height of Angels's prosperity
there had been electric lights and a one-car street tramway, a bank,
and a Building and Loan Association attesting its presence in rows of
ornate cottages on the second mesa--alluring bait thrown out to catch
the potential savings of the railroad colonists.

But now only the railroad plant was electric-lighted; the single
ramshackle street-car had been turned into a _chile-con-carne_ stand;
the bank, unable to compete with the faro games and the roulette wheels,
had gone into liquidation; the Building and Loan directors had long
since looted the treasury and sought fresh fields, and the cottages were
chiefly empty shells.

Of the charter members of the Building and Loan Association, shrewdest
of the many boom-time schemes for the separation of the pay-roll man
from his money, only two remained as residents of Angels the decadent.
One of these was Gridley, the master-mechanic, and the other was
Hallock, chief clerk for a diminishing series of imported
superintendents, and now for the third time the disappointed applicant
for the headship of the Red Butte Western.

Associated for some brief time in the real-estate venture, and hailing
from the same far-away Eastern State and city, these two had been at
first yoke-fellows, and afterward, as if by tacit consent, inert
enemies. As widely separated as the poles in characteristics, habits,
and in their outlook upon life, they had little in common, and many
antipathies.

Gridley was a large man, virile of face and figure, and he marched in
the ranks of the full-fed and the self-indulgent. Hallock was big-boned
and cadaverous of face, but otherwise a fair physical match for the
master-mechanic; a dark man with gloomy eyes and a permanent frown.
Jovial good-nature went with the master-mechanic's gray eyes twinkling
easily to a genial smile, but it stopped rather abruptly at the
straight-lined, sensual mouth, and found a second negation in the brutal
jaw which was only thinly masked by the neatly trimmed beard. Hallock's
smile was bitter, and if he had a social side no one in Angels had ever
discovered it. In a region where fellowship in some sort, if it were
only that of the bottle and the card-table, was any man's for the
taking, he was a hermit, an ascetic; and his attitude toward others, all
others, so far as Angels knew, was that of silent and morose ferocity.

It was in an upper room of the "Crow's Nest" head-quarters building that
these two, the master-mechanic and the acting superintendent, met late
in the evening of the day when Vice-President Ford had kept his
appointment in Copah with Lidgerwood.

Gridley, clad like a gentleman, and tilting comfortably in his chair as
he smoked a cigar that neither love nor money could have bought in
Angels, was jocosely sarcastic. Hallock, shirt-sleeved, unkempt, and
with the permanent frown deepening the furrow between his eyes, neither
tilted nor smoked.

"They tell me you have missed the step up again, Hallock," said the
smoker lazily, when the purely technical matter that had brought him to
Hallock's office had been settled.

"Who tells you?" demanded the other; and a listener, knowing neither,
would have remarked the curious similarity of the grating note in both
voices as infallibly as a student of human nature would have contrasted
the two men in every other personal characteristic.

"I don't remember," said Gridley, good-naturedly refusing to commit his
informant, "but it's on the wires. Vice-President Ford is in Copah, and
the new superintendent is with him."

Hallock leaned forward in his chair.

"Who is the new man?" he asked.

"Nobody seems to know him by name. But he is a friend of Ford's all
right. That is how he gets the job."

Hallock took a plug of black tobacco from his pocket, and cut a small
sliver from it for a chew. It was his one concession to appetite, and he
made it grudgingly.

"A college man, I suppose," he commented. "Otherwise Ford wouldn't be
backing him."

"Oh, yes, I guess it's safe to count on that."

"And a man who will carry out the Ford policy?"

Gridley's eyes smiled, but lower down on his face the smile became a
cynical baring of the strong teeth.

"A man who may try to carry out the Ford idea," he qualified; adding,
"The desert will get hold of him and eat him alive, as it has the
others."

"Maybe," said Hallock thoughtfully. Then, with sudden heat, "It's hell,
Gridley! I've hung on and waited and done the work for their
figure-heads, one after another. The job belongs to me!"

This time Gridley's smile was a thinly veiled sneer.

"What makes you so keen for it, Hallock?" he asked. "You have no use for
the money, and still less for the title."

"How do you know I don't want the salary?" snapped the other. "Because
I don't have my clothes made in New York, or blow myself across the
tables in Mesa Avenue, does it go without saying that I have no use for
money?"

"But you haven't, you know you haven't," was the taunting rejoinder.
"And the title, when you have, and have always had, the real authority,
means still less to you."

"Authority!" scoffed the chief clerk, his gloomy eyes lighting up with
slow fire, "this maverick railroad don't know the meaning of the word.
By God! Gridley, if I had the club in my hands for a few months I'd show
'em!"

"Oh, I guess not," said the cigar-smoker easily. "You're not built right
for it, Hallock; the desert would give you the horse-laugh."

"Would it? Not before I had squared off a few old debts, Gridley; don't
you forget that."

There was a menace in the harsh retort, and the chief clerk made no
attempt to conceal it.

"Threatening, are you?" jeered the full-fed one, still good-naturedly
sarcastic. "What would you do, if you had the chance, Rankin?"

"I'd kill out some of the waste and recklessness, if it took the last
man off the pay-rolls; and I'd break even with at least one man over in
the Timanyoni, if I had to use the whole Red Butte Western to pry him
loose!"

"Flemister again?" queried the master-mechanic. And then, in mild
deprecation, "You are a bad loser, Hallock, a damned bad loser. But I
suppose that is one of your limitations."

A silence settled down upon the upper room, but Gridley made no move to
go. Out in the yards the night men were making up a westbound freight,
and the crashing of box-cars carelessly "kicked" into place added its
note to the discord of inefficiency and destructive breakage.

Over in the town a dance-hall piano was jangling, and the raucous voice
of the dance-master calling the figures came across to the Crow's Nest
curiously like the barking of a distant dog. Suddenly the barking voice
stopped, and the piano clamor ended futilely in an aimless tinkling. For
climax a pistol-shot rang out, followed by a scattering volley. It was a
precise commentary on the time and the place that neither of the two men
in the head-quarters upper room gave heed to the pistol-shots, or to the
yelling uproar that accompanied them.

It was after the shouting had died away in a confused clatter of hoofs,
and the pistol cracklings were coming only at intervals and from an
increasing distance, that the corridor door opened and the night
despatcher's off-trick man came in with a message for Hallock.

It was a mere routine notification from the line-end operator at Copah,
and the chief clerk read it sullenly to the master-mechanic.

"Engine 266, Williams, engineer, and Blackmar, fireman, with service-car
Naught-One, Bradford, conductor, will leave Copah at 12:01 A.M., and run
special to Angels. By order of Howard Lidgerwood, General
Superintendent."

Gridley's pivot-chair righted itself with a snap. But he waited until
the off-trick man was gone before he said, "Lidgerwood! Well, by all the
gods!" then, with a laugh that was more than half a snarl, "There is a
chance for you yet, Rankin."

"Why, do you know him?"

"No, but I know something about him. I've got a line on New York, the
same as you have, and I get a hint now and then. I knew that Lidgerwood
had been considered for the place, but I was given to understand that he
would refuse the job if it were offered to him."

"Why should he refuse?" demanded Hallock.

"That is where my wire-tapper fell down; he couldn't tell."

"Then why do you say there is still a chance for me?"

"Oh, on general principles, I guess. If it was an even break that he
would refuse, it is still more likely that he won't stay after he has
seen what he is up against, don't you think?"

Hallock did not say what he thought. He rarely did.

"Of course, you made inquiries about him when you found out he was a
possible; I'd trust you to do that, Gridley. What do you know?"

"Not much that you can use. He is out of the Middle West; a young man
and a graduate of Purdue. He took the Civil degree, but stayed two years
longer and romped through the Mechanical. He ought to be pretty well up
on theory, you'd say."

"Theory be damned!" snapped the chief clerk. "What he'll need in the Red
Desert will be nerve and a good gun. If he has the nerve, he can buy the
gun."

"But having the gun he couldn't always be sure of buying the nerve, eh?
I guess you are right, Rankin; you usually are when you can forget to be
vindictive. And that brings us around to the jumping-off place again. Of
course, you will stay on with the new man--if he wants you to?"

"I don't know. That is my business, and none of yours."

It was a bid for a renewal of the quarrel which was never more than half
veiled between these two. But Gridley did not lift the challenge.

"Let it go at that," he said placably. "But if you should decide to
stay, I want you to let up on Flemister."

The morose antagonism died out of Hallock's eyes, and in its place came
craft.

"I'd kill Flemister on sight, if I had the sand; you know that, Gridley.
Some day it may come to that. But in the meantime----"

"In the meantime you have been snapping at his heels like a fice-dog,
Hallock; holding out ore-cars on him, delaying his coal supplies,
stirring up trouble with his miners. That was all right, up to
yesterday. But now it has got to stop."

"Not for any orders that you can give," retorted the chief clerk, once
more opening the door for the quarrel.

The master-mechanic got up and flicked the cigar ash from his
coat-sleeve with a handkerchief that was fine enough to be a woman's.

"I am not going to come to blows with you. Rankin--not if I can help
it," he said, with his hand on the door-knob. "But what I have said
will have to go as it lies. Shoot Flemister out of hand, if you feel
like it, but quit hampering his business."

Hallock stood up, and when he was on his feet his big frame made him
look still more a fair match physically for the handsome
master-mechanic.

"Why?" The single word shot out of the loose-lipped mouth like an
explosive bullet.

Gridley opened the door and turned upon the threshold.

"I might borrow the word from you and say that Flemister's business and
mine are none of yours. But I won't do that. I'll merely say that
Flemister may need a little Red Butte Western nursing in the Ute Valley
irrigation scheme he is promoting, and I want you to see that he gets
it. You may take that as a word to the wise, or as a kicked-in hint to a
blind mule; whichever you please. You can't afford to fight me, Hallock,
and you know it. Sleep on it a few hours, and you'll see it in that way,
I'm sure. Good-night."



III

A LITTLE BROTHER OF THE COWS


Crosswater Gap, so named because the high pass over which the railroad
finds its way is anything but a gap, and, save when the winter snows are
melting, there is no water within a day's march, was in sight from the
loopings of the eastern approach. Lidgerwood, scanning the grades as the
service-car swung from tangent to curve and curve to tangent up the
steep inclines, was beginning to think of breakfast. The morning air was
crisp and bracing, and he had been getting the full benefit of it for an
hour or more, sitting under the umbrella roof at the observation end of
the car.

With the breakfast thought came the thing itself, or the invitation to
it. As a parting kindness the night before, Ford had transferred one of
the cooks from his own private car to Lidgerwood's service, and the
little man, Tadasu Matsuwari by name, and a subject of the Mikado by
race and birth, came to the car door to call his new employer to the
table.

It was an attractive table, well appointed and well served; but
Lidgerwood, temperamentally single-eyed in all things, was diverted from
his reorganization problem for the moment only. Since early dawn he had
been up and out on the observation platform, noting, this time with the
eye of mastership, the physical condition of the road; the bridges, the
embankments, the cross-ties, the miles of steel unreeling under the
drumming trucks, and the object-lesson was still fresh in his mind.

To a disheartening extent, the Red Butte demoralization had involved the
permanent way. Originally a good track, with heavy steel, easy grades
compensated for the curves, and a mathematical alignment, the roadbed
and equipment had been allowed to fall into disrepair under indifferent
supervision and the short-handing of the section gangs--always an
impractical directory's first retrenchment when the dividends begin to
fail. Lidgerwood had seen how the ballast had been suffered to sink at
the rail-joints, and he had read the record of careless supervision at
each fresh swing of the train, since it is the section foreman's
weakness to spoil the geometrical curve by working it back, little by
little, into the adjoining tangent.

Reflecting upon these things, Lidgerwood's comment fell into speech over
his cup of coffee and crisp breakfast bacon.

"About the first man we need is an engineer who won't be too exalted to
get down and squint curves with the section bosses," he mused, and from
that on he was searching patiently through the memory card-index for the
right man.

At the summit station, where the line leaves the Pannikin basin to
plunge into the western desert, there was a delay. Lidgerwood was still
at the breakfast-table when Bradford, the conductor, black-shirted and
looking, in his slouch hat and riding-leggings, more like a
horse-wrangler than a captain of railroad trains, lounged in to explain
that there was a hot box under the 266's tender. Bradford was not of any
faction of discontent, but the spirit of morose insubordination, born of
the late change in management, was in the air, and he spoke gruffly.
Hence, with the flint and steel thus provided, the spark was promptly
evoked.

"Were the boxes properly overhauled before you left Copah?" demanded the
new boss.

Bradford did not know, and the manner of his answer implied that he did
not care. And for good measure he threw in an intimation that
roundhouse dope kettles were not in his line.

Lidgerwood passed over the large impudence and held to the matter in
hand.

"How much time have we on 201?" he asked, Train 201 being the westbound
passenger overtaken and left behind in the small hours of the morning by
the lighter and faster special.

"Thirty minutes, here," growled the little brother of the cows; after
which he took himself off as if he considered the incident sufficiently
closed.

Fifteen minutes later Lidgerwood finished his breakfast and went back to
his camp-chair on the observation platform of the service-car. A glance
over the side rail showed him his train crew still working on the heated
axle-bearing. Another to the rear picked up the passenger-train storming
around the climbing curves of the eastern approach to the summit. There
was a small problem impending for the division despatcher at Angels, and
the new superintendent held aloof to see how it would be handled.

It was handled rather indifferently. The passenger-train was pulling in
over the summit switches when Bradford, sauntering into the telegraph
office as if haste were the last thing in the world to be considered,
asked for his clearance card, got it, and gave Williams the signal to
go.

Lidgerwood got up and went into the car to consult the time-table
hanging in the office compartment. Train 201 had no dead time at
Crosswater; hence, if the ten-minute interval between trains of the same
class moving in the same direction was to be preserved, the passenger
would have to be held.

The assumption that the passenger-train would be held aroused all the
railroad martinet's fury in the new superintendent. In Lidgerwood's
calendar, time-killing on regular trains stood next to an infringement
of the rules providing for the safety of life and property. His hand was
on the signal-cord when, chancing to look back, he saw that the
passenger-train had made only the momentary time-card stop at the summit
station, and was coming on.

This turned the high crime into a mere breach of discipline, common
enough even on well-managed railroads when the leading train can be
trusted to increase the distance interval. But again the martinet in
Lidgerwood protested. It was his theory that rules were made to be
observed, and his experience had proved that little infractions paved
the way for great ones. In the present instance, however, it was too
late to interfere; so he drew a chair out in line with one of the rear
observation windows and sat down to mark the event.

Pitching over the hilltop summit, within a minute of each other, the two
trains raced down the first few curving inclines almost as one. Mile
after mile was covered, and still the perilous situation remained
unchanged. Down the short tangents and around the constantly recurring
curves the special seemed to be towing the passenger at the end of an
invisible but dangerously short drag-rope.

Lidgerwood began to grow uneasy. On the straight-line stretches the
following train appeared to be rushing onward to an inevitable rear-end
collision with the one-car special; and where the track swerved to right
or left around the hills, the pursuing smoke trail rose above the
intervening hill-shoulders near and threatening. With the parts of a
great machine whirling in unison and nicely timed to escape destruction,
a small accident to a single cog may spell disaster.

Lidgerwood left his chair and went again to consult the time-table. A
brief comparison of miles with minutes explained the effect without
excusing the cause. Train 201's schedule from the summit station to the
desert level was very fast; and Williams, nursing his hot box, either
could not, or would not, increase his lead.

At first, Lidgerwood, anticipating rebellion, was inclined to charge the
hazardous situation to intention on the part of his own train crew.
Having a good chance to lie out of it if they were accused, Williams and
Bradford might be deliberately trying the nerve of the new boss. The
presumption did not breed fear; it bred wrath, hot and vindictive. Two
sharp tugs at the signal-cord brought Bradford from the engine. The
memory of the conductor's gruff replies and easy impudence was fresh
enough to make Lidgerwood's reprimand harsh.

"Do you call this railroading?" he rasped, pointing backward to the
menace. "Don't you know that we are on 201's time?"

Bradford scowled in surly antagonism.

"That blamed hot box--" he began, but Lidgerwood cut him off short.

"The hot box has nothing to do with the case. You are not hired to take
chances, or to hold out regular trains. Go forward and tell your
engineer to speed up and get out of the way."

"I got my clearance at the summit, and I ain't despatchin' trains on
this jerk-water railroad," observed the conductor coolly. Then he
added, with a shade less of the belligerent disinterest: "Williams can't
speed up. That housin' under the tender is about ready to blaze up and
set the woods afire again, right now."

Once more Lidgerwood turned to the time-card. It was twenty miles
farther along to the next telegraph station, and he heaped up wrath
against the day of wrath in store for a despatcher who would recklessly
turn two trains loose and out of his reach under such critical
conditions, for thirty hazardous mountain miles.

Bradford, looking on sullenly, mistook the new boss's frown for more to
follow, with himself for the target, and was moving away. Lidgerwood
pointed to a chair with a curt, "Sit down!" and the conductor obeyed
reluctantly.

"You say you have your clearance card, and that you are not despatching
trains," he went on evenly, "but neither fact relieves you of your
responsibility. It was your duty to make sure that the despatcher fully
understood the situation at Crosswater, and to refuse to pull out ahead
of the passenger without something more definite than a formal permit.
Weren't you taught that? Where did you learn to run trains?"

It was an opening for hard words, but the conductor let it pass.
Something in the steady, business-like tone, or in the shrewdly
appraisive eyes, turned Bradford the potential mutineer into Bradford
the possible partisan.

"I reckon we are needing a _rodeo_ over here on this jerk-water mighty
bad, Mr. Lidgerwood," he said, half humorously. "Take us coming and
going, about half of us never had the sure-enough railroad brand put
onto us, nohow. But, Lord love you! this little _pasear_ we're making
down this hill ain't anything! That's the old 210 chasin' us with the
passenger, and she couldn't catch Bat Williams and the '66 in a month o'
Sundays if we didn't have that doggoned spavined leg under the tender.
She sure couldn't."

Lidgerwood smiled in spite of his annoyance, and wondered at what page
in the railroad primer he would have to begin in teaching these men of
the camps and the round-ups.

"But it isn't railroading," he insisted, meeting his first pupil
half-way, and as man to man. "You might do this thing ninety-nine times
without paying for it, and the hundredth time something would turn up to
slow or to stop the leading train, and there you are."

"Sure!" said the ex-cowboy, quite heartily.

"Now, if there should happen to be----"

The sentence was never finished. The special, lagging a little now in
deference to the smoking hot box, was rounding one of the long hill
curves to the left. Suddenly the air-brakes ground sharply upon the
wheels, shrill whistlings from the 266 sounded the stop signal, and past
the end of the slowing service-car a trackman ran frantically up the
line toward the following passenger, yelling and swinging his stripped
coat like a madman.

Lidgerwood caught a fleeting glimpse of a section gang's green "slow"
flag lying toppled over between the rails a hundred feet to the rear.
Measuring the distance of the onrushing passenger-train against the
life-saving seconds remaining, he called to Bradford to jump, and then
ran forward to drag the Japanese cook out of his galley.

It was all over in a moment. There was time enough for Lidgerwood to
rush the little Tadasu to the forward vestibule, to fling him into
space, and to make his own flying leap for safety before the crisis
came. Happily there was no wreck, though the margin of escape was the
narrowest. Williams stuck to his post in the cab of the 266, applying
and releasing the brakes, and running as far ahead as he dared upon the
loosened timbers of the culvert, for which the section gang's slowflag
was out. Carter, the engineer on the passenger-train, jumped; but his
fireman was of better mettle and stayed with the machine, sliding the
wheels with the driver-jams, and pumping sand on the rails up to the
moment when the shuddering mass of iron and steel thrust its pilot under
the trucks of Lidgerwood's car, lifted them, dropped them, and drew back
sullenly in obedience to the pull of the reverse and the recoil of the
brake mechanism.

It was an excellent opportunity for eloquence of the explosive sort, and
when the dust had settled the track and trainmen were evidently
expecting the well-deserved tongue-lashing. But in crises like this the
new superintendent was at his self-contained best. Instead of swearing
at the men, he gave his orders quietly and with the brisk certainty of
one who knows his trade. The passenger-train was to keep ten minutes
behind its own time until the next siding was passed, making up beyond
that point if its running orders permitted. The special was to proceed
on 201's time to the siding in question, at which point it would
side-track and let the passenger precede it.

Bradford was in the cab of 266 when Williams eased his engine and the
service-car over the unsafe culvert, and inched the throttle open for
the speeding race down the hill curves toward the wide valley plain of
the Red Desert.

"Turn it loose, Andy," said the big engineman, when the requisite number
of miles of silence had been ticked off by the space-devouring wheels.
"What-all do you think of Mister Collars-and-Cuffs by this time?"

Bradford took a leisurely minute to whittle a chewing cube from his
pocket plug of hard-times tobacco.

"Well, first dash out o' the box, I allowed he was some locoed; he
jumped me like a jack-rabbit for takin' a clearance right under Jim
Carter's nose that-a-way. Then we got down to business, and I was just
beginning to get onto his gait a little when the green flag butted in."

"Gait fits the laundry part of him?" suggested Williams.

"It does and it don't. I ain't much on systems and sure things, Bat, but
I can make out to guess a guess, once in a while, when I have to. If
that little tailor-made man don't get his finger mashed, or something,
and have to go home and get somebody to poultice it, things are goin' to
have a spell of happenings on this little old cow-trail of a railroad.
That's my ante."

"What sort of things?" demanded Williams.

"When it comes to that, your guess is as good as mine, but they'll
spell trouble for the amatoors and the trouble-makers, I reckon. I ain't
placin' any bets yet, but that's about the way it stacks up to me."

Williams let the 266 out another notch, hung out of his window to look
back at the smoking hot box, and, in the complete fulness of time, said,
"Think he's got the sand, Andy?"

"This time you've got me goin'," was the slow reply. "Sizing him up one
side and down the other when he called me back to pull my ear, I said,
'No, my young bronco-buster; you're a bluffer--the kind that'll put up
both hands right quick when the bluff is called.' Afterward, I wasn't so
blamed sure. One kind o' sand he's got, to a dead moral certainty. When
he saw what was due to happen back yonder at the culvert, he told me
'23,' all right, but he took time to hike up ahead and yank that Jap
cook out o' the car-kitchen before he turned his own little handspring
into the ditch."

The big engineer nodded, but he was still unconvinced when he made the
stop for the siding at Last Chance. After the fireman had dropped off to
set the switch for the following train, Williams put the unconvincement
into words.

"That kind of sand is all right in God's country, Andy, but out here in
the nearer edges of hell you got to know how to fight with pitchforks
and such other tools as come handy. The new boss may be that kind of a
scrapper, but he sure don't look it. You know as well as I do that men
like Rufford and 'Cat' Biggs and Red-Light Sammy'll eat him alive, just
for the fun of it, if he can't make out to throw lead quicker'n they
can. And that ain't saying anything about the hobo outfit he'll have to
go up against on this make-b'lieve railroad."

"No," agreed Bradford, ruminating thoughtfully. And then, by way of
rounding out the subject: "Here's hopin' his nerve is as good as his
clothes. I don't love a Mongolian any better'n you do, Bat, but the way
he hustled to save that little brown man's skin sort o' got next to me;
it sure did. Says I, 'A man that'll do that won't go round hunting a
chance to kick a fice-dog just because the fice don't happen to be a
blooded bull-terrier.'"

Williams, brawny and broad-chested, leaned against his box, his bare
arms folded and his short pipe at the disputatious angle.

"He'd better have nerve, or get some," he commented. "T'otherways it's
him for an early wooden overcoat and a trip back home in the
express-car. After which, let me tell you, Andy, that man Ford'll sift
this cussed country through a flour-shaker but what he'll cinch the
outfit that does it. You write that out in your car-report."

Back in the service-car Lidgerwood was sitting quietly in the doorway,
smoking his delayed after-breakfast cigar, and timing the up-coming
passenger-train, watch in hand. Carter was ten minutes, to the exact
second, behind his schedule time when the train thundered past on the
main track, and Lidgerwood pocketed his watch with a smile of
satisfaction. It was the first small victory in the campaign for reform.

Later, however, when the special was once more in motion westward, the
desert laid hold upon him with the grip which first benumbs, then breeds
dull rage, and finally makes men mad. Mile after mile the glistening
rails sped backward into a shimmering haze of red dust. The glow of the
breathless forenoon was like the blinding brightness of a forge-fire. To
right and left the great treeless plain rose to bare buttes, backed by
still barer mountains. Let the train speed as it would, there was always
the same wearying prospect, devoid of interest, empty of human
landmarks. Only the blazing sun swung from side to side with the slow
veerings of the track: what answered for a horizon seemed never to
change, never to move.

At long intervals a siding, sometimes with its waiting train, but
oftener empty and deserted, slid into view and out again. Still less
frequently a telegraph station, with its red, iron-roofed office, its
water-tank cars and pumping machinery, and its high-fenced corral and
loading chute, moved up out of the distorting heat haze ahead, and was
lost in the dusty mirages to the rear. But apart from the crews of the
waiting trains, and now and then the desert-sobered face of some
telegraph operator staring from his window at the passing special, there
were no signs of life: no cattle upon the distant hills, no loungers on
the station platforms.

Lidgerwood had crossed this arid, lifeless plain twice within the week
on his preliminary tour of inspection, but both times he had been in the
Pullman, with fellow-passengers to fill the nearer field of vision and
to temper the awful loneliness of the waste. Now, however, the desert
with its heat, its stillness, its vacancy, its pitiless barrenness,
claimed him as its own. He wondered that he had been impatient with the
men it bred. The wonder now was that human virtue of any temper could
long withstand the blasting touch of so great and awful a desolation.

It was past noon when the bowl-like basin, in which the train seemed to
circle helplessly without gaining upon the terrifying horizons, began to
lose its harshest features. Little by little, the tumbled hills drew
nearer, and the red-sand dust of the road-bed gave place to broken lava.
Patches of gray, sun-dried mountain grass appeared on the passing hill
slopes, and in the arroyos trickling threads of water glistened, or, if
the water were hidden, there were at least paths of damp sand to hint at
the blessed moisture underneath.

Lidgerwood began to breathe again; and when the shrill whistle of the
locomotive signalled the approach to the division head-quarters, he was
thankful that the builders of Angels had pitched their tents and driven
their stakes in the desert's edge, rather than in its heart.

Truly, Angels was not much to be thankful for, as the exile from the
East regretfully admitted when he looked out upon it from the windows of
his office in the second story of the Crow's Nest. A many-tracked
railroad yard, flanked on one side by the repair shops, roundhouse, and
coal-chutes; and on the other by a straggling town of bare and
commonplace exteriors, unpainted, unfenced, treeless, and wind-swept:
Angels stood baldly for what it was--a mere stopping-place in transit
for the Red Butte Western.

The new superintendent turned his back upon the depressing outlook and
laid his hand upon the latch of the door opening into the adjoining
room. There was a thing to be said about the reckless bunching of trains
out of reach of the wires, and it might as well be said now as later, he
determined. But at the moment of door-opening he was made to realize
that a tall, box-like contrivance in one corner of the office was a
desk, and that it was inhabited.

The man who rose up to greet him was bearded, heavy-shouldered, and
hollow-eyed, and he was past middle age. Green cardboard cones
protecting his shirt-sleeves, and a shade of the same material visoring
the sunken eyes, were the only clerkly suggestions about him. Since he
merely stood up and ran his fingers through his thick black hair, with
no more than an abstracted "Good-afternoon" for speech, Lidgerwood was
left to guess at his identity.

"You are Mr. Hallock?" Lidgerwood made the guess without offering to
shake hands, the high, box-like desk forbidding the attempt.

"Yes." The answer was neither antagonistic nor placatory; it was merely
colorless.

"My name is Lidgerwood. You have heard of my appointment?"

Again the colorless "Yes."

Lidgerwood saw no good end to be subserved by postponing the inevitable.

"Mr. Ford spoke to me about you last night. He told me that you had been
Mr. Cumberley's chief clerk, and that since Cumberley's resignation you
have been acting superintendent of the Red Butte Western. Do you want to
stay on as my lieutenant?"

For the long minute that Hallock took before replying, the loose-lipped
mouth under the shaggy mustache seemed to have lost the power of speech.
But when the words finally came, they were shorn of all euphemism.

"I suppose I ought to tell you to go straight to hell, Mr. Lidgerwood,
put on my coat and walk out," said this most singular of all railway
subordinates. "By all the rules of the game, this job belongs to me.
What I've gone through to earn it, you nor any other man will ever know.
If I stay, I'll wish I hadn't; and so will you. You'd better give me a
time-check and let me go."

Lidgerwood walked to the window and once more stared out upon the dreary
prospect, bounded by the bluffs of the second mesa. A horseman was
ambling down the single street of the town, weaving in his saddle, and
giving vent to a series of Indian war-whoops. Lidgerwood saw the drunken
cowboy only with the outward eye. And when he turned back to the man in
the rifle-pit desk, he could not have told why the words of regret and
dismissal which he had made up his mind to say, refused to come. But
they did refuse, and what he said was not at all what he had intended to
say.

"If I can't quite match your frankness, Mr. Hallock, it is because my
early education was neglected. But I'll say this: I appreciate your
disappointment; I know what it means to a man situated as you are.
Notwithstanding, I want you to stay with me. I'll say more; I shall take
it as a personal favor if you will stay."

"You'll be sorry for it if I do," was the ungracious rejoinder.

"Not because you will do anything to make me sorry, I am sure," said the
new superintendent, in his evenest tone. And then, as if the matter were
definitely settled: "I'd like to have a word with the trainmaster, Mr.
McCloskey. May I trouble you to tell me which is his office?"

Hallock waved a hand toward the door which Lidgerwood had been about to
open a few minutes earlier.

"You'll find him in there," he said briefly, adding, with his
altogether remarkable disregard for the official proprieties: "If he
gives you the same chance that I did, don't take him up. He is the one
man in this outfit worth more than the powder it would take to blow him
to the devil."



IV

AT THE RIO GLORIA


The matter to be taken up with McCloskey, master of trains and chief of
the telegraph department, was not altogether disciplinary. In the
summarizing conference at Copah, Vice-President Ford had spoken
favorably of the trainmaster, recommending him to mercy in the event of
a general beheading in the Angels head-quarters. "A lame duck, like most
of the desert exiles, and the homeliest man west of the Missouri River,"
was Ford's characterization. "He is as stubborn as a mule, but he is
honest and outspoken. If you can win him over to your side, you will
have at least one lieutenant whom you can trust--and who will, I think,
be duly grateful for small favors. Mac couldn't get a job east of the
Crosswater Hills, I'm afraid."

Lidgerwood had not inquired the reason for the eastern disability. He
had lived in the West long enough to know that it is an ill thing to pry
too curiously into any man's past. So there should be present
efficiency, no man in the service should be called upon to recite in
ancient history, much less one for whom Ford had spoken a good word.

Like all the other offices in the Crow's Nest, that of the trainmaster
was bare and uninviting. Lidgerwood, passing beyond the door of
communication, found himself in a dingy room, with cobwebs festooning
the ceiling and a pair of unwashed windows looking out upon the open
square called, in the past and gone day of the Angelic promoters, the
"railroad plaza." Two chairs, a cheap desk, and a pine table backed by
the "string-board" working model of the current time-table, did duty as
the furnishings, serving rather to emphasize than to relieve the
dreariness of the place.

McCloskey was at his desk at the moment of door-opening, and Lidgerwood
instantly paid tribute to Vice-President Ford's powers of
characterization. The trainmaster was undeniably homely--and more; his
hard-featured face was a study in grotesques. There was fearless honesty
in the shrewd gray eyes, and a good promise of capability in the strong
Scotch jaw and long upper lip, but the grotesque note was the one which
persisted, and the trainmaster seemed wilfully to accentuate it. His
coat, in a region where shirt-sleeves predominated, was a
close-buttoned gambler's frock, and his hat, in the country of the
sombrero and the soft Stetson, was a derby.

Lidgerwood was striving to estimate the man beneath these outward
eccentricities when McCloskey rose and thrust out a hand, great-jointed
and knobbed like a laborer's.

"You're Mr. Lidgerwood, I take it?" said he, tilting the derby to the
back of his head. "Come to tell me to pack my kit and get out?"

"Not yet, Mr. McCloskey," laughed Lidgerwood, getting his first real
measure of the man in the hearty hand-grip. "On the contrary, I've come
to thank you for not dropping things and running away before the new
management could get on the ground."

The trainmaster's rejoinder was outspokenly blunt. "I've nowhere to run
to, Mr. Lidgerwood, and that's no joke. Some of the backcappers will be
telling you presently that I was a train despatcher over in God's
country, and that I put two trains together. It's your right to know
that it's true."

"Thank you, Mr. McCloskey," said Lidgerwood simply; "that sounds good to
me. And take this for yourself: the man who has done that once won't do
it again. That is one thing, and another is this: we start with a clean
slate on the Red Butte Western. No man in the service who will turn in
and help us make a real railroad out of the R.B.W. need worry about his
past record: it won't be dug up against him."

"That's fair--more than fair," said the trainmaster, mouthing the words
as if the mere effort of speech were painful, "and I wish I could
promise you that the rank and file will meet you half-way. But I can't.
You'll find a plucked pigeon, Mr. Lidgerwood--with plenty of hawks left
to pick the bones. The road has been running itself for the past two
years and more."

"I understand," said Lidgerwood; and then he spoke of the careless
despatching.

"That will be Callahan, the day man," McCloskey broke in wrathfully.
"But that's the way of it. When we get through the twenty-four hours
without killing somebody or smashing something, I thank God, and put a
red mark on that calendar over my desk."

"Well, we won't go back of the returns," declared Lidgerwood, meaning to
be as just as he could to his predecessors in office. "But from now
on----"

The door leading into the room beyond the trainmaster's office opened
squeakily on dry hinges, and a chattering of telegraph instruments
heralded the incoming of a disreputable-looking office-man, with a green
patch over one eye and a blackened cob-pipe between his teeth. Seeing
Lidgerwood, he ducked and turned to McCloskey. Bradley, reporting in,
had given his own paraphrase of the new superintendent's strictures on
Red Butte Western despatching and the criticism had lost nothing in the
recasting.

"Seventy-one's in the ditch at Gloria Siding," he said, speaking
pointedly to the trainmaster. "Goodloe reports it from Little Butte;
says both enginemen are in the mix-up, but he doesn't know whether they
are killed or not."

"There you are!" snarled McCloskey, wheeling upon Lidgerwood. "They
couldn't let you get your chair warmed the first day!"

With the long run from Copah to Angels to his credit, and with all the
head-quarters loose ends still to be gathered up, Lidgerwood might
blamelessly have turned over the trouble call to his trainmaster. But a
wreck was as good a starting-point as any, and he took command at once.

"Go and clear for the wrecking-train, and have some one in your office
notify the shops and the yard," he said briskly, compelling the
attention of the one-eyed despatcher; and when Callahan was gone: "Now,
Mac, get out your map and post me. I'm a little lame on geography yet.
Where is Gloria Siding?"

McCloskey found a blue-print map of the line and traced the course of
the western division among the foot-hills to the base of the Great
Timanyonis, and through the Timanyoni Canyon to a park-like valley, shut
in by the great range on the east and north, and by the Little
Timanyonis and the Hophras on the west and south. At a point midway of
the valley his stubby forefinger rested.

"That's Gloria," he said, "and here's Little Butte, twelve miles
beyond."

"Good ground?" queried Lidgerwood.

"As pretty a stretch as there is anywhere west of the desert; reminds
you of a Missouri bottom, with the river on one side and the hills a
mile away on the other. I don't know what excuse those hoboes could find
for piling a train in the ditch there."

"We'll hear the excuse later," said Lidgerwood. "Now, tell me what sort
of a wrecking-plant we have?"

"The best in the bunch," asserted the trainmaster. "Gridley's is the one
department that has been kept up to date and in good fighting trim. We
have one wrecking-crane that will pick up any of the big
freight-pullers, and a lighter one that isn't half bad."

"Who is your wrecking-boss?"

"Gridley--when he feels like going out. He can clear a main line quicker
than any man we've ever had."

"He will go with us to-day?"

"I suppose so. He is in town and he's--sober."

The new superintendent caught at the hesitant word.

"Drinks, does he?"

"Not much while he is on the job. But he disappears periodically and
comes back looking something the worse for wear. They tell tough stories
about him over in Copah."

Lidgerwood dropped the master-mechanic as he had dropped the offending
trainmen who had put Train 71 in the ditch at Gloria where, according to
McCloskey, there should be no ditch.

"I'll go and run through my desk mail and fill Hallock up while you are
making ready," he said. "Call me when the train is made up."

Passing through the corridor on the way to his private office back of
Hallock's room, Lidgerwood saw that the wreck call had already reached
the shops. A big, bearded man with a soft hat pulled over his eyes was
directing the make-up of a train on the repair track, and the yard
engine was pulling an enormous crane down from its spur beyond the
coal-chutes. Around the man in the soft hat the wrecking-crew was
gathering: shopmen for the greater part, as a crew of a master
mechanic's choosing would be.

As the event proved, there was little time for the doing of the
preliminary work which Lidgerwood had meant to do. In the midst of the
letter-sorting, McCloskey put his head in at the door of the private
office.

"We're ready when you are, Mr. Lidgerwood," he interrupted; and with a
few hurried directions to Hallock, Lidgerwood joined the trainmaster on
the Crow's Nest platform. The train was backing up to get its
clear-track orders, and on the tool-car platform stood the big man whom
Lidgerwood had already identified presumptively as Gridley.

McCloskey would have introduced the new superintendent when the train
paused for the signal from the despatcher's window, but Gridley did not
wait for the formalities.

"Come aboard, Mr. Lidgerwood," he called, genially. "It's too bad we
have to give you a sweat-box welcome. If there are any of Seventy-one's
crew left alive, you ought to give them thirty days for calling you out
before you could shake hands with yourself."

Being by nature deliberate in forming friendships, and proportionally
tenacious of them when they were formed, Lidgerwood's impulse was to
hold all men at arm's length until he was reasonably assured of
sincerity and a common ground. But the genial master-mechanic refused to
be put on probation. Lidgerwood made the effort while the rescue train
was whipping around the hill shoulders and plunging deeper into the
afternoon shadows of the great mountain range. The tool-car was
comfortably filled with men and working tackle, and for seats there were
only the blocking timbers, the tool-boxes, and the coils of rope and
chain cables. Sharing a tool-box with Gridley and smoking a cigar out of
Gridley's pocket-case, Lidgerwood found it difficult to be less than
friendly.

It was to little purpose that he recalled Ford's qualified
recommendation of the man who had New York backing and who, in Ford's
phrase, was a "brute after his own peculiar fashion." Brute or human,
the big master-mechanic had the manners of a gentleman, and his easy
good-nature broke down all the barriers of reserve that his somewhat
reticent companion could interpose.

"You smoke good cigars, Mr. Gridley," said Lidgerwood, trying, as he
had tried before, to wrench the talk aside from the personal channel
into which it seemed naturally to drift.

"Good tobacco is one of the few luxuries the desert leaves a man capable
of enjoying. You haven't come to that yet, but you will. It is a savage
life, Mr. Lidgerwood, and if a man hasn't a good bit of the blood of his
stone-age ancestors in him, the desert will either kill him or make a
beast of him. There doesn't seem to be any medium."

The talk was back again in the personal channel, and this time
Lidgerwood met the issue fairly.

"You have been saying that, in one form or another, ever since we left
Angels: are you trying to scare me off, Mr. Gridley, or are you only
giving me a friendly warning?" he asked.

The master-mechanic laughed easily.

"I hope I wouldn't be impudent enough to do either, on such short
acquaintance," he protested. "But now that you have opened the door,
perhaps a little man-to-man frankness won't be amiss. You have tackled a
pretty hard proposition, Mr. Lidgerwood."

"Technically, you mean?"

"No, I didn't mean that, because, if your friends tell the truth about
you, you can come as near to making bricks without straw as the next
man. But the Red Butte Western reorganization asks for something more
than a good railroad officer."

"I'm listening," said Lidgerwood.

Gridley laughed again.

"What will you do when a conductor or an engineer whom you have called
on the carpet curses you out and invites you to go to hell?"

"I shall fire him," was the prompt rejoinder.

"Naturally and properly, but afterward? Four out of five men in this
human scrap-heap you've inherited will lay for you with a gun to play
even for the discharge. What then?"

It was just here that Lidgerwood, staring absently at the passing
panorama of shifting hill shoulders framing itself in the open side-door
of the tool-car, missed a point. If he had been less absorbed in the
personal problem he could scarcely have failed to mark the searching
scrutiny in the shrewd eyes shaded by Gridley's soft hat.

"I don't know," he said, half hesitantly. "Civilization means
something--or it should mean something--even in the Red Desert, Mr.
Gridley. I suppose there is some semblance of legal protection in
Angels, as elsewhere, isn't there?"

The master-mechanic's smile was tolerant.

"Surely. We have a town marshal, and a justice of the peace; one is a
blacksmith and the other the keeper of the general store."

The good-natured irony in Gridley's reply was not thrown away upon his
listener, but Lidgerwood held tenaciously to his own contention.

"The inadequacy of the law, or of its machinery, hardly excuses a lapse
into barbarism," he protested. "The discharged employee, in the case you
are supposing, might hold himself justified in shooting at me; but if I
should shoot back and happen to kill him, it would be murder. We've got
to stand for something, Mr. Gridley, you and I who know the difference
between civilization and savagery."

Gridley's strong teeth came together with a little snap.

"Certainly," he agreed, without a shade of hesitation; adding, "I've
never carried a gun and have never had to." Then he changed the subject
abruptly, and when the train had swung around the last of the hills and
was threading its tortuous way through the great canyon, he proposed a
change of base to the rear platform from which Chandler's marvel of
engineering skill could be better seen and appreciated.

The wreck at Gloria Siding proved to be a very mild one, as railway
wrecks go. A broken flange under a box-car had derailed the engine and a
dozen cars, and there were no casualties--the report about the
involvement of the two enginemen being due to the imagination of the
excited flagman who had propelled himself on a hand-car back to Little
Butte to send in the call for help.

Since Gridley was on the ground, Lidgerwood and McCloskey stood aside
and let the master-mechanic organize the attack. Though the problem of
track-clearing, on level ground and with a convenient siding at hand for
the sorting and shifting, was a simple one, there was still a chance for
an exhibition of time-saving and speed, and Gridley gave it. There was
never a false move made or a tentative one, and when the huge
lifting-crane went into action, Lidgerwood grew warmly enthusiastic.

"Gridley certainly knows his business," he said to McCloskey. "The Red
Butte Western doesn't need any better wrecking-boss than it has right
now."

"He can do the job, when he feels like it," admitted the trainmaster
sourly.

"But he doesn't often feel like it? You can't blame him for that.
Picking up wrecks isn't fairly a part of a master-mechanic's duty."

"That is what he says, and he doesn't trouble himself to go when it
isn't convenient. I have a notion he wouldn't be here to-day if you
weren't."

It was plainly evident that McCloskey meant more than he said, but once
again Lidgerwood refused to go behind the returns. He felt that he had
been prejudiced against Gridley at the outset, unduly so, he was
beginning to think, and even-handed fairness to all must be the
watchword in the campaign of reorganization.

"Since we seem to be more ornamental than useful on this job, you might
give me another lesson in Red Butte geography, Mac," he said, purposely
changing the subject. "Where are the gulch mines?"

The trainmaster explained painstakingly, squatting to trace a rude map
in the sand at the track-side. Hereaway, twelve miles to the westward,
lay Little Butte, where the line swept a great curve to the north and so
continued on to Red Butte. Along the northward stretch, and in the
foot-hills of the Little Timanyonis, were the placers, most of them
productive, but none of them rich enough to stimulate a rush.

Here, where the river made a quick turn, was the butte from which the
station of Little Butte took its name--the superintendent might see its
wooded summit rising above the lower hills intervening. It was a long,
narrow ridge, more like a hogback than a true mountain, and it held a
silver mine, Flemister's, which was a moderately heavy shipper. The vein
had been followed completely through the ridge, and the spur track in
the eastern gulch, which had originally served it, had been abandoned
and a new spur built up along the western foot of the butte, with a main
line connection at Little Butte. Up here, ten miles above Little Butte,
was a bauxite mine, with a spur; and here....

McCloskey went on, industriously drawing lines in the sand, and
Lidgerwood sat on a cross-tie end and conned his lesson. Below the
siding the big crane was heaving the derailed cars into line with
methodical precision, but now it was Gridley's shop foreman who was
giving the orders. The master-mechanic had gone aside to hold converse
with a man who had driven up in a buckboard, coming from the direction
in which Little Butte lay.

"Goodloe told me the wreck-wagons were here, and I thought you would
probably be along," the buckboard driver was saying. "How are things
shaping up? I haven't cared to risk the wires since Bigsby leaked on
us."

Gridley put a foot on the hub of the buckboard wheel and began to
whittle a match with a penknife that was as keen as a razor.

"The new chum is in the saddle; look over your shoulder to the left and
you'll see him sitting on a cross-tie beside McCloskey," he said.

"I've seen him before. He was over the road last week, and I happened to
be in Goodloe's office at Little Butte when he got off to look around,"
was the curt rejoinder. "But that doesn't help any. What do you know?"

"He is a gentleman," said Gridley slowly.

"Oh, the devil! what do I care about----"

"And a scholar," the master-mechanic went on imperturbably.

The buckboard driver's black eyes snapped. "Can you add the rest of
it--'and he isn't very bright'?"

"No," was the sober reply.

"Well, what are we up against?"

Gridley snapped the penknife shut and began to chew the sharpened end of
the match.

"Your pop-valve is set too light; you blow off too easily, Flemister,"
he commented. "So far we--or rather you--are up against nothing worse
than the old proposition. Lidgerwood is going to try to make a silk
purse out of a sow's ear, beginning with the pay-roll contingent. If I
have sized him up right, he'll be kept busy; too busy to remember your
name--or mine."

"What do you mean? in just so many words."

"Nothing more than I have said. Mr. Lidgerwood is a gentleman and a
scholar."

"Ha!" said the man in the buckboard seat. "I believe I'm catching on,
after so long a time. You mean he hasn't the sand."

Gridley neither denied nor affirmed. He had taken out his penknife again
and was resharpening the match.

"Hallock is the man to look to," he said. "If we could get him
interested ..."

"That's up to you, damn it; I've told you a hundred times that I can't
touch him!"

"I know; he doesn't seem to love you very much. The last time I talked
to him he mentioned something about shooting you off-hand, but I guess
he didn't mean, it. You've got to interest him in some way, Flemister."

"Perhaps you can tell me how," was the sarcastic retort.

"I think perhaps I can, now. Do you remember anything about the
sky-rocketing finish of the Mesa Building and Loan Association, or is
that too much of a back number for a busy man like you?"

"I remember it," said Flemister.

"Hallock was the treasurer," put in Gridley smoothly.

"Yes, but----"

"Wait a minute. A treasurer is supposed to treasure something, isn't he?
There are possibly twenty-five or thirty men still left in the Red Butte
Western service who have never wholly quit trying to find out why
Hallock, the treasurer, failed so signally to treasure anything."

"Yah! that's an old sore."

"I know, but old sores may become suddenly troublesome--or useful--as
the case may be. For some reason best known to himself, Hallock has
decided to stay and continue playing second fiddle."

"How do you know?"

The genial smile was wrinkling at the corners of Gridley's eyes.

"There isn't very much going on under the sheet-iron roof of the Crow's
Nest that I don't know, Flemister, and usually pretty soon after it
happens. Hallock will stay on as chief clerk, and, naturally, he is
anxious to stand well with his new boss. Are you beginning to see
daylight?"

"Not yet."

"Well, we'll open the shutters a little wider. One of the first things
Lidgerwood will have to wrestle with will be this Loan Association
business. The kickers will put it up to him, as they have put it up to
every new man who has come out here. Ferguson refused to dig into
anybody's old graveyard, and so did Cumberley. But Lidgerwood won't
refuse. He is going to be the just judge, if not the very terrible."

"Still, I don't see," persisted Flemister.

"Don't you? Hallock will be obliged to justify himself to Lidgerwood,
and he can't. In fact, there is only one man living to-day who could
fully justify him."

"And that man is----"

"--Pennington Flemister, ex-president of the defunct Building and Loan.
You know where the money went, Flemister."

"Maybe I do. What of that?"

"I can only offer a suggestion, of course. You are a pretty smooth liar,
Pennington; it wouldn't be much trouble for you to fix up a story that
would satisfy Lidgerwood. You might even show up a few documents, if it
came to the worst."

"Well?"

"That's all. If you get a good, firm grip on that club, you'll have
Hallock, coming and going. It's a dead open and shut. If he falls in
line, you'll agree to pacify Lidgerwood; otherwise the law will have to
take its course."

The man in the buckboard was silent for a long minute before he said:
"It won't work, Gridley. Hallock's grudge against me is too bitter. You
know part of it, and part of it you don't know. He'd hang himself in a
minute if he could get my neck in the same noose."

The master-mechanic threw the whittled match away, as if the argument
were closed.

"That is where you are lame, Flemister: you don't know your man. Put it
up to Hallock barehanded: if he comes in, all right; if not, you'll put
him where he'll wear stripes. That will fetch him."

The men of the derrick gang were righting the last of the derailed
box-cars, and the crew of the wrecking-train was shifting the cripples
into line for the return run to Angels.

"We'll be going in a few minutes," said the master-mechanic, taking his
foot from the wheel-hub. "Do you want to meet Lidgerwood?"

"Not here--or with you," said the owner of the Wire-Silver; and he had
turned his team and was driving away when Gridley's shop foreman came up
to say that the wrecking-train was ready to leave.

Lidgerwood found a seat for himself in the tool-car on the way back to
Angels, and put in the time smoking a short pipe and reviewing the
events of his first day in the new field.

The outlook was not wholly discouraging, and but for the talk with
Gridley he might have smoked and dozed quite peacefully on his coiled
hawser, in the corner of the car. But, try as he would, the importunate
demon of distrust, distrust of himself, awakened by the
master-mechanic's warning, refused to be quieted; and when, after the
three hours of the slow return journey were out-worn, McCloskey came to
tell him that the train was pulling into the Angels yard, the explosion
of a track torpedo under the wheels made him start like a nervous woman.



V

THE OUTLAWS


For the first few weeks after the change in ownership and the arrival of
the new superintendent, the Red Butte Western and its nerve-centre,
Angels, seemed disposed to take Mr. Howard Lidgerwood as a rather
ill-timed joke, perpetrated upon a primitive West and its people by some
one of the Pacific Southwestern magnates who owned a broad sense of
humor.

During this period the sardonic laugh was heard in the land, and the
chuckling appreciation of the joke by the Red Butte rank and file, and
by the Angelic soldiers of fortune who, though not upon the company's
pay-rolls, still throve indirectly upon the company's bounty, lacked
nothing of completeness. The Red Desert grinned like the famed Cheshire
cat when an incoming train from the East brought sundry boxes and
trunks, said to contain the new boss's wardrobe. Its guffaws were long
and uproarious when it began to be noised about that the company
carpenters and fitters were installing a bath and other civilizing and
softening appliances in the alcove opening out of the superintendent's
sleeping-room in the head-quarters building.

Lidgerwood slept in the Crow's Nest, not so much from choice as for the
reason that there seemed to be no alternative save a room in the town
tavern, appropriately named "The Hotel Celestial." Between his
sleeping-apartment and his private office there was only a thin board
partition; but even this gave him more privacy than the Celestial could
offer, where many of the partitions were of building-paper, muslin
covered.

It is a railroad proverb that the properly inoculated railroad man eats
and sleeps with his business; Lidgerwood exemplified the saying by
having a wire cut into the despatcher's office, with the terminals on a
little table at his bed's head, and with a tiny telegraph relay
instrument mounted on the stand. Through the relay, tapping softly in
the darkness, came the news of the line, and often, after the strenuous
day was ended, Lidgerwood would lie awake listening.

Sometimes the wire gossiped, and echoes of Homeric laughter trickled
through the relay in the small hours; as when Ruby Creek asked the night
despatcher if it were true that the new boss slept in what translated
itself in the laborious Morse of the Ruby Creek operator as
"pijjimmies"; or when Navajo, tapping the same source of information,
wished to be informed if the "Chink"--doubtless referring to Tadasu
Matsuwari--ran a laundry on the side and thus kept His Royal Highness in
collars and cuffs.

At the tar-paper-covered, iron-roofed Celestial, where he took his
meals, Lidgerwood had a table to himself, which he shared at times with
McCloskey, and at other times with breezy Jack Benson, the young
engineer whom Vice-President Ford had sent, upon Lidgerwood's request
and recommendation, to put new life into the track force, and to make
the preliminary surveys for a possible western extension of the road.

When the superintendent had guests, the long table on the opposite side
of the dining-room restrained itself. When he ate alone, Maggie Donovan,
the fiery-eyed, heavy-handed table-girl who ringed his plate with the
semicircle of ironstone portion dishes, stood between him and the men
who were still regarding him as a joke. And since Maggie's displeasure
manifested itself in cold coffee and tough cuts of the beef, the long
table made its most excruciating jests elaborately impersonal.

On the line, and in the roundhouse and repair-shops, the joke was far
too good to be muzzled. The nickname, "Collars-and-Cuffs," became
classical; and once, when Brannagan and the 117 were ordered out on the
service-car, the Irishman wore the highest celluloid collar he could
find in Angels, rounding out the clownery with a pair of huge wickerware
cuffs, which had once seen service as the coverings of a pair of
Maraschino bottles.

No official notice having been taken of Brannagan's fooling, Buck Tryon,
ordered out on the same duty, went the little Irishman one better,
decorating his engine headlight and handrails with festoonings of
colored calico, the decoration figuring as a caricature of Lidgerwood's
college colors, and calico being the nearest approach to bunting
obtainable at Jake Schleisinger's emporium, two doors north of Red-Light
Sammy's house of call.

All of which was harmless enough, one would say, however subversive of
dignified discipline it might be. Lidgerwood knew. The jests were too
broad to be missed. But he ignored them good-naturedly, rather thankful
for the playful interlude which gave him a breathing-space and time to
study the field before the real battle should begin.

That a battle would have to be fought was evident enough. As yet, the
demoralization had been scarcely checked, and sooner or later the
necessary radical reforms would have to begin. Gridley, whose attitude
toward the new superintendent continued to be that of a disinterested
adviser, assured Lidgerwood that he was losing ground by not opening the
campaign of severity at once.

"You'll have to take a club to these hoboes before you can ever hope to
make railroad men out of them," was Gridley's oft-repeated assertion;
and the fact that the master-mechanic was continually urging the warfare
made Lidgerwood delay it.

Just why Gridley's counsel should have produced such a contrary effect,
Lidgerwood could not have explained. The advice was sound, and the man
who gave it was friendly and apparently ingenuous. But prejudices, like
prepossessions, are sometimes as strong as they are inexplicable, and
while Lidgerwood freely accused himself of injustice toward the
master-mechanic, a certain feeling of distrust and repulsion, dating
back to his first impressions of the man, died hard.

Oddly enough, on the other hand, there was a prepossession, quite as
unreasoning, for Hallock. There was absolutely nothing in the chief
clerk to inspire liking, or even common business confidence; on the
contrary, while Hallock attended to his duties and carried out his
superior's instructions with the exactness of an automaton, his attitude
was distinctly antagonistic. As the chief subaltern on Lidgerwood's
small staff he was efficient and well-nigh invaluable. But as a man,
Lidgerwood felt that he might easily be regarded as an enemy whose
designs could never be fathomed or prefigured.

In spite of Hallock's singular manner, which was an abrupt challenge to
all comers, Lidgerwood acknowledged a growing liking for the chief
clerk. Under the crabbed and gloomy crust of the man the superintendent
fancied he could discover a certain savage loyalty. But under the
loyalty there was a deeper depth--of misery, or tragedy, or both; and to
this abysmal part of him there was no key that Lidgerwood could find.

McCloskey, who had served under Hallock for a number of months before
the change in management, confessed that he knew the gloomy chief clerk
only as a man in authority, and exceedingly hard to please. Questioned
more particularly by Lidgerwood, McCloskey added that Hallock was
married; that after the first few months in Angels his wife, a
strikingly beautiful young woman, had disappeared, and that since her
departure Hallock had lived alone in two rooms over the freight station,
rooms which no one, save himself, ever entered.

These, and similar bits of local history, were mere gatherings by the
way for the superintendent, picked up while the Red Desert was having
its laugh at the new bath-room, the pajamas, and the clean linen. They
weighed lightly, because the principal problem was, as yet, untouched.
For while the laugh endured, Lidgerwood had not found it possible to
breach many of the strongholds of lawlessness.

Orders, regarded by disciplined railroad men as having the immutability
of the laws of the Medes and Persians, were still interpreted as loosely
as if they were but the casual suggestions of a bystander. Rules were
formulated and given black-letter emphasis in their postings on the
bulletin boards, only to be coolly ignored when they chanced to conflict
with some train crew's desire to make up time or to kill it. Directed to
account for fuel and oil consumed, the enginemen good-naturedly forged
reports and the storekeepers blandly O.K.'d them. Instructed to keep an
accurate record of all material used, the trackmen jocosely scattered
more spikes than they drove, made fire-wood of the stock cross-ties, and
were not above underpinning the section-houses with new dimension
timbers.

In countless other ways the waste was prodigious and often mysteriously
unexplainable. The company supplies had a curious fashion of
disappearing in transit. Two car-loads of building lumber sent to repair
the station at Red Butte vanished somewhere between the Angels
shipping-yards and their billing destination. Lime, cement, and paint
were exceedingly volatile. House hardware, purchased in quantities for
company repairs, figured in the monthly requisition sheet as regularly
as coal and oil; and the lost-tool account roughly balanced the pay-roll
of the company carpenters and bridge-builders.

In such a chaotic state of affairs, track and train troubles were the
rule rather than the exception, and it was a Red Butte Western boast
that the fire was never drawn under the wrecking-train engine. For the
first few weeks Lidgerwood let McCloskey answer the "hurry calls" to the
various scenes of disaster, but when three sections of an eastbound
cattle special, ignoring the ten-minute-interval rule, were piled up in
the Piñon Hills, he went out and took personal command of the
track-clearers.

This happened when the joke was at flood-tide, and the men of the
wrecking-crew took a ten-gallon keg of whiskey along wherewith to
celebrate the first appearance of the new superintendent in character as
a practical wrecking-boss. The outcome was rather astonishing. For one
thing, Lidgerwood's first executive act was to knock in the head of the
ten-gallon celebration with a striking-hammer, before it was even
spiggoted; and for another he quickly proved that he was Gridley's
equal, if not his master, in the gentle art of track-clearing; lastly,
and this was the most astonishing thing of all, he demonstrated that
clean linen and correct garmentings do not necessarily make for softness
and effeminacy in the wearer. Through the long day and the still longer
night of toil and stress the new boss was able to endure hardship with
the best man on the ground.

This was excellent, as far as it went. But later, with the offending
cattle-train crews before him for trial and punishment, Lidgerwood lost
all he had gained by being too easy.

"We've got him chasin' his feet," said Tryon, one of the rule-breaking
engineers, making his report to the roundhouse contingent at the close
of the "sweat-box" interview. "It's just as I've been tellin' you mugs
all along, he hain't got sand enough to fire anybody."

Likewise Jack Benson, though from a friendlier point of view. The
"sweat-box" was Lidgerwood's private office in the Crow's Nest, and
Benson happened to be present when the reckless trainmen were told to go
and sin no more.

"I'm not running your job, Lidgerwood, and you may fire the inkstand at
me if the spirit moves you to, but I've got to butt in. You can't handle
the Red Desert with kid gloves on. Those fellows needed an artistic
cussing-out and a thirty-day hang-up at the very lightest. You can't
hold 'em down with Sunday-school talk."

Lidgerwood was frowning at his blotting-pad and pencilling idle little
squares on it--a habit which was insensibly growing upon him.

"Where would I get the two extra train-crews to fill in the thirty-day
lay-off, Jack? Had you thought of that?"

"I had only the one think, and I gave you that one," rejoined Benson
carelessly. "I suppose it is different in your department. When I go up
against a thing like that on the sections, I fire the whole bunch and
import a few more Italians. Which reminds me, as old Dunkenfeld used to
say when there wasn't either a link or a coupling-pin anywhere within
the four horizons: what do you know about Fred Dawson, Gridley's shop
draftsman?"

"Next to nothing, personally," replied Lidgerwood, taking Benson's
abrupt change of topic as a matter of course. "He seems a fine fellow;
much too fine a fellow to be wasting himself out here in the desert.
Why?"

"Oh, I just wanted to know. Ever met his mother and sister?"

"No."

"Well, you ought to. The mother is one of the only two angels in Angels,
and the sister is the other. Dawson, himself, is a ghastly monomaniac."

Lidgerwood's brows lifted, though his query was unspoken.

"Haven't you heard his story?" asked Benson; "but of course you haven't.
He is a lame duck, you know--like every other man this side of
Crosswater Summit, present company excepted."

"A lame duck?" repeated Lidgerwood.

"Yes, a man with a past. Don't tell me you haven't caught onto the
hall-mark of the Red Desert. It's notorious. The blacklegs and tin-horns
and sure-shots go without saying, of course, but they haven't a
monopoly on the broken records. Over in the ranch country beyond the
Timanyonis they lump us all together and call us the outlaws."

"Not without reason," said Lidgerwood.

"Not any," asserted Benson with cheerful pessimism. "The entire Red
Butte Western outfit is tarred with the same stick. You haven't a dozen
operators, all told, who haven't been discharged for incompetence, or
worse, somewhere else; or a dozen conductors or engineers who weren't
good and comfortably blacklisted before they climbed Crosswater. Take
McCloskey: you swear by him, don't you? He was a chief despatcher back
East, and he put two passenger-trains together in a head-on collision
the day he resigned and came West to grow up with the Red Desert."

"I know," said Lidgerwood, "and I did not have to learn it at
second-hand. Mac was man enough to tell me himself, before I had known
him five minutes." Then he suggested mildly, "But you were speaking of
Dawson, weren't you?"

"Yes, and that's what makes me say what I'm saying; he is one of them,
though he needn't be if he weren't such a hopelessly sensitive ass. He's
a B.S. in M.E., or he would have been if he had stayed out his senior
year in Carnegie, but also he happened to be a foot-ball fiend, and in
the last intercollegiate game of his last season he had the horrible
luck to kill a man--and the man was the brother of the girl Dawson was
going to marry."

"Heavens and earth!" exclaimed Lidgerwood. "Is he _that_ Dawson?"

"The same," said the young engineer laconically. "It was the sheerest
accident, and everybody knew it was, and nobody blamed Dawson. I happen
to know, because I was a junior in Carnegie at the time. But Fred took
it hard; let it spoil his life. He threw up everything, left college
between two days, and came to bury himself out here. For two years he
never let his mother and sister know where he was; made remittances to
them through a bank in Omaha, so they shouldn't be able to trace him.
Care to hear any more?"

"Yes, go on," said the superintendent.

"_I_ found him," chuckled Benson, "and I took the liberty of piping his
little game off to the harrowed women. Next thing he knew they dropped
in on him; and he is just crazy enough to stay here, and to keep them
here. That wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for Gridley, Fred's boss and
your peach of a master-mechanic."

"Why 'peach'? Gridley is a pretty decent sort of a man-driver, isn't
he?" said Lidgerwood, doing premeditated and intentional violence to
what he had come to call his unjust prejudice against the handsome
master-mechanic.

"You won't believe it," said Benson hotly, "but he has actually got the
nerve to make love to Dawson's sister! and he a widow-man, old enough to
be her father!"

Lidgerwood smiled. It is the privilege of youth to be intolerant of age
in its rival. Gridley was, possibly, forty-two or three, but Benson was
still on the sunny slope of twenty-five. "You are prejudiced, Jack," he
criticized. "Gridley is still young enough to marry again, if he wants
to--and to live long enough to spoil his grandchildren."

"But he doesn't begin to be good enough for Faith Dawson," countered the
young engineer, stubbornly.

"Isn't he? or is that another bit of your personal grudge? What do you
know against him?"

Pressed thus sharply against the unyielding fact, Benson was obliged to
confess that he knew nothing at all against the master-mechanic, nothing
that could be pinned down to day and date. If Gridley had the weaknesses
common to Red-Desert mankind, he did not parade them in Angels. As the
head of his department he was well known to be a hard hitter; and now
and then, when the blows fell rather mercilessly, the railroad colony
called him a tyrant, and hinted that he, too, had a past that would not
bear inspection. But even Benson admitted that this was mere gossip.

Lidgerwood laughed at the engineer's failure to make his case, and asked
quizzically, "Where do I come in on all this, Jack? You have an axe to
grind, I take it."

"I have. Mrs. Dawson wants me to take my meals at the house. I'm
inclined to believe that she is a bit shy of Gridley, and maybe she
thinks I could do the buffer act. But as a get-between I'd be chiefly
conspicuous by my absence."

"Sorry I can't give you an office job," said the superintendent in mock
sympathy.

"So am I, but you can do the next best thing. Get Fred to take you home
with him some of these fine evenings, and you'll never go back to Maggie
Donovan and the Celestial's individual hash-holders; not if you can
persuade Mrs. Dawson to feed you. The alternative is to fire Gridley out
of his job."

"This time you are trying to make the tail wag the dog," said
Lidgerwood. "Gridley has twice my backing in the P. S-W. board of
directors. Besides, he is a good fellow; and if I go up on the mesa and
try to stand him off for you, it will be only because I hope you are a
better fellow."

"Prop it up on any leg you like, only go," said Benson simply. "I'll
take it as a personal favor, and do as much for you, some time. I
suppose I don't have to warn you not to fall in love with Faith Dawson
yourself--or, on second thought, perhaps I _had_ better."

This time Lidgerwood's laugh was mirthless.

"No, you don't have to, Jack. Like Gridley, I am older than I look, and
I have had my little turn at that wheel; or rather, perhaps I should say
that the wheel has had its little turn at me. You can safely deputize
me, I guess."

"All right, and many thanks. Here's 202 coming in, and I'm going over to
Navajo on it. Don't wait too long before you make up to Dawson. You'll
find him well worth while, after you've broken through his shell."

The merry jest on the Red Butte Western ran its course for another week
after the three-train wreck in the Piñons--for a week and a day. Then
Lidgerwood began the drawing of the net. A new time-card was strung with
McCloskey's cooperation, and when it went into effect a notice on all
bulletin boards announced the adoption of the standard "Book of Rules,"
and promised penalties in a rising scale for unauthorized departure
therefrom.

Promptly the horse-laugh died away and the trouble storm was evoked.
Grievance committees haunted the Crow's Nest, and the insurrectionary
faction, starting with the trainmen and spreading to the track force,
threatened to involve the telegraph operators--threatened to become a
protest unanimous and in the mass. Worse than this, the service,
haphazard enough before, now became a maddening chaos. Orders were
misunderstood, whether wilfully or not no court of inquiry could
determine; wrecks were of almost daily occurrence, and the shop track
was speedily filled to the switches with crippled engines and cars.

In such a storm of disaster and disorder the captain in command soon
finds and learns to distinguish his loyal supporters, if any such there
be. In the pandemonium of untoward events, McCloskey was Lidgerwood's
right hand, toiling, smiting, striving, and otherwise approving himself
a good soldier. But close behind him came Gridley; always suave and
good-natured, making no complaints, not even when the repair work made
necessary by the innumerable wrecks grew mountain-high, and always
counselling firmness and more discipline.

"This is just what we have been needing for years, Mr. Lidgerwood," he
took frequent occasion to say. "Of course, we have now to pay the
penalty for the sins of our predecessors; but if you will persevere,
we'll pull through and be a railroad in fact when the clouds roll by.
Don't give in an inch. Show these muckers that you mean business, and
mean it all the time, and you'll win out all right."

Thus the master-mechanic; and McCloskey, with more at stake and a less
insulated point of view, took it out in good, hard blows, backing his
superior like a man. Indeed, in the small head-quarters staff, Hallock
was the only non-combatant. From the beginning of hostilities he seemed
to have made a pact with himself not to let it be known by any act or
word of his that he was aware of the suddenly precipitated conflict. The
routine duties of a chief clerk's desk are never light; Hallock's became
so exacting that he rarely left his office, or the pen-like contrivance
in which he entrenched himself and did his work.

When the fight began, Lidgerwood observed Hallock closely, trying to
discover if there were any secret signs of the satisfaction which the
revolt of the rank and file might be supposed to awaken in an
unsuccessful candidate for the official headship of the Red Butte
Western. There were none. Hallock's gaunt face, with the loose lips and
the straggling, unkempt beard, was a blank; and the worst wreck of the
three which promptly followed the introduction of the new rules, was
noted in his reports with the calm indifference with which he might have
jotted down the breakage of a section foreman's spike-maul.

McCloskey, being of Scottish blood and desert-seasoned, was a cool
in-fighter who could take punishment without wincing overmuch. But at
the end of the first fortnight of the new time-card, he cornered his
chief in the private office and freed his mind.

"It's no use, Mr. Lidgerwood; we can't make these reforms stick with the
outfit we've got," he asserted, in sharp discouragement. "The next thing
on the docket will be a strike, and you know what that will mean, in a
country where the whiskey is bad and nine men out of every ten go fixed
for trouble."

"I know; nevertheless the reforms have got to stick," returned
Lidgerwood definitively. "We are going to run this railroad as it should
be run, or hang it up in the air. Did you discharge that operator at
Crow Canyon? the fellow who let Train 76 get by him without orders night
before last?"

"Dick Rufford? Oh yes, I fired him, and he came in on 202 to-day lugging
a piece of artillery and shooting off his mouth about what he was going
to do to me ... and to you. I suppose you know that his brother Bart,
they call him 'the killer', is the lookout at Red-Light Sammy Faro's
game, and the meanest devil this side of the Timanyonis?"

"I didn't know it, but that cuts no figure." Lidgerwood forced himself
to say it, though his lips were curiously dry. "We are going to have
discipline on this railroad while we stay here, Mac; there are no two
ways about that."

McCloskey tilted his hat to the bridge of his nose, his characteristic
gesture of displeasure.

"I promised myself that I wouldn't join the gun-toters when I came out
here," he said, half musingly, "but I've weakened on that. Yesterday,
when I was calling Jeff Cummings down for dropping that new
shifting-engine out of an open switch in broad daylight, he pulled on me
out of his cab window. What I had to take while he had me 'hands up' is
more than I'll take from any living man again."

As in other moments of stress and perplexity, Lidgerwood was absently
marking little pencil squares on his desk blotter.

"I wouldn't get down to the desert level, if I were you, Mac," he said
thoughtfully.

"I'm down there right now, in self-defence," was the sober rejoinder.
"And if you'll take a hint from me you'll heel yourself, too, Mr.
Lidgerwood. I know this country better than you do, and the men in it. I
don't say they'll come after you deliberately, but as things are now you
can't open your face to one of them without taking the chance of a
quarrel, and a quarrel in a gun-country----"

"I know," said Lidgerwood patiently, and the trainmaster gave it up.

It was an hour or two later in the same day when McCloskey came into the
private office again, hat tilted to nose, and the gargoyle face
portraying fresh soul agonies.

"They've taken to pillaging now!" he burst out. "The 316, that new
saddle-tank shifting-engine, has disappeared. I saw Broderick using the
'95, and when I asked him why, he said he couldn't find the '16."

"Couldn't find it?" echoed Lidgerwood.

"No; nor I can't, either. It's nowhere in the yards, the roundhouse, or
back shop, and none of Gridley's foremen know anything about it. I've
had Callahan wire east and west, and if they're all telling the truth,
nobody has seen it or heard of it."

"Where was it, at last accounts?"

"Standing on the coal track under chute number three, where the night
crew left it at midnight, or thereabouts."

"But certainly somebody must know where it has gone," said Lidgerwood.

"Yes; and by grapples! I think I know who the somebody is."

"Who is it?"

"If I should tell you, you wouldn't believe it, and besides I haven't
got the proof. But I'm going to get the proof," shaking a menacing
forefinger, "and when I do----"

The interruption was the entrance of Hallock, coming in with the
pay-rolls for the superintendent's approval. McCloskey broke off short
and turned to the door, but Lidgerwood gave him a parting command.

"Come in again, Mac, in about half an hour. There is another matter that
I want to take up with you, and to-day is as good a time as any."

The trainmaster nodded and went out, muttering curses to the tilted hat
brim.



VI

EVERYMAN'S SHARE


"This switching-engine mystery opens up a field that I've been trying to
get into for some little time, Mac," the superintendent began, after the
half-hour had elapsed and the trainmaster had returned to the private
office. "Sit down and we'll thresh it out. Here are some figures showing
loss and expense in the general maintenance account. Look them over and
tell me what you think."

"Wastage, you mean?" queried the trainmaster, glancing at the totals in
the auditor's statement.

"That is what I have been calling it; a reckless disregard for the value
of anything and everything that can be included in a requisition. There
is a good deal of that, I know; the right-of-way is littered from end to
end with good material thrown aside. But I'm afraid that isn't the worst
of it."

The trainmaster was nursing a knee and screwing his face into the
reflective scheme of distortion.

"Those things are always hard to prove. Short of a military guard, for
instance, you couldn't prevent Angels from raiding the company's
coal-yard for its cook-stoves. That's one leak, and the others are
pretty much like it. If a company employee wants to steal, and there
isn't enough common honesty among his fellow-employees to hold him down,
he can steal fast enough and get away with it."

"By littles, yes, but not in quantity," pursued Lidgerwood.

"'Mony a little makes a mickle,' as my old grandfather used to say,"
McCloskey went on. "If everybody gets his fingers into the
sugar-bowl----"

Lidgerwood swung his chair to face McCloskey.

"We'll pass up the petty thieveries, for the present, and look a little
higher," he said gravely. "Have you found any trace of those two
car-loads of company lumber lost in transit between here and Red Butte
two weeks ago?"

"No, nor of the cars themselves. They were reported as two
Transcontinental flats, initials and numbers plainly given in the
car-record. They seem to have disappeared with the lumber."

"Which means?" queried the superintendent.

"That the numbers, or the initials, or both, were wrongly reported. It
means that it was a put-up job to steal the lumber."

"Exactly. And there was a mixed car-load of lime and cement lost at
about the same time, wasn't there?"

"Yes."

Lidgerwood's swing-chair "righted itself to the perpendicular with a
snap."

"Mac, the Red Butte mines are looking up a little, and there is a good
bit of house-building going on in the camp just now: tell me, what man
or men in the company's service would be likely to be taking a flyer in
Red Butte real estate?"

"I don't know of anybody. Gridley used to be interested in the camp. He
went in pretty heavily on the boom, and lost out--so they all say. So
did your man out there in the pig-pen desk," with a jerk of his thumb to
indicate the outer office.

"They are both out of it," said Lidgerwood shortly. Then: "How about
Sullivan, the west-end supervisor of track? He has property in Red
Butte, I am told."

"Sullivan is a thief, all right, but he does it openly and brags about
it; carries off a set of bridge-timbers, now and then, for house-sills,
and makes a joke of it with anybody who will listen."

Lidgerwood dismissed Sullivan abruptly.

"It is an organized gang, and it must have its members pretty well
scattered through the departments--and have a good many members, too,"
he said conclusively. "That brings us to the disappearance of the
switching-engine again. No one man made off with that, single-handed,
Mac."

"Hardly."

"It was this gang we are presupposing--the gang that has been stealing
lumber and lime and other material by the car-load."

"Well?"

"I believe we'll get to the bottom of all the looting on this
switching-engine business. They have overdone it this time. You can't
put a locomotive in your pocket and walk off with it. You say you've
wired Copah?"

"Yes."

"Who was at the Copah key--Mr. Leckhard?"

"No. I didn't want to advertise our troubles to a main-line official. I
got the day-despatcher, Crandall, and told him to keep his mouth shut
until he heard of it some other way."

"Good. And what did Crandall say?"

"He said that the '16 had never gone out through the Copah yards; that
it couldn't get anywhere if it had without everybody knowing about it."

Lidgerwood's abstracted gaze out of the office window became a frown of
concentration.

"But the object, McCloskey--what possible profit could there be in the
theft of a locomotive that can neither be carried away nor converted
into salable junk?"

The trainmaster shook his head. "I've stewed over that till I'm
threatened with softening of the brain," he confessed.

"Never mind, you have a comparatively easy job," Lidgerwood went on.
"That engine is somewhere this side of the Crosswater Hills. It is too
big to be hidden under a bushel basket. Find it, and you'll be hot on
the trail of the car-load robbers."

McCloskey got upon his feet as if he were going at once to begin the
search, but Lidgerwood detained him.

"Hold on; I'm not quite through yet. Sit down again and have a smoke."

The trainmaster squinted sourly at the extended cigar-case. "I guess
not," he demurred. "I cut it out, along with the toddies, the day I put
on my coat and hat and walked out of the old F. & P.M. offices without
my time-check."

"If it had to be both or neither, you were wise; whiskey and railroading
don't go together very well. But about this other matter. Some years
ago there was a building and loan association started here in Angels,
the ostensible object being to help the railroad men to own their homes.
Ever hear of it?"

"Yes, but it was dead and buried before my time."

"Dead, but not buried," corrected Lidgerwood. "As I understand it, the
railroad company fathered it, or at all events, some of the officials
took stock in it. When it died there was a considerable deficit,
together with a failure on the part of the executive committee to
account for a pretty liberal cash balance."

"I've heard that much," said the trainmaster.

"Then we'll bring it down to date," Lidgerwood resumed. "It appears that
there are twenty-five or thirty of the losers still in the employ of
this company, and they have sent a committee to me to ask for an
investigation, basing the demand on the assertion that they were coerced
into giving up their money to the building and loan people."

"I've heard that, too," McCloskey admitted. "The story goes that the
house-building scheme was promoted by the old Red Butte Western bosses,
and if a man didn't take stock he got himself disliked. If he did take
it, the premiums were held out on the pay-rolls. It smells like a good,
old-fashioned graft, with the lid nailed on."

"There wouldn't seem to be any reasonable doubt about the graft," said
the superintendent. "But my duty is clear. Of course, the Pacific
Southwestern Company isn't responsible for the side-issue schemes of the
old Red Butte Western officials. But I want to do strict justice. These
men charge the officials of the building and loan company with open
dishonesty. There was a balance of several thousand dollars in the
treasury when the explosion came, and it disappeared."

"Well?" said the trainmaster.

"The losers contend that somebody ought to make good to them. They also
call attention to the fact that the building and loan treasurer, who was
never able satisfactorily to explain the disappearance of the cash
balance, is still on the railroad company's pay-rolls."

McCloskey sat up and tilted the derby to the back of his head.
"Gridley?" he asked.

"No; for some reasons I wish it were Gridley. He is able to fight his
own battles. It comes nearer home, Mac. The treasurer was Hallock."

McCloskey rose noiselessly, tiptoed to the door of communication with
the outer office, and opened it with a quick jerk. There was no one
there.

"I thought I heard something," he said. "Didn't you think you did?"

Lidgerwood shook his head.

"Hallock has gone over to the storekeeper's office to check up the
time-rolls. He won't be back to-day."

McCloskey closed the door and returned to his chair.

"If I say what I think, you'll be asking me for proofs, Mr. Lidgerwood,
and I have none. Besides, I'm a prejudiced witness. I don't like
Hallock."

Quite unconsciously Lidgerwood picked up a pencil and began adding more
squares to the miniature checker-board on his desk blotter. It was
altogether subversive of his own idea of fitness to be discussing his
chief clerk with his trainmaster, but McCloskey had proved himself an
honest partisan and a fearless one, and Lidgerwood was at a pass where
the good counsel of even a subordinate was not to be despised.

"I don't want to do Hallock an injustice," he went on, after a hesitant
pause, "neither do I wish to dig up the past, for him or for anybody. I
was hoping that you might know some of the inside details, and so make
it easier for me to get at the truth. I can't believe that Hallock was
culpably responsible for the disappearance of the money."

By this time McCloskey had his hat tilted to the belligerent angle.

"I'm not a fair witness," he reiterated. "There's been gossip, and I've
listened to it."

"About this building and loan mess?"

"No; about the wife."

"To Hallock's discredit, you mean?"

"You'd think so: there was a scandal of some sort; I don't know what it
was--never wanted to know. But there are men here in Angels who hint
that Hallock killed the woman and sunk her body in the Timanyoni."

"Heavens!" exclaimed Lidgerwood, under his breath. "I can't believe
that, Mac."

"I don't know as I do, but I can tell you a thing that I do know, Mr.
Lidgerwood: Hallock is a devil out of hell when it comes to paying a
grudge. There was a freight-conductor named Jackson that he had a shindy
with in Mr. Ferguson's time, and it came to blows. Hallock got the worst
of the fist-fight, but Ferguson made a joke of it and wouldn't fire
Jackson. Hallock bided his time like an Indian, and worked it around so
that Jackson got promoted to a passenger run. After that it was easy."

"How so?"

"It was the devil's own game. Jackson was a handsome young fellow, and
Hallock set a woman on him--a woman out of Cat Biggs's dance-hall. From
that to holding out fares to get more money to squander was only a step
for the young fool, and he took it. Having baited the trap and set it,
Hallock sprung it. One fine day Jackson was caught red-handed and turned
over to the company lawyers. There had been a good bit of talk and they
made an example of him. He's got a couple of years to serve yet, I
believe."

Lidgerwood was listening thoughtfully. The story which had ended so
disastrously for the young conductor threw a rather lurid sidelight upon
Jackson's accuser. Fairness was the superintendent's fetish, and the
revenge which would sleep on its wrongs and go about deliberately and
painstakingly to strike a deadly blow in the dark was revolting to him.
Yet he was just enough to distinguish between gross vindictiveness and
an evil which bore no relation to the vengeful one.

"A financially honest man might still have a weakness for playing even
in a personal quarrel," he commented. "Your story proves nothing more
than that."

"I know it."

"But I am going to run the other thing down, too," Lidgerwood insisted.
"Hallock shall have a chance to clear himself, but if he can't do it, he
can't stay with me."

At this the trainmaster changed front so suddenly that Lidgerwood began
to wonder if his estimate of the man's courage was at fault.

"Don't do that, Mr. Lidgerwood, for God's sake don't stir up the devil
in that long-haired knife-fighter at such a time as this!" he begged.
"The Lord knows you've got trouble enough on hand as it is, without
digging up something that belongs to the has-beens."

"I know, but justice is justice," was the decisive rejoinder. "The
question is still a live one, as the complaint of the grievance
committee proves. If I dodge, my refusal to investigate will be used
against us in the labor trouble which you say is brewing. I'm not going
to dodge, McCloskey."

The contortions of the trainmaster's homely features indicated an inward
struggle of the last-resort nature. When he had reached a conclusion he
spat it out.

"You haven't asked my advice, Mr. Lidgerwood, but here it is anyway.
Flemister, the owner of the Wire-Silver mine over in Timanyoni Park, was
the president of that building and loan outfit. He and Hallock are at
daggers drawn, for some reason that I've never understood. If you could
get them together, perhaps they could make some sort of a statement that
would quiet the kickers for the time being, at any rate."

Lidgerwood looked up quickly. "That's odd," he said. "No longer ago than
yesterday, Gridley suggested precisely the same thing."

McCloskey was on his feet again and fumbling behind him for the
door-knob.

"I'm all in," he grimaced. "When it comes to figuring with Gridley and
Flemister and Hallock all in the same breath, I'm done."

Lidgerwood made a memorandum on his desk calendar to take the building
and loan matter up with Hallock the following day. But another wreck
intervened, and after the wreck a conference with the Red Butte
mine-owners postponed all office business for an additional twenty-four
hours. It was late in the evening of the third day when the
superintendent's special steamed home from the west, and Lidgerwood, who
had dined in his car, went directly to his office in the Crow's Nest.

He had scarcely settled himself at his desk for an attack upon the
accumulation of mail when Benson came in. It was a trouble call, and the
young engineer's face advertised it.

"It's no use talking, Lidgerwood," he began, "I can't do business on
this railroad until you have killed off some of the thugs and
highbinders."

Lidgerwood flung the paper-knife aside and whirled his chair to face the
new complaint.

"What is the matter now, Jack?" he snapped.

"Oh, nothing much--when you're used to it; only about a thousand
dollars' worth of dimension timber gone glimmering. That's all."

"Tell it out," rasped the superintendent. The mine-owners' conference,
from which he had just returned, had been called to protest against the
poor service given by the railroad, and knowing his present inability to
give better service, he had temporized until it needed but this one more
touch of the lash to make him lose his temper hopelessly.

"It's the Gloria bridge," said Benson. "We had the timbers all ready to
pull out the old and put in the new, and the shift was to be made to-day
between trains. Last night every stick of the new stock disappeared."

Lidgerwood was not a profane man, but what he said to Benson in the
coruscating minute or two which followed resolved itself into a very
fair imitation of profanity, inclusive and world-embracing.

"And you didn't have wit enough to leave a watchman on the job!" he
chafed--this by way of putting an apex to the pyramid of objurgation.
"By heavens! this thing has got to stop, Benson. And it's going to stop,
if we have to call out the State militia and picket every cursed mile of
this rotten railroad!"

"Do it," said Benson gruffly, "and when it's done you notify me and I'll
come back to work." And with that he tramped out, and was too angry to
remember to close the door.

Lidgerwood turned back to his desk, savagely out of humor with Benson
and with himself, and raging inwardly at the mysterious thieves who were
looting the company as boldly as an invading army might. At this, the
most inauspicious moment possible, his eye fell upon the calendar
memorandum, "See Hallock about B/L.," and his finger was on the chief
clerk's bell-push before he remembered that it was late, and that there
had been no light in Hallock's room when he had come down the corridor
to his own door.

The touch of the push-button was only a touch, and there was no
answering skirl of the bell in the adjoining room. But, as if the
intention had evoked it, a shadow crossed behind the superintendent's
chair and came to rest at the end of the roll-top desk. Lidgerwood
looked up with his eyes aflame. It was Hallock who was standing at the
desk's end, and he was pointing to the memorandum on the calendar pad.

"You made that note three days ago," he said abruptly. "I saw your train
come in and your light go on. What bill of lading was it you wanted to
see me about?"

For an instant Lidgerwood failed to understand. Then he saw that in
abbreviating he had unconsciously used the familiar sign, "B/L," the
common abbreviation of "bill of lading." At another time he would have
turned Hallock's very natural mistake into an easy introduction to a
rather delicate subject. But now he was angry.

"Sit down," he rapped out. "That isn't 'bill of lading'; it's 'building
and loan.'"

Hallock dragged the one vacant chair into the circle illuminated by the
shaded desk-electric, and sat on the edge of it, with his hands on his
knees. "Well?" he said, in the grating voice that was so curiously like
the master-mechanic's.

"We can cut out the details," this from the man who, under other
conditions, would have gone diplomatically into the smallest details.
"Some years ago you were the treasurer of the Mesa Building and Loan
Association. When the association went out of business, its books
showed a cash balance in the treasury. What became of the money?"

Hallock sat as rigid as a carved figure flanking an Egyptian propylon,
which his attitude suggested. He was silent for a time, so long a time
that Lidgerwood burst out impatiently, "Why don't you answer me?"

"I was just wondering if it is worth while for you to throw me
overboard," said the chief clerk, speaking slowly and quite without
heat. "You are needing friends pretty badly just now, if you only knew
it, Mr. Lidgerwood."

The cool retort, as from an equal in rank, added fresh fuel to the fire.

"I'm not buying friends with concessions to injustice and crooked
dealing," Lidgerwood exploded. "You were in the railroad service when
the money was paid over to you, and you are in the railroad service now.
I want to know where the money went."

"It is none of your business, Mr. Lidgerwood," said the carved figure
with the gloomy eyes that never blinked.

"By heavens! I'm making it my business, Hallock! These men who were
robbed say that you are an embezzler, a thief. If you are not, you've
got to clear yourself. If you are, you can't stay in the Red Butte
service another day: that's all."

Again there was a silence surcharged with electric possibilities.
Lidgerwood bit the end from a cigar and lost three matches before he
succeeded in lighting it. Hallock sat perfectly still, but the sallow
tinge in his gaunt face had given place to a stony pallor. When he
spoke, it was still without anger.

"I don't care a damn for your chief clerkship," he said calmly, "but for
reasons of my own I am not ready to quit on such short notice. When I am
ready, you won't have to discharge me. Upon what terms can I stay?"

"I've stated them," said the one who was angry. "Discharge your trust;
make good in dollars and cents, or show cause why you were caught with
an empty cash-box."

For the first time in the interview the chief clerk switched the stare
of the gloomy eyes from the memorandum desk calendar, and fixed it upon
his accuser.

"You seem to take it for granted that I was the only grafter in the
building and loan business," he objected. "I wasn't; on the contrary, I
was only a necessary cog in the wheel. Somebody had to make the
deductions from the pay-rolls, and----"

"I'm not asking you to make excuses," stormed Lidgerwood. "I'm telling
you that you've got to make good! If the money was used legitimately,
you, or some of your fellow-officers in the company, should be able to
show it. If the others left you to hold the bag, it is due to yourself,
to the men who were held up, and to me, that you set yourself straight.
Go to Flemister--he was your president, wasn't he?--and get him to make
a statement that I can show to the grievance committee. That will let
you out, and me, too."

Hallock stood up and leaned over the desk end. His saturnine face was a
mask of cold rage, but his eyes were burning.

"If I thought you knew what you're saying," he began in the grating
voice, "but you don't--you _can't_ know!" Then, with a sudden break in
the fierce tone: "Don't send me to Flemister for my clearance--don't do
it, Mr. Lidgerwood. It's playing with fire. I didn't steal the money;
I'll swear it on a stack of Bibles a mile high. Flemister will tell you
so if he is paid his price. But you don't want me to pay the price. If I
do----"

"Go on," said Lidgerwood, frowning, "if you do, what then?"

Hallock leaned still farther over the desk end.

"If I do, you'll get what you are after--and a good deal more. Again I
am going to ask you if it is worth while to throw me overboard."

Lidgerwood was still angry enough to resent this advance into the field
of the personalities.

"You've had my last word, Hallock, and all this talk about consequences
that you don't explain is beside the mark. Get me that statement from
Flemister, and do it soon. I am not going to have it said that we are
fighting graft in one place and covering it up in another."

Hallock straightened up and buttoned his coat.

"I'll get you the statement," he said, quietly; "and the consequences
won't need any explaining." His hand was on the door-knob when he
finished saying it, and Lidgerwood had risen from his chair. There was a
pause, while one might count five.

"Well?" said the superintendent.

"I was thinking again," said the man at the door. "By all the rules of
the game--the game as it is played here in the desert--I ought to be
giving you twenty-four hours to get out of gunshot, Mr. Lidgerwood.
Instead of that I am going to do you a service. You remember that
operator, Rufford, that you discharged a few days ago?"

"Yes."

"Bart Rufford, his brother, the 'lookout' at Red Light's place, has
invited a few of his friends to take notice that he intends to kill you.
You can take it straight. He means it. And that was what brought me up
here to-night--not that memorandum on your desk calendar."

For a long time after the door had jarred to its shutting behind
Hallock, Lidgerwood sat at his desk, idle and abstractedly thoughtful.
Twice within the interval he pulled out a small drawer under the
roll-top and made as if he would take up the weapon it contained, and
each time he closed the drawer to break with the temptation to put the
pistol into his pocket.

Later, after he had forced himself to go to work, a door slammed
somewhere in the despatcher's end of the building, and automatically his
hand shot out to the closed drawer. Then he made his decision and
carried it out. Taking the nickel-plated thing from its hiding-place,
and breaking it to eject the cartridges, he went to the end door of the
corridor, which opened into the unused space under the rafters, and
flung the weapon to the farthest corner of the dark loft.



VII

THE KILLER


Lidgerwood had found little difficulty in getting on the companionable
side of Dawson, so far as the heavy-muscled, silent young draftsman had
a companionable side; and an invitation to the family dinner-table at
the Dawson cottage on the low mesa above the town had followed, as a
matter of course.

Once within the home circle, with Benson to plead his cause with the
meek little woman whose brown eyes held the shadow of a deep trouble,
Lidgerwood had still less difficulty in arranging to share Benson's
permanent table welcome. Though Martha Dawson never admitted it, even to
her daughter, she stood in constant terror of the Red Desert and its
representative town of Angels, and the presence of the superintendent as
the member of the household promised to be an added guaranty of
protection.

Lidgerwood's acceptance as a table boarder in the cottage on the mesa
being hospitably prompt, he was coming and going as regularly as his
oversight of the three hundred miles of demoralization permitted before
the buffoonery of the Red Butte Western suddenly laughed itself out, and
war was declared. In the interval he had come to concur very heartily in
Benson's estimate of the family, and to share--without Benson's excuse,
and without any reason that could be set in words--the young engineer's
opposition to Gridley as Miss Faith's possible choice.

There was little to be done in this field, however. Gridley came and
went, not too often, figuring always as a friend of the family, and
usurping no more of Miss Dawson's time and attention than she seemed
willing to bestow upon him. Lidgerwood saw no chance to obstruct and no
good reason for obstructing. At all events, Gridley did not furnish the
reason. And the first time Lidgerwood found himself sitting out the
sunset hour after dinner on the tiny porch of the mesa cottage, with
Faith Dawson as his companion--this while the joke was still running its
course--his talk was not of Gridley, nor yet of Benson; it was of
himself.

"How long is it going to be before you are able to forget that I am
constructively your brother's boss, Miss Faith?" he asked, when she had
brought him a cushion for the back of the hard veranda chair in which
he was trying to be luxuriously lazy.

"Oh, do I remember it?--disagreeably?" she laughed. And then, with
charming naïveté: "I am sure I try not to."

"I am beginning to wish you would try a little harder," he ventured,
endeavoring to put her securely upon the plane of companionship. "It is
pretty lonesome sometimes, up here on the top round of the
Red-Butte-Western ladder of authority."

"You mean that you would like to leave your official dignity behind you
when you come to us here on the mesa?" she asked.

"That's the idea precisely. You have no conception how strenuous it is,
wearing the halo all the time, or perhaps I should say, the cap and
bells."

She smiled. Frederic Dawson, the reticent, had never spoken of the
attitude of the Red Butte Western toward its new boss, but Gridley had
referred to it quite frequently and had made a joke of it. Without
knowing just why, she had resented Gridley's attitude; this
notwithstanding the master-mechanic's genial affability whenever
Lidgerwood and his difficulties were the object of discussion.

"They are still refusing to take you seriously?" she said. "I hope you
don't mind it too much."

"Personally, I don't mind it at all," he assured her--which was
sufficiently true at the moment. "The men are acting like a lot of
foolish schoolboys bent on discouraging the new teacher. I am hoping
they will settle down to a sensible basis after a bit, and take me and
the new order of things for granted."

Miss Dawson had something on her mind; a thing not gathered from Gridley
or from any one else in particular, but which seemed to take shape of
itself. The effect of setting it in speech asked for a complete
effacement of Lidgerwood the superintendent, and that was rather
difficult. But she compassed it.

"I don't think you ought to take them so much for granted--the men, I
mean," she cautioned. "I can't help feeling afraid that some of the
joking is not quite good-natured."

"I fancy very little of it is what you would call good-natured," he
rejoined evenly. "Very much of it is thinly disguised contempt."

"For your authority?"

"For me, personally, first; and for my authority as a close second."

"Then you are anticipating trouble when the laugh is over?"

He shook his head. "I'm hoping No, as I said a moment ago, but I'm
expecting Yes."

"And you are not afraid?"

It would have been worth a great deal to him if he could have looked
fearlessly into the clear gray eyes of questioning, giving her a brave
man's denial. But instead, his gaze went beyond her and he said: "You
surely wouldn't expect me to confess it if I were afraid, would you?
Don't you despise a coward, Miss Dawson?"

The sun was sinking behind the Timanyonis, and the soft glow of the
western sky suffused her face, illuminating it with rare radiance. It
was not, in the last analysis, a beautiful face, he told himself,
comparing it with another whose outlines were bitten deeply and beyond
all hope of erasure into the memory page. Yet the face warming softly in
the sunset glow was sweet and winsome, attractive in the best sense of
the overworked word. At the moment Lidgerwood rather envied Benson--or
Gridley, whichever one of the two it was for whom Miss Dawson cared the
most.

"There are so many different kinds of cowards," she said, after the
reflective interval.

"But they are all equally despicable?" he suggested.

"The real ones are, perhaps. But our definitions are often careless. My
grandfather, who was a captain of volunteers in the Civil War, used to
say that real cowardice is either a psychological condition or a soul
disease, and that what we call the physical symptoms of it are often
misleading."

"For example?" said Lidgerwood.

"Grandfather used to be fond of contrasting the camp-fire bully and
braggart, as one extreme, with the soldier who was frankly afraid of
getting killed, as the other. It was his theory that the man who dodged
the first few bullets in a battle was quite likely to turn out to be the
real hero."

Lidgerwood could not resist the temptation to probe the old wound.

"Suppose, under some sudden stress, some totally unexpected trial, a man
who was very much afraid of being afraid found himself morally and
physically unable to do the courageous thing. Wouldn't he be, to all
intents and purposes, a real coward?"

She took time to think.

"No," she said finally, "I wouldn't say that. I should wait until I had
seen the same man tried under conditions that would give him time, to
think first and to act afterward."

"Would you really do that?" he asked doubtfully.

"Yes, I should. A trial of the kind you describe isn't quite fair. Acute
presence of mind in an emergency is not a supreme test of anything
except of itself; least of all, perhaps, is it a test of courage--I mean
courage of that quality which endures to-day and faces without flinching
the threatening to-morrow."

"And you think the man who might be surprised into doing something very
disgraceful on the spur of the moment might still have that other kind
of courage, Miss Faith?"

"Certainly." She was far enough from making any personal application of
the test case suggested by the superintendent. But in a world which took
its keynote from the harsh discords of the Red Desert, these little
thoughtful talks with a man who was most emphatically not of the Red
Desert were refreshing. And she could scarcely have been Martha Dawson's
daughter or Frederic Dawson's sister without having a thoughtful cast of
mind.

Lidgerwood rose and felt in his pockets for his after-dinner cigar.

"You are much more charitable than most women, Miss Dawson," he said
gravely; after which he left abruptly, and went back to his desk in the
Crow's Nest.

As we have seen, this bit of confidential talk between the
superintendent and Faith Dawson fell in the period of the jesting
horse-laugh; fell, as it chanced, on a day when the horse-laugh was at
its height. Later, after the storm broke, there were no more quiet
evenings on the cottage porch for a harassed superintendent. Lidgerwood
came and went as before, when the rapidly recurring wrecks did not keep
him out on the line, but he scrupulously left his troubles behind him
when he climbed to the cottage on the mesa.

Quite naturally, his silence on the one topic which was stirring the Red
Desert from the Crosswater Hills to Timanyoni Canyon was a poor mask.
The increasing gravity of the situation wrote itself plainly enough in
his face, and Faith Dawson was sorry for him, giving him silent
sympathy, unasked, if not wholly unexpected. The town talk of Angels,
what little of it reached the cottage, was harshly condemnatory of the
new superintendent; and public opinion, standing for what it was worth,
feared no denial when it asserted that Lidgerwood was doing what he
could to earn his newer reputation.

After the mysterious disappearance of the switching-engine, mystery
still unsolved and apparently unsolvable, he struck fast and hard,
searching painstakingly for the leaders in the rebellion, reprimanding,
suspending, and discharging until McCloskey warned him that, in addition
to the evil of short-handing the road, he was filling Angels with a
growing army of ex-employees, desperate and ripe for anything.

"I can't help it, Mac," was his invariable reply. "Unless they put me
out of the fight I shall go on as I have begun, staying with it until we
have a railroad in fact, or a forfeited charter. Do the best you can,
but let it be plainly and distinctly understood that the man who isn't
with us is against us, and the man who is against us is going to get a
chance to hunt for a new job every time."

Whereupon the trainmaster's homely face would take on added furrowings
of distress.

"That's all right, Mr. Lidgerwood; that is stout, two-fisted talk all
right; and I'm not doubting that you mean every word of it. But, they'll
murder you."

"That is neither here nor there, what they will do to me. I handled them
with gloves at first, but they wanted the bare fist. They've got it now,
and as I have said before, we are going to fight this thing through to
a complete and artistic finish. Who goes east on 202 to-day?"

"It is Judson's run, but he is laying off."

"What is the matter with him, sick?"

"No; just plain drunk."

"Fire him. I won't have a single solitary man in the train service who
gets drunk. Tell him so."

"All right; one more stick of dynamite, with a cap and fuse in it,
turned loose under foot," prophesied McCloskey gloomily. "Judson goes."

"Never mind the dynamite. Now, what has been done with Johnston, that
conductor who turned in three dollars as the total cash collections for
a hundred-and-fifty-mile run?"

"I've had him up. He grinned and said that that was all the money there
was, everybody had tickets."

"You don't believe it?"

"No; Grantby, the superintendent of the Ruby Mine, came in on Johnston's
train that morning and he registered a kick because the Ruby Gulch
station agent wasn't out of bed in time to sell him a ticket. He paid
Johnston on the train, and that one fare alone was five dollars and
sixty cents."

Lidgerwood was adding another minute square to the pencilled
checker-board on his desk blotter.

"Discharge Johnston and hold back his time-check. Then have him
arrested for stealing, and wire the legal department at Denver that I
want him prosecuted."

Again McCloskey's rough-cast face became the outward presentment of a
soul in anxious trouble.

"Call it done--and another stick of dynamite turned loose," he
acquiesced. "Is there anything else?"

"Yes. What have you found out about that missing switch-engine?" This
had come to be the stereotyped query, vocalizing itself every time the
trainmaster showed his face in the superintendent's room.

"Nothing, yet. I'm hunting for proof."

"Against the men you suspect? Who are they, and what did they do with
the engine?"

McCloskey became dumb.

"I don't dare to say part of it till I can say it all, Mr. Lidgerwood.
You hit too quick and too hard. But tell me one thing: have you had to
report the loss of that engine to anybody higher up?"

"I shall have to report it to General Manager Frisbie, of course, if we
don't find it."

"But haven't you already reported it?"

"No; that is, I guess not. Wait a minute."

A touch of the bell-push brought Hallock to the door of the inner
office. The green shade was pulled low over his eyes, and he held the
pen he had been using as if it were a dagger.

"Hallock, have you reported the disappearance of that switching-engine
to Mr. Frisbie?" asked the superintendent.

The answer seemed reluctant, and it was given in the single word of
assent.

"When?" asked Lidgerwood.

"In the weekly summary for last week; you signed it," said the chief
clerk.

"Did I tell you to include that particular item in the report?"
Lidgerwood did not mean to give the inquiry the tang of an implied
reproof, but the fight with the outlaws was beginning to make his manner
incisive.

"You didn't need to tell me; I know my business," said Hallock, and his
tone matched his superior's.

Lidgerwood looked at McCloskey, and, at the trainmaster's almost
imperceptible nod, said, "That's all," and Hallock disappeared and
closed the door.

"Well?" queried Lidgerwood sharply, when they had privacy again.

McCloskey was shifting uneasily from one foot to the other.

"My name's Scotch, and they tell me I've got Scotch blood in me," he
began. "I don't like to shoot my mouth off till I know what I'm doing. I
suppose I quarrelled with Hallock once a day, regular, before you came
on the job, Mr. Lidgerwood, and I'll say again that I don't like
him--never did. That's what makes me careful about throwing it into him
now."

"Go on," said Lidgerwood.

"Well, you know he wanted to be superintendent of this road. He kept the
wires to New York hot for a week after he found out that the P. S-W. was
in control. He missed it, and you naturally took it over his head--at
least, maybe that's the way he looks at it."

"Take it for granted and get to the point," urged Lidgerwood, always
impatient of preliminary bush-beating.

"There isn't any point, if you don't see any," said McCloskey
stubbornly. "But I can tell you how it would strike me, if I had to be
wearing your shoes just now. You've got a man for your chief clerk who
has kept this whole town guessing for two years. Some say he isn't all
to the bad; some say he is a woman-killer; but they all agree that he's
as spiteful as an Indian. He wanted your job: supposing he still wants
it."

"Stick to the facts, Mac," said the superintendent. "You're theorizing
now, you know."

"Well, by gravels, I will!" rasped McCloskey, pushed over the cautionary
edge by Lidgerwood's indifference to the main question at issue. "What I
know don't amount to much yet, but it all leans one way. Hallock puts in
his daytime scratching away at his desk out there, and you'd think he
didn't know it was this year. But when that desk is shut up, you'll find
him at the roundhouse, over in the freight yard, round the switch
shanties, or up at Biggs's--anywhere he can get half a dozen of the men
together. I haven't found a man yet that I could trust to keep tab on
him, and I don't know what he's doing; but I can guess."

"Is that all?" said Lidgerwood quietly.

"No, it isn't! That switch-engine dropped out two weeks ago last Tuesday
night. I've been prying into this locked-up puzzle-box every way I could
think of ever since. _Hallock knows where that engine went!_"

"What makes you think so?"

"I'll tell you. Robinson, the night-crew engineer, was a little late
leaving her that night. His fireman had gone home, and so had the
yardmen. After he had crossed the yard coming out, he saw a man sneaking
toward the shifter, keeping in the shadow of the coal-chutes. He was
just curious enough to want to know who it was, and he made a little
sneak of his own. When he found it was Hallock, he went home and thought
no more about it till I got him to talk."

Lidgerwood had gone back to the pencil and the blotting-pad and the
making of squares.

"But the motive, Mac?" he questioned, without looking up. "How could the
theft or the destruction of a locomotive serve any purpose that Hallock
might have in view?"

McCloskey did not mean any disrespect to his superior officer when he
retorted: "I'm no 'cyclopædia. There are lots of things I don't know.
But unless you call it off, I'm going to know a few more of them before
I quit."

"I don't call it off, Mac; find out what you can. But I can't believe
that Hallock is heading this organized robbery and rebellion."

"Somebody is heading it, to a dead moral certainty, Mr. Lidgerwood; the
licks are coming too straight and too well-timed."

"Find the man if you can, and we'll eliminate him. And, by the way, if
it comes to the worst, how will Hepburn, the town marshal, stand?"

The trainmaster shook his head.

"I don't know. Jack's got plenty of sand, but he was elected out of the
shops, and by the railroad vote. If it comes to a show-down against the
men who elected him----"

"That is what I mean," nodded Lidgerwood. "It will come to a show-down
sooner or later, if we can't nip the ringleaders. Young Rufford and a
dozen more of the dropped employees are threatening to get even. That
means train-wrecking, misplaced switches, arson--anything you like. At
the first break there are going to be some very striking examples made of
all the wreckers and looters we can land on."

McCloskey's chair faced the window, and he was scowling and mouthing at
the tall chimney of the shop power-plant across the tracks. Where had he
fallen upon the idea that this carefully laundered gentleman, who never
missed his daily plunge and scrub, and still wore immaculate linen,
lacked the confidence of his opinions and convictions? The trainmaster
knew, and he thought Lidgerwood must also know, that the first blow of
the vengeful ones would be directed at the man rather than at the
company's property.

"I guess maybe Hepburn will do his duty when it comes to the pinch," he
said finally. And the subject having apparently exhausted itself, he
went about his business, which was to call up the telegraph operator at
Timanyoni to ask why he had broken the rule requiring the conductor and
engineer, both of them, to sign train orders in his presence.

Thereupon, quite in keeping with the militant state of affairs on a
harassed Red Butte Western, ensued a sharp and abusive wire quarrel at
long range; and when it was over, Timanyoni was temporarily stricken
from the list of night telegraph stations pending the hastening forward
of a relief operator, to take the place of the one who, with many
profane objurgations curiously clipped in rattling Morse, had wired his
opinion of McCloskey and the new superintendent, closely interwoven with
his resignation.

It was after dark that evening when Lidgerwood closed his desk on the
pencilled blotting-pad and groped his way down the unlighted stair to
the Crow's Nest platform.

The day passenger from the east was in, and the hostler had just coupled
Engine 266 to the train for the night run to Red Butte. Lidgerwood
marked the engine's number, and saw Dawson talking to Williams, the
engineer, as he turned the corner at the passenger-station end of the
building. Later, when he was crossing the open plaza separating the
railroad yard from the town, he thought he heard the draftsman's step
behind him, and waited for Dawson to come up.

[Illustration: His hand was on the latch of the door-yard gate when a
man rose out of the gloom.]

The rearward darkness, made blacker by contrast with the white beam of
the 266's headlight, yielding no one and no further sounds, he went on,
past the tar-paper-covered hotel, past the flanking of saloons and the
false-fronted shops, past the "Arcade" with its crimson sidewalk eye
setting the danger signal for all who should enter Red-Light Sammy's,
and so up to the mesa and to the cottage of seven-o'clock dinners.

His hand was on the latch of the dooryard gate when a man rose out of
the gloom--out of the ground at his feet, as it appeared to
Lidgerwood--and in the twinkling of an eye the night and the starry dome
of it were effaced for the superintendent in a flash of red lightning
and a thunder-clap louder than the crash of worlds.

When he began to realize again, Dawson was helping him to his feet, and
the draftsman's mother was calling anxiously from the door.

"What was it?" Lidgerwood asked, still dazed and half blinded.

"A man tried to kill you," said Dawson in his most matter-of-fact tone.
"I happened along just in time to joggle his arm. That, and your quick
drop, did the business. Not hurt, are you?"

Lidgerwood was gripping the gate and trying to steady himself. A chill,
like a violent attack of ague, was shaking him to the bone.

"No," he returned, mastering the chattering teeth by the supremest
effort of will. "Thanks to you, I guess--I'm--not hurt. Who w-was the
man?"

"It was Rufford. He followed you from the Crow's Nest. Williams saw him
and put me on, so I followed him."

"Williams? Then he isn't----"

"No," said Dawson, anticipating the query. "He is with us, and he is
swinging the best of the engineers into line. But come into the house
and let me give you a drop of whiskey. This thing has got on your nerves
a bit--and no wonder."

But Lidgerwood clung to the gate-palings for yet another steadying
moment.

"Rufford, you said: you mean the discharged telegraph operator?"

"Worse luck," said Dawson. "It was his brother Bart, the 'lookout' at
Red-Light Sammy's; the fellow they call 'The Killer'."



VIII

BENSON'S BRIDGE-TIMBERS


It was on the morning following the startling episode at the Dawsons'
gate that Benson, lately arrived from the west on train 204, came into
the superintendent's office with the light of discovery in his eye. But
the discovery, if any there were, was made to wait upon a word of
friendly solicitude.

"What's this they were telling me down at the lunch-counter just
now--about somebody taking a pot-shot at you last night?" he asked.
"Dougherty said it was Bart Rufford; was it?"

Lidgerwood confirmed the gossip with a nod. "Yes, it was Rufford, so
Dawson says. I didn't recognize him, though; it was too dark."

"Well, I'm mighty glad to see that he didn't get you. What was the row?"

"I don't know, definitely; I suppose it was because I told McCloskey to
discharge his brother a while back. The brother has been hanging about
town and making threats ever since he was dropped from the pay-rolls,
but no one has paid any attention to him."

"A pretty close call, wasn't it?--or was Dougherty only putting on a few
frills to go with my cup of coffee?"

"It was close enough," admitted Lidgerwood half absently. He was
thinking not so much of the narrow escape as of the fresh and
humiliating evidence it had afforded of his own wretched unreadiness.

"All right; you'll come around to my way of thinking after a while. I
tell you, Lidgerwood, you've got to heel yourself when you live in a gun
country. I said I wouldn't do it, but I have done it, and I'll tell you
right now, when anybody in this blasted desert makes monkey-motions at
me, I'm going to blow the top of his head off, quick."

Lidgerwood's gaze was resting on the little drawer in his desk which now
contained nothing but a handful of loose cartridges.

"Hasn't it ever occurred to you, Jack, that I am the one man in the
desert who cannot afford to go armed? I am supposed to stand for law and
order. What would my example be worth if it should be noised around that
I, too, had become a 'gun-toter'?"

"Oh, I'm not going to argue with you," laughed Benson. "You'll go your
own way and do as you please, and probably get yourself comfortably shot
up before you get through. But I didn't come up here to wrangle with you
about your theoretical notions of law and order. I came to tell you that
I have been hunting for those bridge-timbers of mine."

"Well?" queried Lidgerwood; "have you found them?"

"No, and I don't believe anybody will ever find them. It's going to be
another case of Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be
comforted because they are not."

"But you have discovered something?"

"Partly yes, and partly no. I think I told you at the time that they
vanished between two days like a puff of smoke, leaving no trace behind
them. How it was done I couldn't imagine. There is a wagon-road
paralleling the river over there at the Siding, as you know, and the
first thing I did the next morning was to look for wagon-tracks. No set
of wheels carrying anything as heavy as those twelve-by-twelve
twenty-fours had gone over the road."

"How were they taken, then? They couldn't have been floated off down the
river, could they?"

"It was possible, but not at all probable," said the engineer. "My
theory was that they were taken away on somebody's railroad car. There
were only two sources of information, at first--the night operator at
Little Butte twelve miles west, and the track-walker at Point-of-Rocks,
whose boat goes down to within two or three miles of the Gloria bridge.
Goodloe, at Little Butte, reports that there was nothing moving on the
main line after the passing of the midnight freight east; and
Shaughnessy, the track-walker, is just a plain, unvarnished liar: he
knows a lot more than he will tell."

"Still, you are looking a good bit more cheerful than you were last
week," was Lidgerwood's suggestion.

"Yes; after I got the work started again with a new set of timbers, I
spent three or four days on the ground digging for information like a
dog after a woodchuck. There are some prospectors panning on the bar
three miles up the Gloria, but they knew nothing--or if they knew they
wouldn't tell. That was the case with every man I talked to on our side
of the river. But over across the Timanyoni, nearly opposite the mouth
of the Gloria, there is a little creek coming in from the north, and on
this creek I found a lone prospector--a queer old chap who hails from
my neck of woods up in Michigan."

"Go on," said Lidgerwood, when the engineer stopped to light his pipe.

"The old man told me a fairy tale, all right," Benson went on. "He was
as full of fancies as a fig is of seeds. I have been trying to believe
that what he told me isn't altogether a pipe-dream, but it sounds
mightily like one. He says that about two o'clock in the morning of
Saturday, two weeks ago, an engine and a single car backed down from the
west to the Gloria bridge, and a crowd of men swarmed off the train,
loaded those bridge-timbers, and ran away with them, going back up the
line to the west. He tells it all very circumstantially, though he
neglected to explain how he happened to be awake and on guard at any
such unearthly hour."

"Where was he when he saw all this?"

"On his own side of the river, of course. It was a dark night, and the
engine had no headlight. But the loading gang had plenty of lanterns,
and he says they made plenty of noise."

"You didn't let it rest at that?" said the superintendent.

"Oh, no, indeed! I put in the entire afternoon that day on a hand-car
with four of my men to pump it for me, and if there is a foot of the
main line, side-tracks, or spurs, west of the Gloria bridge, that I
haven't gone over, I don't know where it is. The next night I crossed
the Timanyoni and tackled the old prospector again. I wanted to check
him up--see if he had forgotten any of the little frills and details. He
hadn't. On the contrary, he was able to add what seems to me a very
important detail. About an hour after the disappearance of the one-car
train with my bridge-timbers, he heard something that he had heard many
times before. He says it was the high-pitched song of a circular saw. I
asked him if he was sure. He grinned and said he hadn't been brought up
in the Michigan woods without being able to recognize that song wherever
he might hear it."

"Whereupon you went hunting for saw-mills?" asked Lidgerwood.

"That is just what I did, and if there is one within hearing distance of
that old man's cabin on Quartz Creek, I couldn't find it. But I am
confident that there is one, and that the thieves, whoever they were,
lost no time in sawing my bridge-timbers up into board-lumber, and I'll
bet a hen worth fifty dollars against a no-account yellow dog that I
have seen those boards a dozen times within the last twenty-four hours,
without knowing it."

"Didn't see anything of our switch-engine while you were looking for
your bridge-timbers and saw-mills and other things, did you?" queried
Lidgerwood.

"No," was the quick reply, "no, but I have a think coming on that, too.
My old prospector says he couldn't make out very well in the dark, but
it seemed to him as if the engine which hauled away our bridge-timbers
didn't have any tender. How does that strike you?"

Lidgerwood grew thoughtful. The missing engine was of the "saddle-tank"
type, and it had no tender. It was hard to believe that it could be
hidden anywhere on so small a part of the Red Butte Western system as
that covered by the comparatively short mileage in Timanyoni Park. Yet
if it had not been dumped into some deep pot-hole in the river, it was
unquestionably hidden somewhere.

"Benson, are you sure you went over all the line lying west of the
Gloria bridge?" he asked pointedly.

"Every foot of it, up one side and down the other ... No, hold on, there
is that old spur running up on the eastern side of Little Butte; it's
the one that used to serve Flemister's mine when the workings were on
the eastern slope of the butte. I didn't go over that spur. It hasn't
been used for years; as I remember it, the switch connections with the
main line have been taken out."

"You're wrong about that," said Lidgerwood definitely. "McCloskey
thought so too, and told me that the frogs and point-rails had been
taken out at Silver Switch--at both of the main-line ends of the
'Y',--but the last time I was over the line I noticed that the old
switch stands were there, and that the split rails were still in place."

Benson had been tilting comfortably in his chair, smoking his pipe, but
at this he got up quickly and looked at his watch.

"Say, Lidgerwood, I'm going back to the Park on Extra 71, which ought to
leave in about five minutes," he said hurriedly. "Tell me half a dozen
things in just about as many seconds. Has Flemister used that spur since
you took charge of the road?"

"No."

"Have you ever suspected him of being mixed up in the looting?"

"I haven't known enough about him to form an opinion."

Benson stepped to the door communicating with the outer office, and
closed it quietly.

"Your man Hallock out there; how is he mixed up with Flemister?"

"I don't know. Why?"

"Because, the day before yesterday, when I was on the Little Butte
station platform, talking with Goodloe, I saw Flemister and Hallock
walking down the new spur together. When they saw me, they turned around
and began to walk back toward the mine."

"Hallock had business with Flemister, I know that much, and he took half
a day off Thursday to go and see him," said the superintendent.

"Do you happen to know what the business was?"

"Yes, I do. He went at my request."

"H'm," said Benson, "another string broken. Never mind; I've got to
catch that train."

"Still after those bridge-timbers?"

"Still after the boards they have probably been sawed into. And before I
get back I am going to know what's at the upper end of that old Silver
Switch 'Y' spur."

The young engineer had been gone less than half an hour, and Lidgerwood
had scarcely finished reading his mail, when McCloskey opened the door.
Like Benson, the trainmaster also had the light of discovery in his eye.

"More thievery," he announced gloomily. "This time they have been
looting my department. I had ten or twelve thousand feet of high-priced,
insulated copper wire, and a dozen or more telephone sets, in the
store-room. Mr. Cumberley had a notion of connecting up all the Angels
departments by telephone, and it got as far as the purchasing of the
material. The wire and all those telephone sets are gone."

"Well?" said Lidgerwood, evenly. The temptation to take it out upon the
nearest man was still as strong as ever, but he was growing better able
to resist it.

"I've done what I could," snapped McCloskey, seeming to know what was
expected of him, "but nobody knows anything, of course. So far as I
could find out, no one of my men has had occasion to go to the
store-room for a week."

"Who has the keys?"

"I have one, and Spurlock, the line-chief, has one. Hallock has the
third."

"Always Hallock!" was the half-impatient comment. "I hope you don't
suspect him of stealing your wire."

McCloskey tilted his hat over his eyes, and looked truculent enough to
fight an entire cavalry troop.

"That's just what I do," he gritted. "I've got him dead to rights this
time. He was in that store-room day before yesterday, or rather night
before last. Callahan saw him coming out of there."

Lidgerwood sat back in his chair and smiled. "I don't blame you much,
Mac; this thing is getting to be pretty binding upon all of us. But I
think you are mistaken in your conclusion, I mean. Hallock has been
making an inventory of material on hand for the past week or more, and
now that I think of it, I remember having seen your wire and the
telephone sets included in his last sheet of telegraph supplies."

"There it goes again," said the trainmaster sourly. "Every time I get a
half-hitch on that fellow, something turns up to make it slip. But if I
had my way about twenty minutes I'd go and choke him till he'd tell me
what he has done with that wire."

Lidgerwood was smiling again.

"Try to be as fair to him as you can," he advised good-naturedly. "I
know you dislike him, and probably you have good reasons. But have you
stopped to ask yourself what possible use he could make of the stolen
material?"

Again McCloskey's hat went to the pugnacious angle. "I don't know
anything any more; you couldn't prove it by me what day of the week it
is. But I can tell you one thing, Mr. Lidgerwood"--shaking an emphatic
finger--"Flemister has just put a complete system of wiring and
telephones in his mine, and if he had the stuff for the system shipped
in over our railroad, the agent at Little Butte doesn't know anything
about it. I asked Goodloe, by grapples!"

But even this was unconvincing to the superintendent.

"That proves nothing against Hallock, Mac, as you will see when you cool
down a little," he said.

"I know it doesn't," wrathfully; "nothing proves anything any more. I
suppose I've got to say it again: I'm all in, down and out." And he went
away, growling to his hat-brim.

Late in the evening of the same day, Benson returned from the west,
coming in on a light engine that was deadheading from Red Butte to the
Angels shops. He sought out Lidgerwood at once, and flinging himself
wearily into a chair at the superintendent's elbow, made his report of
the day's doings.

"I have, and I haven't," he said, beginning in the midst of things, as
his habit was. "You were right about the track connection at Silver
Switch. It is in; Flemister put it in himself a month ago when he had a
car-load of coal taken up to the back door of his mine."

"Did you go up over the spur?"

"Yes; and I had my trouble for my pains. Before I go any further,
Lidgerwood, I'd like to ask you one question: can we afford to quarrel
with Mr. Pennington Flemister?"

"Benson, we sha'n't hesitate a single moment to quarrel with the biggest
mine-owner or freight-shipper this side of the Crosswater Hills if we
have the right on our side. Spread it out. What did you find?"

Benson sank a little lower in his chair. "The first thing I found was a
couple of armed guards--a pair of tough-looking citizens with guns
sagging at their hips, lounging around the Wire-Silver back door. There
is quite a little nest of buildings at the old entrance to the
Wire-Silver, and a stockade has been built to enclose them. The old spur
runs through a gate in the stockade, and the gate was open; but the two
toughs wouldn't let me go inside. I wrangled with them first, and tried
to bribe them afterward, but it was no go. Then I started to walk around
the outside of the stockade, which is only a high board fence, and they
objected to that. Thereupon I told them to go straight to blazes, and
walked away down the spur, but when I got out of sight around the first
curve I took to the timber on the butte slope and climbed to a point
from which I could look over into Flemister's carefully built
enclosure."

"Well, what did you see?"

"Much or little, just as you happen to look at it. There are half a
dozen buildings in the yard, and two of them are new and unpainted.
Sizing them up from a distance, I said to myself that the lumber in them
hadn't been very long out of the mill. One of them is evidently the
power-house; it has an iron chimney set in the roof, and the power-plant
was running."

For a little time after Benson had finished his report there was
silence, and Lidgerwood had added many squares to the pencillings on his
desk blotter before he spoke again.

"You say two of the buildings are new; did you make any inquiries about
recent lumber shipments to the Wire-Silver?"

"I did," said the young engineer soberly. "So far as our station records
show, Flemister has had no material, save coal, shipped in over either
the eastern or the western spur for several months."

"Then you believe that he took your bridge-timbers and sawed them up
into lumber?"

"I do--as firmly as I believe that the sun will rise to-morrow. And that
isn't all of it, Lidgerwood. He is the man who has your switch-engine.
As I have said, the power-plant was running while I was up there to-day.
The power is a steam engine, and if you'd stand off and listen to it
you'd swear it was a locomotive pulling a light train up an easy grade.
Of course, I'm only guessing at that, but I think you will agree with me
that the burden of proof lies upon Flemister."

Lidgerwood was nodding slowly. "Yes, on Flemister and some others. Who
are the others, Benson?"

"I have no more guesses coming, and I am too tired to invent any.
Suppose we drop it until to-morrow. I'm afraid it means a fight or a
funeral, and I am not quite equal to either to-night."

For a long time after Benson had gone, Lidgerwood sat staring out of his
office window at the masthead electrics in the railroad yard. Benson's
news had merely confirmed his own and McCloskey's conclusion that some
one in authority was in collusion with the thieves who were raiding the
company. Sooner or later it must come to a grapple, and he dreaded it.

It was deep in the night when he closed his desk and went to the little
room partitioned off in the rear of the private office as a
sleeping-apartment. When he was preparing to go to bed, he noticed that
the tiny relay on the stand at his bed's head was silent. Afterward,
when he tried to adjust the instrument, he found it ruined beyond
repair. Some one had connected its wiring with the electric lighting
circuit, and the tiny coils were fused and burned into solid little
cylinders of copper.



IX

JUDSON'S JOKE


Barton Rufford, ex-distiller of illicit whiskey in the Tennessee
mountains, ex-welsher turned informer and betraying his neighbor
law-breakers to the United States revenue officers, ex-everything which
made his continued stay in the Cumberlands impossible, was a man of
distinction in the Red Desert.

In the wider field of the West he had been successively a claim-jumper,
a rustler of unbranded cattle, a telegraph operator in collusion with a
gang of train-robbers, and finally a faro "lookout": the armed guard
who sits at the head of the gaming-table in the untamed regions to kill
and kill quickly if a dispute arises.

Angels acknowledged his citizenship without joy. A cold-blooded
murderer, with an appalling record; and a man with a temper like smoking
tow, an itching trigger-finger, the eye of a duck-hawk, and cat-like
swiftness of movement, he tyrannized the town when the humor was on
him; and as yet no counter-bully had come to chase him into oblivion.

For Lidgerwood to have earned the enmity of this man was considered
equivalent to one of three things: the superintendent would throw up his
job and leave the Red Desert, preferably by the first train; or Rufford
would kill him; or he must kill Rufford. Red Butte Western opinion was
somewhat divided as to which horn of the trilemma the victim of
Rufford's displeasure would choose, all admitting that, for the moment,
the choice lay with the superintendent. Would Lidgerwood fight, or run,
or sit still and be slain? In the Angels roundhouse, on the second
morning following the attempt upon Lidgerwood's life at the gate of the
Dawson cottage, the discussion was spirited, not to say acrimonious.

"I'm telling you hyenas that Collars-and-Cuffs ain't going to run away,"
insisted Williams, who was just in from the all-night trip to Red Butte
and return. "He ain't built that way."

Lester, the roundhouse foreman, himself a man-queller of no mean repute,
thought differently. Lidgerwood would, most likely, take to the high
grass and the tall timber. The alternative was to "pack a gun" for
Rufford--an alternative quite inconceivable to Lester when it was
predicated of the superintendent.

"I don't know about that," said Judson, the discharged--and consequently
momentarily sobered--engineer of the 271. "He's fooled everybody more
than once since he lit down in the Red Desert. First crack everybody
said he didn't know his business, 'cause he wore b'iled shirts: he
_does_ know it. Next, you could put your ear to the ground and hear that
he didn't have the sand to round up the maverick R.B.W. He's doing it. I
don't know but he might even run a bluff on Bart Rufford, if he felt
like it."

"Come off, John!" growled the big foreman. "You needn't be afraid to
talk straight over here. He hit you when you was down, and we all know
you're only waitin' for a chance to hit back."

Judson was a red-headed man, effusively good-natured when he was in
liquor, and a quick-tempered fighter of battles when he was not.

"Don't you make any such mistake!" he snapped. "That's what McCloskey
said when he handed me the 'good-by.' 'You'll be one more to go round
feelin' for Mr. Lidgerwood's throat, I suppose,' says he. By cripes!
what I said to Mac I'm sayin' to you, Bob Lester. I know good and well
a-plenty when I've earned my blue envelope. If I'd been in the super's
place, the 271 would have had a new runner a long time ago!"

"Oh, hell! _I_ say he'll chase his feet," puffed Broadbent, the fat
machinist who was truing off the valve-seats of the 195. "If Rufford
doesn't make him, there's some others that will."

Judson flared up again.

"Who you quotin' now, Fatty? One o' the shop 'prentices? Or maybe it's
Rank Hallock? Say, what's he doin' monkeyin' round the back shop so much
lately? I'm goin' to stay round here till I get a chance to lick that
scrub."

Broadbent snorted his derision of all mere enginemen.

"You rail-pounders'd better get next to Rankin Hallock," he warned.
"He's the next sup'rintendent of the R.B.W. You'll see the 'pointment
circular the next day after that jim-dandy over in the Crow's Nest gets
moved off'n the map."

"Well, I'm some afeared Bart Rufford's likely to move him," drawled
Clay, the six-foot Kentuckian who was filing the 195's brasses at the
bench. "Which the same I ain't rejoicin' about, neither. That little
cuss is shore a mighty good railroad man. And when you ain't rubbin' his
fur the wrong way, he treats you white."

"For instance?" snapped Hodges, a freight engineer who had been thrice
"on the carpet" in Lidgerwood's office for over-running his orders.

"Oh, they ain't so blame' hard to find," Clay retorted. "Last week, when
we was out on the Navajo wreck, me and the boy didn't have no
dinner-buckets. Bradford was runnin' the super's car, and when Andy just
sort o' happened to mention the famine up along, the little man made
that Jap cook o' his'n get us up a dinner that'd made your hair frizzle.
He shore did."

"Why don't you go and take up for him with Bart Rufford?" sneered
Broadbent, stopping his facing machine to set in a new cut on the
valve-seat.

"Not me. I've got cold feet," laughed the Kentuckian. "I'm like the
little kid's daddy in the Sunday-school song: I ain't got time to die
yet--got too much to do."

It was Williams's innings, and what he said was cautionary.

"Dry up, you fellows; here comes Gridley."

The master-mechanic was walking down the planked track from the back
shop, carrying his years, which showed only in the graying mustache and
chin beard, and his hundred and eighty pounds of well-set-up bone and
muscle, jauntily. Now, as always, he was the beau ideal of the
industrial field-officer; handsome in a clean-cut masculine way, a type
of vigor--but also, if the signs of the full face and the eager eyes
were to be regarded, of the elemental passions.

Angelic rumor hinted that he was a periodic drunkard: he was both more
and less than that. Like many another man, Henry Gridley lived a double
life; or, perhaps it would be nearer the truth to say that there were
two Henry Gridleys. Lidgerwood, the Dawsons, the little world of Angels
at large, knew the virile, accomplished mechanical engineer and master
of men, which was his normal personality. What time the other
personality, the elemental barbarian, yawned, stretched itself, and came
awake, the unspeakable dens of the Copah lower quarter engulfed him
until the nether-man had gorged himself on degradation.

To his men, Gridley was a tyrant, exacting, but just; ruling them, as
the men of the desert could only be ruled, with the mailed fist. Yet
there was a human hand inside of the steel gauntlet, as all men knew.
Having once beaten a bullying gang-boss into the hospital at Denver, he
had promptly charged himself with the support of the man's family. Other
generous roughnesses were recorded of him, and if the attitude of the
men was somewhat tempered by wholesome fear, it was none the less
loyal.

Hence, when he entered the roundhouse, industrious silence supplanted
the discussion of the superintendent's case. Glancing at the group of
enginemen, and snapping out a curt criticism of Broadbent's slowness on
the valve-seats, he beckoned to Judson. When the discharged engineer had
followed him across the turn-table, he faced about and said, not too
crisply, "So your sins have found you out one more time, have they,
John?"

Judson nodded.

"What is it this time, thirty days?"

Judson shook his head gloomily. "No, I'm down and out."

"Lidgerwood made it final, did he? Well, you can't blame him."

"You hain't heard me sayin' anything, have you?" was the surly
rejoinder.

"No, but it isn't in human nature to forget these little things." Then,
suddenly: "Where were you day before yesterday between noon and one
o'clock, about the time you should have been taking your train out?"

Judson had a needle-like mind when the alcohol was out of it, and the
sudden query made him dissemble.

"About ten o'clock I was playin' pool in Rafferty's place with the butt
end of the cue. After that, things got kind o'hazy."

"Well, I want you to buckle down and think hard. Don't you remember
going over to Cat Biggs's about noon, and sitting down at one of the
empty card-tables to drink yourself stiff?"

Judson could not have told, under the thumbscrews, why he was prompted
to tell Gridley a plain lie. But he did it.

"I can't remember," he denied. Then then needle-pointed brain got in its
word, and he added, "Why?"

"I saw you there when I was going up to dinner. You called me in to tell
me what you were going to do to Lidgerwood if he slated you for getting
drunk. Don't you remember it?"

Judson was looking the master-mechanic fairly in the eyes when he said,
"No, I don't remember a thing about that."

"Try again," said Gridley, and now the shrewd gray eyes under the brim
of the soft-rolled felt hat held the engineer helpless.

"I guess--I do--remember it--now," said Judson, slowly, trying, still
ineffectually, to break Gridley's masterful eyehold upon him.

[Illustration: "Bart's afraid he can't duck without dying."]

"I thought you would," said the master-mechanic, without releasing him.
"And you probably remember, also, that I took you out into the street
and started you home."

"Yes," said Judson, this time without hesitation.

"Well, keep on remembering it; you went home to Maggie, and she put you
to bed. That is what you are to keep in mind."

Judson had broken the curious eye-grip at last, and again he said,
"Why?"

Gridley hooked his finger absently in the engineer's buttonhole.

"Because, if you don't, a man named Rufford says he'll start a lead mine
in you. I heard him say it last night--overheard him, I should say.
That's all."

The master-mechanic passed on, going out by the great door which opened
for the locomotive entering-track. Judson hung upon his heel for a
moment, and then went slowly out through the tool-room and across the
yard tracks to the Crow's Nest.

He found McCloskey in his office above stairs, mouthing and grimacing
over the string-board of the new time-table.

"Well?" growled the trainmaster, when he saw who had opened and closed
the door. "Come back to tell me you've sworn off? That won't go down
with Mr. Lidgerwood. When he fires, he means it."

"You wait till I ask you for my job back again, won't you, Jim
McCloskey?" said the disgraced one hotly. "I hain't asked it yet; and
what's more, I'm sober."

"Sure you are," muttered McCloskey. "You'd be better-natured with a
drink or two in you. What's doing?"

"That's what I came over here to find out," said Judson steadily. "What
is the boss going to do about this flare-up with Bart Rufford?"

The trainmaster shrugged.

"You've got just as many guesses as anybody, John. What you can bet on
is that he will do something different."

Judson had slouched to the window. When he spoke, it was without turning
his head.

"You said something yesterday morning about me feeling for the boss's
throat along with that gang up-town that's trying to drink itself up to
the point of hitting him back. It don't strike me that way, Mac."

"How does it strike you?"

Judson turned slowly, crossed the room, and sat down in the only vacant
chair.

"You know what's due to happen, Mac. Rufford won't try it on again the
way he tried it night before last. I heard up-town that he has posted
his de-fi: Mr. Lidgerwood shoots him on sight or he shoots Mr.
Lidgerwood on sight. You can figure that out, can't you?"

"Not knowing Mr. Lidgerwood much better than you do, John, I'm not sure
that I can."

"Well, it's easy. Bart'll walk up to the boss in broad daylight, drop
him, and then fill him full o'lead after he's down. I've seen him--saw
him do it to Bixby, Mr. Brewster's foreman at the Copperette."

"Say the rest of it," commanded McCloskey.

"I've been thinking. While I'm laying round with nothing much to do, I
believe I'll keep tab on Bart for a little spell. I don't love him much,
nohow."

McCloskey's face contortion was intended to figure as a derisive smile.
"Pshaw, John!" he commented, "he'd skin you alive. Why, even Jack
Hepburn is afraid of him!"

"Jack is? How do you know that?"

McCloskey shrugged again.

"Are you with us, John?" he asked cautiously.

"I ain't with Bart Rufford and the tin-horns," said Judson negatively.

"Then I'll tell you a fairy tale," said the trainmaster, lowering his
voice. "I gave you notice that Mr. Lidgerwood would do something
different: he did it, bright and early this morning; went to Jake
Schleisinger, who had to try twice before he could remember that he was
a justice of the peace, and swore out a warrant for Rufford's arrest, on
a charge of assault with intent to kill."

"Sure," said Judson, "that's what any man would do in a civilized
country, ain't it?"

"Yes, but not here, John--not in the red-colored desert, with Bart
Rufford's name in the body of the warrant."

"I don't know why not," insisted the engineer stubbornly. "But go on
with the story; it ain't any fairy tale, so far."

"When he'd got the warrant, Schleisinger protesting all the while that
Bart'd kill him for issuing it, Mr. Lidgerwood took it to Hepburn and
told him to serve it. Jack backed down so fast that he fell over his
feet. Said to ask him anything else under God's heavens and he'd do
it--anything but that."

"Huh!" said Judson. "If I'd took an oath to serve warrants I'd serve
'em, if it did make me sick at my stomach." Then he got up and shuffled
away to the window again, and when next he spoke his voice was the voice
of a broken man.

"I lied to you a minute ago, Mac. I did want my job back. I came over
here hopin' that you and Mr. Lidgerwood might be seein' things a little
different by this time. I've quit the whiskey."

McCloskey wagged his shaggy head.

"So you've said before, John, and not once or twice either."

"I know, but every man gets to the bottom, some time. I've hit bed-rock,
and I've just barely got sense enough to know it. Let me tell you, Mac,
I've pulled trains on mighty near every railroad in this country--and
then some. The Red Butte is my last ditch. With my record I couldn't get
an engine anywhere else in the United States. Can't you see what I'm up
against?"

The trainmaster nodded. He was human.

"Well, it's Maggie and the babies now," Judson went on. "They don't
starve, Mac, not while I'm on top of earth. Don't you reckon you could
make some sort of a play for me with the boss, Jim? He's got bowels."

McCloskey did not resent the familiarity of the Christian name, neither
did he hold out any hope of reinstatement.

"No, John. One or two things I've learned about Mr. Lidgerwood: he
doesn't often hit when he's mad, and he doesn't take back anything he
says in cold blood. I'm afraid you've cooked your last goose."

"Let me go in and see him. He ain't half as hard-hearted as you are,
Jim."

The trainmaster shook his head. "No, it won't do any good. I heard him
tell Hallock not to let anybody in on him this morning."

"Hallock be--Say, Mac, what makes him keep that--" Judson broke off
abruptly, pulled his hat over his eyes, and said, "Reckon it's worth
while to shove me over to the other side, Jim McCloskey?"

"What other side?" demanded McCloskey.

Judson scoffed openly. "You ain't making out like you don't know, are
you? Who was behind that break of Rufford's last night?"

"There didn't need to be anybody behind it. Bart thinks he has a kick
coming because his brother was discharged."

"But there was somebody behind it. Tell me, Mac, did you ever see me too
drunk to read my orders and take my signals?"

"No, don't know as I have."

"Well, I never was. And I don't often get too drunk to hear straight,
either, even if I do look and act like the biggest fool God ever let
live. I was in Cat Biggs's day before yesterday noon, when I ought to
have been down here taking 202 east. There were two men in the back room
putting their heads together. I don't know whether they knew I was on
the other side of the partition or not. If they did, they probably
didn't pay any attention to a drivellin' idiot that couldn't wrap his
tongue around an order for more whiskey."

"Go on!" snapped McCloskey, almost viciously.

"They were talking about 'fixing' the boss. One of 'em was for the slow
and safe way: small bets and a good many of 'em. The other was for
pulling a straight flush on Mr. Lidgerwood, right now. Number One said
no, that things were moving along all right, and it wasn't worth while
to rush. Then something was said about a woman; I didn't catch her name
or just what the hurry man said about her, only it was something about
Mr. Lidgerwood's bein' in shape to mix up in it. At that Number One
flopped over. 'Pull it off whenever you like!' says he, savage-like."

McCloskey sprang from his chair and towered over the smaller man.

"One of those men was Bart Rufford: who was the other one, Judson?"

Judson was apparently unmoved. "You're forgettin' that I was plum' fool
drunk, Jim. I didn't see either one of 'em."

"But you heard?"

"Yes, one of 'em was Rufford, as you say, and up to a little bit ago I'd
'a' been ready to swear to the voice of the one you haven't guessed. But
now I can't."

"Why can't you do it now?"

"Sit down and I'll tell you. I've been jarred. Everything I've told you
so far, I can remember, or it seems as if I can, but right where I broke
off a cog slipped. I must 'a' been drunker than I thought I was. Gridley
says he was going by and he says I called him in and told him,
fool-wise, all the things I was going to do to Mr. Lidgerwood. He says
he hushed me up, called me out to the sidewalk, and started me home.
Mac, I don't remember a single wheel-turn of all that, and it makes me
scary about the other part."

McCloskey relapsed into his swing-chair.

"You said you thought you recognized the other man by his voice. It
sounds like a drunken pipe-dream, the whole of it; but who did you think
it was?"

Judson rose up, jerked his thumb toward the door of the superintendent's
business office, and said, "Mac, if the whiskey didn't fake the whole
business for me--the man who was mumblin' with Bart Rufford
was--Hallock!"

"Hallock?" said McCloskey; "and you said there was a woman in it? That
fits down to the ground, John. Mr. Lidgerwood has found out something
about Hallock's family tear-up, or he's likely to find out. That's what
that means!"

What more McCloskey said was said to an otherwise empty room. Judson had
opened the door and closed it, and was gone.

Summing up the astounding thing afterward, those who could recall the
details and piece them together traced Judson thus:

It was ten-forty when he came down from McCloskey's office, and for
perhaps twenty minutes he had been seen lounging at the lunch-counter in
the station end of the Crow's Nest. At about eleven one witness had seen
him striking at the anvil in Hepburn's shop, the town marshal being the
town blacksmith in the intervals of official duty.

Still later, he had apparently forgotten the good resolution declared to
McCloskey, and all Angels saw him staggering up and down Mesa Avenue,
stumbling into and out of the many saloons, and growing, to all
appearances, more hopelessly irresponsible with every fresh stumble.
This was his condition when he tripped over the doorstep into the
"Arcade," and fell full length on the floor of the bar-room. Grimsby,
the barkeeper, picked him up and tried to send him home, but with
good-natured and maudlin pertinacity he insisted on going on to the
gambling-room in the rear.

The room was darkened, as befitted its use, and a lighted lamp hung over
the centre of the oval faro table as if the time were midnight instead
of midday. Eight men, five of them miners from the Brewster copper mine,
and three of them discharged employees of the Red Butte Western, were
the bettors; Red-Light himself, in sombrero and shirt-sleeves, was
dealing, and Rufford, sitting on a stool at the table's end, was the
"lookout."

When Judson reeled in there was a pause, and a movement to put him out.
One of the miners covered his table stakes and rose to obey Rufford's
nod. But at this conjuncture the railroad men interfered. Judson was a
fellow craftsman, and everybody knew that he was harmless in his cups.
Let him stay--and play, if he wanted to.

So Judson stayed, and stumbled round the table, losing his money and
dribbling foolishness. Now faro is a silent game, and more than once an
angry voice commanded the foolish one to choose his place and to shut
his mouth. But the ex-engineer seemed quite incapable of doing either.
Twice he made the wavering circuit of the oval table, and when he
finally gripped an empty chair it was the one nearest to Rufford on the
right, and diagonally opposite to the dealer.

What followed seemed to have no connecting sequence for the other
players. Too restless to lose more than one bet in the place he had
chosen, Judson tried to rise, tangled his feet in the chair, and fell
down, laughing uproariously. When he struggled to the perpendicular
again, after two or three ineffectual attempts, he was fairly behind
Rufford's stool.

One man, who chanced to be looking, saw the "lookout" start and stiffen
rigidly in his place, staring straight ahead into vacancy. A moment
later the entire circle of witnesses saw him take a revolver from the
holster on his hip and lay it upon the table, with another from the
breast pocket of his coat to keep it company. Then his hands went
quickly behind him, and they all heard the click of the handcuffs.

The man in the sombrero and shirt-sleeves was first to come alive.

"Duck, Bart!" he shouted, whipping a weapon from its convenient shelf
under the table's edge. But Judson, trained to the swift handling of
many mechanisms in the moment of respite before a wreck or a
derailment, was ready for him.

"Bart's afraid he can't duck without dying," he said grimly, screening
himself behind his captive. Then to the others, in the same unhasting
tone: "Some of you fellows just quiet Sammy down till I get out of here
with this peach of mine. I've got the papers, and I know what I'm doin';
if this thing I'm holdin' against Bart's back should happen to go
off----"

That ended it, so far as resistance was concerned. Judson backed quickly
out through the bar-room, drawing his prisoner backward after him; and a
moment later Angels was properly electrified by the sight of Rufford,
the Red Desert terror, marching sullenly down to the Crow's Nest, with a
fiery-headed little man at his elbow, the little man swinging the weapon
which had been made to simulate the cold muzzle of the revolver when he
had pressed it into Rufford's back at the gaming-table.

It was nothing more formidable than a short, thick "S"-wrench, of the
kind used by locomotive engineers in tightening the nuts of the
piston-rod packing glands.



X

FLEMISTER AND OTHERS

The jocosely spectacular arrest of Barton Rufford, with its appeal to
the grim humor of the desert, was responsible for a brief lull in the
storm of antagonism evoked by Lidgerwood's attempt to bring order out of
the chaos reigning in his small kingdom. For a time Angels was a-grin
again, and while the plaudits were chiefly for Judson, the figure of the
correctly clothed superintendent who was courageous enough to appeal to
the law, loomed large in the reflected light of the red-headed
engineer's cool daring.

For the space of a week there were no serious disasters, and Lidgerwood,
with good help from McCloskey and Benson, continued to dig persistently
into the mystery of the wholesale robberies. With Benson's discoveries
for a starting-point, the man Flemister was kept under surveillance, and
it soon became evident to the three investigators that the owner of the
Wire-Silver mine had been profiting liberally at the expense of the
railroad company in many ways. That there had been connivance on the
part of some one in authority in the railroad service, was also a fact
safely assumable; and each added thread of evidence seemed more and more
to entangle the chief clerk.

But behind the mystery of the robberies, Lidgerwood began to get
glimpses of a deeper mystery involving Flemister and Hallock. Angelic
tradition, never very clearly defined and always shot through with
prejudice, spoke freely of a former friendship between the two men.
Whether the friendship had been broken, or whether, for reasons best
known to themselves, they had allowed the impression to go out that it
had been broken, Lidgerwood could not determine from the bits of gossip
brought in by the trainmaster. But one thing was certain: of all the
minor officials in the railway service, Hallock was the one who was best
able to forward and to conceal Flemister's thieveries.

It was in the midst of these subterranean investigations that Lidgerwood
had a call from the owner of the Wire-Silver. On the Saturday in the
week of surcease, Flemister came in on the noon train from the west, and
it was McCloskey who ushered him into the superintendent's office.
Lidgerwood looked up and saw a small man wearing the khaki of the
engineers, with a soft felt hat to match. The snapping black eyes, with
the straight brows almost meeting over the nose, suggested Goethe's
_Mephistopheles_, and Flemister shaved to fit the part, with curling
mustaches and a dagger-pointed imperial. Instantly Lidgerwood began
turning the memory pages in an effort to recall where he had seen the
man before, but it was not until Flemister began to speak that he
remembered his first day in authority, the wreck at Gloria Siding, and
the man who had driven up in a buckboard to hold converse with the
master-mechanic.

"I've been trying to find time for a month or more to come up and get
acquainted with you, Mr. Lidgerwood," the visitor began, when Lidgerwood
had waved him to a chair. "I hope you are not going to hold it against
me that I haven't done it sooner."

Lidgerwood's smile was meant to be no more than decently hospitable.

"We are not standing much upon ceremony in these days of
reorganization," he said. Then, to hold the interview down firmly to a
business basis: "What can I do for you, Mr. Flemister?"

"Nothing--nothing on top of earth; it's the other way round. I came to
do something for you--or, rather, for one of your subordinates. Hallock
tells me that the ghost of the old Mesa Building and Loan Association
still refuses to be laid, and he intimates that some of the survivors
are trying to make it unpleasant for him by accusing him to you."

"Yes," said Lidgerwood, studying his man shrewdly by the road of the
eye, and without prejudice to the listening ear.

"As I understand it, the complaint of the survivors is based upon the
fact that they think they ought to have had a cash dividend forthcoming
on the closing up of the association's affairs," Flemister went on; and
Lidgerwood again said, "Yes."

"As Hallock has probably told you, I had the misfortune to be the
president of the company. Perhaps it's only fair to say that it was a
losing venture from the first for those of us who put the loaning
capital into it. As you probably know, the money in these mutual benefit
companies is made on lapses, but when the lapses come all in a
bunch----"

"I am not particularly interested in the general subject, Mr.
Flemister," Lidgerwood cut in. "As the matter has been presented to me,
I understand there was a cash balance shown on the books, and that there
was no cash in the treasury to make it good. Since Hallock was the
treasurer, I can scarcely do less than I have done. I am merely asking
him--and you--to make some sort of an explanation which will satisfy the
losers."

"There is only one explanation to be made," said the
ex-building-and-loan president, brazenly. "A few of us who were the
officers of the company were the heaviest losers, and we felt that we
were entitled to the scraps and leavings."

"In other words, you looted the treasury among you," said Lidgerwood
coldly. "Is that it, Mr. Flemister?"

The mine-owner laughed easily. "I'm not going to quarrel with you over
the word," he returned. "Possibly the proceeding was a little informal,
if you measure it by some of the more highly civilized standards."

"I don't care to go into that," was Lidgerwood's comment, "but I cannot
evade my responsibility for the one member of your official staff who is
still on my pay-roll. How far was Hallock implicated?"

"He was not implicated at all, save in a clerical way."

"You mean that he did not share in the distribution of the money?"

"He did not."

"Then it is only fair that you should set him straight with the others,
Mr. Flemister."

The ex-president did not reply at once. He took time to roll a
cigarette leisurely, to light it, and to take one or two deep
inhalations, before he said: "It's a rather disagreeable thing to do,
this digging into old graveyards, don't you think? I can understand why
you should wish to be assured of Hallock's non-complicity, and I have
assured you of that; but as for these kickers, really I don't know what
you can do with them unless you send them to me. And if you do that, I
am afraid some of them may come back on hospital stretchers. I haven't
any time to fool with them at this late day."

Lidgerwood felt his gorge rising, and a great contempt for Flemister was
mingled with a manful desire to pitch him out into the corridor. It was
a concession to his unexplainable pity for Hallock that made him
temporize.

"As I said before, you needn't go into the ethics of the matter with me,
Mr. Flemister," he said. "But in justice to Hallock, I think you ought
to make a statement of some kind that I can show to these men who, very
naturally, look to me for redress. Will you do that?"

"I'll think about it," returned the mine-owner shortly; but Lidgerwood
was not to be put off so easily.

"You must think of it to some good purpose," he insisted. "If you
don't, I shall be obliged to put my own construction upon your failure
to do so, and to act accordingly."

Flemister's smile showed his teeth.

"You're not threatening me, are you, Mr. Lidgerwood?"

"Oh, no; there is no occasion for threats. But if you don't make me that
statement, fully exonerating Hallock, I shall feel at liberty to make
one of my own, embodying what you have just told me. And if I am
compelled to do this, you must not blame me if I am not able to place
the matter in the most favorable light for you."

This time the visitor's smile was a mere baring of the teeth.

"Is it worth your while to make it a personal quarrel with me, Mr.
Lidgerwood?" he asked, with a thinly veiled menace in his tone.

"I am not looking for quarrelsome occasions with you or with any one,"
was the placable rejoinder. "And I hope you are not going to force me to
show you up. Is there anything else? If not, I'm afraid I shall have to
ask you to excuse me. This is one of my many busy days."

After Flemister had gone, Lidgerwood was almost sorry that he had not
struck at once into the matter of the thieveries. But as yet he had no
proof upon which to base an open accusation. One thing he did do,
however, and that was to summon McCloskey and give instructions pointing
to a bit of experimental observation with the mine-owner as the subject.

"He can't get away from here before the evening train, and I should like
to know where he goes and what be does with himself," was the form the
instructions took. "When we find out who his accomplices are, I shall
have something more to say to him."

"I'll have him tagged," promised the trainmaster; and a few minutes
later, when the Wire-Silver visitor sauntered up Mesa Avenue in quest of
diversion wherewith to fill the hours of waiting for his train, a small
man, red-haired, and with a mechanic's cap pulled down over his eyes,
kept even step with him from dive to dive.

Judson's report, made to the trainmaster that evening after the
westbound train had left, was short and concise.

"He went up and sat in Sammy's game and didn't come out until it was
time to make a break for his train. I didn't see him talking to anybody
after he left here." This was the wording of the report.

"You are sure of that, are you, John?" questioned McCloskey.

Judson hung his head. "Maybe I ain't as sure as I ought to be. I saw him
go into Sammy's, and saw him come out again, and I know he didn't stay
in the bar-room. I didn't go in where they keep the tiger. Sammy don't
love me any more since I held Bart Rufford up with an S-wrench, and I
was afraid I might disturb the game if I went buttin' in to make sure
that Flemister was there. But I guess there ain't no doubt about it."

Thus Judson, who was still sober, and who meant to be faithful according
to his gifts. He was scarcely blameworthy for not knowing of the
existence of a small back room in the rear of the gambling-den; or for
the further unknowledge of the fact that the man in search of diversion
had passed on into this back room after placing a few bets at the silent
game, appearing no more until he had come out through the gambling-room
on his way to the train. If Judson had dared to press his espial, he
might have been the poorer by the loss of blood, or possibly of his
life; but, living to get away with it, he would have been the richer for
an important bit of information. For one thing, he would have known that
Flemister had not spent the afternoon losing his money across the
faro-table; and for another, he might have made sure, by listening to
the subdued voices beyond the closed door, that the man he was shadowing
was not alone in the back room to which he had retreated.



XI

NEMESIS


On the second day following Flemister's visit to Angels, Lidgerwood was
called again to Red Butte to another conference with the mine-owners. On
his return, early in the afternoon, his special was slowed and stopped
at a point a few miles east of the "Y" spur at Silver Switch, and upon
looking out he saw that Benson's bridge-builders were once more at work
on the wooden trestle spanning the Gloria. Benson himself was in
command, but he turned the placing of the string-timbers over to his
foreman and climbed to the platform of the superintendent's service-car.

"I won't hold you more than a few minutes," he began, but the
superintendent pointed to one of the camp-chairs and sat down, saying:
"There's no hurry. We have time orders against 73 at Timanyoni, and we
would have to wait there, anyhow. What do you know now?--more than you
knew the last time we talked?"

Benson shook his head. "Nothing that would do us any good in a jury
trial," he admitted reluctantly. "We are not going to find out anything
more until you send somebody up to Flemister's mine with a
search-warrant."

Lidgerwood was gazing absently out over the low hills intervening
between his point of view and the wooded summit of Little Butte.

"Whom am I to send, Jack?" he asked. "I have just come from Red Butte,
and I took occasion to make a few inquiries. Flemister is evidently
prepared at all points. From what I learned to-day, I am inclined to
believe that the sheriff of Timanyoni County would probably refuse to
serve a warrant against him, if we could find a magistrate who would
issue one. Nice state of affairs, isn't it?"

"Beautiful," Benson agreed, adding: "But you don't want Flemister half
as bad as you want the man who is working with him. Are you still trying
to believe that it isn't Hallock?"

"I am still trying to be fair and just. McCloskey says that the two used
to be friends--Hallock and Flemister. I don't believe they are now.
Hallock didn't want to go to Flemister about that building-and-loan
business, and I couldn't make out whether he was afraid, or whether it
was just a plain case of dislike."

"It would doubtless be Hallock's policy--and Flemister's, too, for that
matter--to make you believe they are not friends. You'll have to admit
they are together a great deal."

"I'll admit it if you say so, but I didn't know it before. How do you
know it?"

"Hallock is over here every day or two; I have seen him three or four
times since that day when he and Flemister were walking down the new
spur together and turned back at sight of me," said Benson. "Of course,
I don't know what other business Hallock may have over here, but one
thing I do know, he has been across the river, digging into the inner
consciousness of my old prospector. And that isn't all. After he had got
the story of the timber stealing out of the old man, he tried to bribe
him not to tell it to any one else; tried the bribe first and a scare
afterward--told him that something would happen to him if he didn't keep
a still tongue in his head."

Lidgerwood shook his head slowly. "That looks pretty bad. Why should he
want to silence the old man?"

"That's just what I've been asking myself. But right on the heels of
that, another little mystery developed. Hallock asked the old man if he
would be willing to swear in court to the truth of his story. The old
man said he would."

"Well?" said Lidgerwood.

"A night or two later the old prospector's shack burned down, and the
next morning he found a notice pinned to a tree near one of his
sluice-boxes. It was a polite invitation for him to put distance between
him and the Timanyoni district. I suppose you can put two and two
together, as I did."

Again Lidgerwood said: "It looks pretty bad for Hallock. No one but the
thieves themselves could have any possible reason for driving the old
man out of the country. Did he go?"

"Not much; he isn't built that way. That same day he went to work
building him a new shack; and he swears that the next man who gets near
enough to set it afire won't live to get away and brag about it. Two
days afterward Hallock showed up again, and the old fellow ran him off
with a gun."

Just then the bridge-foreman came up to say that the timbers were in
place, and Benson swung off to give Lidgerwood's engineer instructions
to run carefully. As the service-car platform came along, Lidgerwood
leaned over the railing for a final word with Benson. "Keep in touch
with your old man, and tell him to count on us for protection," he said;
and Benson nodded acquiescence as the one-car train crept out upon the
dismantled bridge.

Having an appointment with Leckhard, of the main line, timed for an
early hour the following morning, Lidgerwood gave his conductor
instructions to stop at Angels only long enough to get orders for the
eastern division.

When the division station was reached, McCloskey met the service-car in
accordance with wire instructions sent from Timanyoni, bringing an
armful of mail, which Lidgerwood purposed to work through on the run to
Copah.

"Nothing new, Mac?" he asked, when the trainmaster came aboard.

"Nothing much, only the operators have notified me that there'll be
trouble, _pronto_, if we don't put Hannegan and Dickson back on the
wires. The grievance committee intimated pretty broadly that they could
swing the trainmen into line if they had to make a fight."

"We put no man back who has been discharged for cause," said the
superintendent firmly. "Did you tell them that?"

"I did. I have been saying that so often that it mighty nearly says
itself now, when I hear my office door open."

"Well, there is nothing to do but to go on saying it. We shall either
make a spoon or spoil a horn. How would you be fixed in the event of a
telegraphers' strike?"

"I've been figuring on that. It may seem like tempting the good Lord to
say it, but I believe we could hold about half of the men."

"That is decidedly encouraging," said the man who needed to find
encouragement where he could. "Two weeks ago, if you had said one in
ten, I should have thought you were overestimating. We shall win out
yet."

But now McCloskey was shaking his head dubiously. "I don't know. Andy
Bradford has been giving me an idea of how the trainmen stand, and he
says there is a good deal of strike talk. Williams adds a word about the
shop force: he says that Gridley's men are not saying anything, but
they'll be likely to go out in a body unless Gridley wakes up at the
last minute and takes a club to them."

Lidgerwood's conductor was coming down the platform of the Crow's Nest
with his orders in his hand, and McCloskey made ready to swing off. "I
can reach you care of Mr. Leckhard, at Copah, I suppose?" he asked.

"Yes. I shall be back some time to-morrow; in the meantime there is
nothing to do but to sit tight in the boat. Use my private code if you
want to wire me. I don't more than half trust that young fellow, Dix,
Callahan's day operator. And, by the way, Mr. Frisbie is sending me a
stenographer from Denver. If the young man turns up while I am away, see
if you can't get Mrs. Williams to board him."

McCloskey promised and dropped off, and the one-car special presently
clanked out over the eastern switches. Lidgerwood went at once to his
desk and promptly became deaf and blind to everything but his work. The
long desert run had been accomplished, and the service-car train was
climbing the Crosswater grades, when Tadasu Matsuwari began to lay the
table for dinner. Lidgerwood glanced at his watch, and ran his finger
down the line of figures on the framed time-table hanging over his desk.

"Humph!" he muttered; "Acheson's making better time with me than he ever
has before. I wonder if Williams has succeeded in talking him over to
our side? He is certainly running like a gentleman to-day, at all
events."

The superintendent sat down to Tadasu's table and took his time to
Tadasu's excellent dinner, indulging himself so far as to smoke a
leisurely cigar with his black coffee before plunging again into the
sea of work. Not to spoil his improving record, Engineer Acheson
continued to make good time, and it was only a little after eleven
o'clock when Lidgerwood, looking up from his work at the final slowing
of the wheels, saw the masthead lights of the Copah yards.

Taking it for granted that Superintendent Leckhard had long since left
his office in the Pacific Southwestern building, Lidgerwood gave orders
to have his car placed on the station-spur, and went on with his work.
Being at the moment deeply immersed in the voluminous papers of a claim
for stock killed, he was quite oblivious of the placement of the car,
and of everything else, until the incoming of the fast main-line mail
from the east warned him that another hour had passed. When the mail was
gone on its way westward, the midnight silence settled down again, with
nothing but the minimized crashings of freight cars in the lower
shifting-yard to disturb it. The little Japanese had long since made up
his bunk in one of the spare state-rooms, the train crew had departed
with the engine, and the last mail-wagon had driven away up-town.
Lidgerwood had closed his desk and was taking a final pull at the short
pipe which was his working companion, when the car door opened silently
and he saw an apparition.

Standing in the doorway and groping with her hands held out before her
as if she were blind, was a woman. Her gown was the tawdry half-dress of
the dance-halls, and the wrap over her bare shoulders was a gaudy
imitation in colors of the Spanish mantilla. Her head was without
covering, and her hair, which was luxuriant, hung in disorder over her
face. One glance at the eyes, fixed and staring, assured Lidgerwood
instantly that he had to do with one who was either drink-maddened or
demented.

"Where is he?" the intruder asked, in a throaty whisper, staring, not at
him, as Lidgerwood was quick to observe, but straight ahead at the
portieres cutting off the state-room corridor from the open compartment.
And then: "I told you I would come, Rankin; I've been watching years and
years for your car to come in. Look--I want you to see what you have
made of me, you and that other man."

Lidgerwood sat perfectly still. It was quite evident that the woman did
not see him. But his thoughts were busy. Though it was by little more
than chance, he knew that Hallock's Christian name was Rankin, and
instantly he recalled all that McCloskey had told him about the chief
clerk's marital troubles. Was this poor painted wreck the woman who
was, or who had been, Hallock's wife? The question had scarcely
formulated itself before she began again.

"Why don't you answer me? Where are you?" she demanded, in the same
husky whisper; "you needn't hide--I know you are here. _What have you
done to that man?_ You said you would kill him; you promised me that,
Rankin: have you done it?"

Lidgerwood reached up cautiously behind him, and slowly turned off the
gas from the bracket desk-lamp. Without wishing to pry deeper than he
should into a thing which had all the ear-marks of a tragedy, he could
not help feeling that he was on the verge of discoveries which might
have an important bearing upon the mysterious problems centring in the
chief clerk. And he was afraid the woman would see him.

But he was not permitted to make the discoveries. The woman had taken
two or three steps into the car, still groping her way as if the
brightly lighted interior were the darkest of caverns, when some one
swung over the railing of the observation platform, and Superintendent
Leckhard appeared at the open door. Without hesitation he entered and
touched the woman on the shoulder. "Hello, Madgie," he said, not
ungently, "you here again? It's pretty late for even your kind to be
out, isn't it? Better trot away and go to bed, if you've got one to go
to; he isn't here."

The woman put her hands to her face, and Lidgerwood saw that she was
shaking as if with a sudden chill. Then she turned and darted away like
a frightened animal. Leckhard was drawing a chair up to face Lidgerwood.

"Did she give you a turn?" he asked, when Lidgerwood reached up and
turned the desk-lamp on full again.

"Not exactly that, though it was certainly startling enough. I had no
warning at all; when I looked up, she was standing pretty nearly where
she was when you came in. She didn't seem to see me at all, and she was
talking crazily all the time to some one else--some one who isn't here."

"I know," said Leckhard; "she has done it before."

"Whom is she trying to find?" asked Lidgerwood, wishing to have his
suspicion either denied or confirmed.

"Didn't she call him by name?--she usually does. It's your chief clerk,
Hallock. She is--or was--his wife. Haven't you heard the ghastly story
yet?"

"No; and, Leckhard, I don't know that I care to hear it. It can't
possibly concern me."

"It's just as well, I guess," said the main-line superintendent
carelessly. "I probably shouldn't get it straight anyway. It's a rather
horrible affair, though, I believe. There is another man mixed up in
it--the man whom she is always asking if Hallock has killed. Curiously
enough, she never names the other man, and there have been a good many
guesses. I believe your head boiler-maker, Gridley, has the most votes.
He's been seen with her here, now and then--when he's on one of his
'periodicals.' By Jove! Lidgerwood, I don't envy you your job over
yonder in the Red Desert a little bit.... But about the consolidation of
the yards here: I got a telegram after I wired you, making it necessary
for me to go west on main-line Twenty-seven early in the morning, so I
stayed up to talk this yard business over with you to-night."

It was well along in the small hours when the roll of blue-print maps
was finally laid aside, and Leckhard rose yawning. "We'll carry it out
as you propose, and divide the expense between the two divisions," he
said in conclusion. "Frisbie has left it to us, and he will approve
whatever we agree upon. Will you go up to the hotel with me, or bunk
down here?"

Lidgerwood said he would stay with his car; or, better still, now that
the business for which he had come to Copah was despatched, he would
have the roundhouse night foreman call a Red Butte Western crew and go
back to his desert.

"We are in the thick of things over on the jerk-water just now," he
explained, "and I don't like to stay away any longer than I have to."

"Having a good bit of trouble with the sure-shots?" asked Leckhard.
"What was that story I heard about somebody swiping one of your
switching-engines?"

"It was true," said Lidgerwood, adding, "But I think we shall recover
the engine--and some other things--presently." He liked Leckhard well
enough, but he wished he would go. There are exigencies in which even
the comments of a friend and well-wisher are superfluous.

"You have a pretty tough gang to handle over these," the well-wisher
went on. "I wouldn't touch a job like yours with a ten-foot pole, unless
I could shoot good enough to be sure of hitting a half-dollar nine times
out of ten at thirty paces. Somebody was telling me that you have
already had trouble with that fellow Rufford."

"Nobody was hurt, and Rufford is in jail," said Lidgerwood, hoping to
kill the friendly inquiry before it should run into details.

"Oh, well, it's all in the day's work, I suppose, which reminds me: my
day's work to-morrow won't amount to much if I don't go and turn in.
Good-night."

When Leckhard was gone, Lidgerwood climbed the stair in the station
building to the despatcher's office and gave orders for the return of
his car to Angels. Half an hour later the one-car special was retracing
its way westward up the valley of the Tumbling Water, and Lidgerwood was
trying to go to sleep in the well-appointed little state-room which it
was Tadasu Matsuwari's pride to keep spick and span and spotlessly
clean. But there were disturbing thoughts, many and varied, to keep him
awake, chief among them those which hung upon the dramatic midnight
episode with the demented woman for its central figure. Through what
dreadful Valley of Humiliation had she come to reach the abysmal depths
in which the one cry of her soul was a cry for vengeance? Who was the
unnamed man whom Hallock had promised to kill? How much or how little
was this tragedy figuring in the trouble storm which was brooding over
the Red Desert? And how much or how little would it involve one who was
anxious only to see even-handed justice prevail?

These and similar insistent questions kept Lidgerwood awake long after
his train had left the crooked pathway marked out by the Tumbling Water,
and when he finally fell asleep the laboring engine of the one-car
special was storming the approaches to Crosswater Summit.



XII

THE PLEASURERS


The freight wreck in the Crosswater Hills, coming a fortnight after
Rufford's arrest and deportation to Copah and the county jail, rudely
marked the close of the short armistice in the conflict between law and
order and the demoralization which seemed to thrive the more lustily in
proportion to Lidgerwood's efforts to stamp it out.

Thirty-two boxes, gondolas, and flats, racing down the Crosswater grades
in the heart of a flawless, crystalline summer afternoon at the heels of
Clay's big ten-wheeler, suddenly left the steel as a unit to heap
themselves in chaotic confusion upon the right-of-way, and to round out
the disaster at the moment of impact by exploding a shipment of giant
powder somewhere in the midst of the debris.

Lidgerwood was on the western division inspecting, with Benson, one of
the several tentative routes for a future extension of the Red Butte
line to a connection with the Transcontinental at Lemphi beyond the
Hophras, when the news of the wreck reached Angels. Wherefore, it was
not until the following morning that he was able to leave the
head-quarters station, on the second wrecking-train, bringing the big
100-ton crane to reinforce McCloskey, who had been on the ground with
the lighter clearing tackle for the better part of the night.

With a slowly smouldering fire to fight, and no water to be had nearer
than the tank-cars at La Guayra, the trainmaster had wrought miracles.
By ten o'clock the main line was cleared, a temporary siding for a
working base had been laid, and McCloskey's men were hard at work
picking up what the fire had spared when Lidgerwood arrived.

"Pretty clean sweep this time, eh, Mac?" was the superintendent's
greeting, when he had penetrated to the thick of things where McCloskey
was toiling and sweating with his men.

"So clean that we get nothing much but scrap-iron out of what's left,"
growled McCloskey, climbing out of the tangle of crushed cars and bent
and twisted iron-work to stand beside Lidgerwood on the main-line
embankment. Then to the men who were making the snatch-hitch for the
next pull: "A little farther back, boys; farther yet, so she won't
overbalance on you; that's about it. Now, _wig_ it!"

"You seem to be getting along all right with the outfit you've got," was
Lidgerwood's comment. "If you can keep this up we may as well go back to
Angels."

"No, don't!" protested the trainmaster. "We can snake out these
scrap-heaps after a fashion, but when it comes to resurrecting the
195--did you notice her as you came along? We kept the fire from getting
to her, but she's dug herself into the ground like a dog after a
woodchuck!"

Lidgerwood nodded. "I looked her over," he said. "If she'd had a little
more time and another wheel-turn or two to spare, she might have
disappeared entirely--like that switching-engine you can't find. I'm
taking it for granted that you haven't found it yet--or have you?"

"No, I haven't!" grated McCloskey, and he said it like a man with a
grievance. Then he added: "I gave you all the pointers I could find two
weeks ago. Whenever you get ready to put Hallock under the hydraulic
press, you'll squeeze what you want to know out of him."

This was coming to be an old subject and a sore one. The trainmaster
still insisted that Hallock was the man who was planning the robberies
and plotting the downfall of the Lidgerwood management, and he wanted
to have the chief clerk systematically shadowed. And it was Lidgerwood's
wholly groundless prepossession for Hallock that was still keeping him
from turning the matter over to the company's legal department--this in
spite of the growing accumulation of evidence all pointing to Hallock's
treason. Subjected to a rigid cross-examination, Judson had insisted
that a part, at least, of his drunken recollection was real--that part
identifying the voices of the two plotters in Cat Biggs's back room as
those of Rufford and Hallock. Moreover, it was no longer deniable that
the chief clerk was keeping in close touch with the discharged
employees, for some purpose best known to himself; and latterly he had
been dropping out of his office without notice, disappearing, sometimes,
for a day at a time.

Lidgerwood was recalling the last of these disappearances when the
second wrecking-train, having backed to the nearest siding to admit of a
reversal of its make-up order and the placing of the crane in the lead,
came up to go into action. McCloskey shaded his eyes from the sun's
glare and looked down the line.

"Hello!" he exclaimed. "Got a new wrecking-boss?"

The superintendent nodded. "I have one in the making. Dawson wanted to
come along and try his hand."

"Did Gridley send him?"

"No; Gridley is away somewhere."

"So Fred's your understudy, is he? Well, I've got one, too. I'll show
him to you after a while."

They were walking back over the ties toward the half-buried 195. The
ten-wheeler was on its side in the ditch, nuzzling the opposite bank of
a low cutting. Dawson had already divided his men: half of them to place
the huge jack-beams and outriggers of the self-contained steam lifting
machine to insure its stability, and the other half to trench under the
fallen engine and to adjust the chain slings for the hitch.

"It's a pretty long reach, Fred," said the superintendent. "Going to try
it from here?"

"Best place," said the reticent one shortly.

Lidgerwood was looking at his watch.

"Williams will be due here before long with a special from Copah. I
don't want to hold him up," he remarked.

"Thirty minutes?" inquired the draftsman, without taking mind or eye off
his problem.

"Oh, yes; forty or fifty, maybe."

"All right, I'll be out of the way," was the quiet rejoinder.

"Yes, you will!" was McCloskey's ironical comment, when the draftsman
had gone around to the other side of the great crane.

"Let him alone," said Lidgerwood. "It lies in my mind that we are
developing a genius, Mac."

"He'll fall down," grumbled the trainmaster. "That crane won't pick up
the '95 clear the way she's lying."

"Won't it?" said Lidgerwood. "That's where you are mistaken. It will
pick up anything we have on the two divisions. It's the biggest and best
there is made. How did you come to get a tool like that on the Red Butte
Western?"

McCloskey grinned.

"You don't know Gridley yet. He's a crank on good machinery. That crane
was a clean steal."

"What?"

"I mean it. It was ordered for one of the South American railroads, and
was on its way to the Coast over the P. S-W. About the time it got as
far as Copah, we happened to have a mix-up in our Copah yards, with a
ditched engine that Gridley couldn't pick up with the 60-ton crane we
had on the ground. So he borrowed this one out of the P. S-W. yards,
used it, liked it, and kept it, sending our 60-ton machine on to the
South Americans in its place."

"What rank piracy!" Lidgerwood exclaimed. "I don't wonder they call us
buccaneers over here. How could he do it without being found out?"

"That puzzled more than two or three of us; but one of the men told me
some time afterward how it was done. Gridley had a painter go down in
the night and change the lettering--on our old crane and on this new
one. It happened that they were both made by the same manufacturing
company, and were of substantially the same general pattern. I suppose
the P. S-W. yard crew didn't notice particularly that the crane they had
lent us out of the through westbound freight had shrunk somewhat in the
using. But I'll bet those South Americans are saying pleasant things to
the manufacturers yet."

"Doubtless," Lidgerwood agreed, and now he was not smiling. The little
side-light on the former Red-Butte-Western methods--and upon
Gridley--was sobering.

By this time Dawson had got his big lifter in position, with its huge
steel arm overreaching the fallen engine, and was giving his orders
quietly, but with clean-cut precision.

"Man that hand-fall and take slack! Pay off, Darby," to the hoister
engineer. "That's right; more slack!"

The great tackling-hook, as big around as a man's thigh, settled
accurately over the 195.

"There you are!" snapped Dawson. "Now make your hitch, boys, and be
lively about it. You've got just about one minute to do it in!"

"Heavens to Betsey!" said McCloskey. "He's going to pick it up at one
hitch--and without blocking!"

"Hands off, Mac," said Lidgerwood good-naturedly. "If Fred didn't know
this trade before, he's learning it pretty rapidly now."

"That's all right, but if he doesn't break something before he gets
through----"

But Dawson was breaking nothing. Having designed locomotives, he knew to
the fraction of an inch where the balancing hitch should be made for
lifting one. Also machinery, and the breaking strains of it, were as his
daily bread. While McCloskey was still prophesying failure, he was
giving the word to Darby, the hoister engineer.

"Now then, Billy, try your hitch! Put the strain on a little at a time
and often. Steady!--now you've got her--keep her coming!"

Slowly the big freight-puller rose out of its furrow in the gravel,
righting itself to the perpendicular as it came. Anticipating the inward
swing of it, Dawson was showing his men how to place ties and rails for
a short temporary track, and when he gave Darby the stop signal, the
hoisting cables were singing like piano strings, and the big engine was
swinging bodily in the air in the grip of the crane tackle, poised to a
nicety above the steel placed to receive it.

Dawson climbed up to the main-line embankment where Darby could see him,
and where he could see all the parts of his problem at once. Then his
hands went up to beckon the slacking signals. At the lifting of his
finger there was a growling of gears and a backward racing of machinery,
a groan of relaxing strains, and a cry of "All gone!" and the 195 stood
upright, ready to be hauled out when the temporary track should be
extended to a connection with the main line.

"Let's go up to the other end and see how your understudy is making it,
Mac," said the gratified superintendent. "It is quite evident that we
can't tell this young man anything he doesn't already know about picking
up locomotives."

On the way up the track he asked about Clay and Green, the engineer and
fireman who were in the wreck.

"They are not badly hurt," said the trainmaster. "They both jumped--on
Green's side, luckily. Clay was bruised considerably, and Green says he
knows he plowed up fifty yards of gravel with his face before he
stopped--and he looked it. They both went home on 201."

Lidgerwood was examining the cross-ties, which were cut and scarred by
the flanges of many derailed wheels.

"You have no notion of what did it?" he queried, turning abruptly upon
McCloskey.

"Only a guess, and it couldn't be verified in a thousand years. The '95
went off first, and Clay and Green both say it felt as if a rail had
turned over on the outside of the curve."

"What did you find when you got here?"

"Chaos and Old Night: a pile of scrap with a hole torn in the middle of
it as if by an explosion, and a fire going."

"Of course, you couldn't tell anything about the cause, under such
conditions."

"Not much, you'd say; and yet a queer thing happened. The entire train
went off so thoroughly that it passed the point where the trouble began
before it piled up. I was able to verify Clay's guess--a rail had turned
over on the outside of the curve."

"That proves nothing more than poor spike-holds in a few dry-rotted
cross-ties," Lidgerwood objected.

"No; there were a number of others farther along also turned over and
broken and bent. But the first one was the only freak."

"How was that?"

"Well, it wasn't either broken or bent; but when it turned over it not
only unscrewed the nuts of the fish-plate bolts and threw them away--it
pulled out every spike on both sides of itself and hid them."

Lidgerwood nodded gravely. "I should say your guess has already verified
itself. All it lacks is the name of the man who loosened the fish-plate
bolts and pulled the spikes."

"That's about all."

The superintendent's eyes narrowed.

"Who was missing out of the Angels crowd of trouble-makers yesterday,
Mac?"

"I hate to say," said the trainmaster. "God knows I don't want to put it
all over any man unless it belongs to him, but I'm locoed every time it
comes to that kind of a guess. Every bunch of letters I see spells just
one name."

"Go on," said Lidgerwood sharply.

"Hallock came somewhere up this way on 202 yesterday."

"I know," was the quick reply. "I sent him out to Navajo to meet
Cruikshanks, the cattleman with the long claim for stock injured in the
Gap wreck two weeks ago."

"Did he stop at Navajo?" queried the trainmaster.

"I suppose so; at any rate, he saw Cruikshanks."

"Well, I haven't got any more guesses, only a notion or two. This is a
pretty stiff up-grade for 202--she passes here at two-fifty--just about
an hour before Clay found that loosened rail--and it wouldn't be
impossible for a man to drop off as she was climbing this curve."

But now the superintendent was shaking his head.

"It doesn't hold together, Mac; there are too many parts missing. Your
hypothesis presupposes that Hallock took a day train out of Angels, rode
twelve miles past his destination, jumped off here while the train was
in motion, pulled the spikes on this loosened rail, and walked back to
Navajo in time to see the cattleman and get in to Angels on the delayed
Number 75 this morning. Could he have done all these things without
advertising them to everybody?"

"I know," confessed the trainmaster. "It doesn't look reasonable."

"It isn't reasonable," Lidgerwood went on, arguing Hallock's case as if
it were his own. "Bradford was 202's conductor; he'd know if Hallock
failed to get off at Navajo. Gridley was a passenger on the same train,
and he would have known. The agent at Navajo would be a third witness.
He was expecting Hallock on that train, and was no doubt holding
Cruikshanks. Your guesses prefigure Hallock failing to show up when the
train stopped at Navajo, and make it necessary for him to explain to the
two men who were waiting for him why he let Bradford carry him by so far
that it took him several hours to walk back. You see how incredible it
all is?"

"Yes, I see," said McCloskey, and when he spoke again they were several
rail-lengths nearer the up-track end of the wreck, and his question went
back to Lidgerwood's mention of the expected special.

"You were saying something to Dawson about Williams and a special train;
is that Mr. Brewster coming in?"

"Yes. He wired from Copah last night. He has Mr. Ford's car--the
_Nadia_."

The trainmaster's face-contortion was expressive of the deepest chagrin.

"Suffering Moses! but this is a nice thing for the president of the
road to see as he comes along! Wouldn't the luck we're having make a dog
sick?"

Lidgerwood shook his head. "That isn't the worst of it, Mac. Mr.
Brewster isn't a railroad man, and he will probably think this is all in
the day's work. But he is going to stop at Angels and go over to his
copper mine, which means that he will camp right down in the midst of
the mix-up. I'd cheerfully give a year's salary to have him stay away a
few weeks longer."

McCloskey was not a swearing man in the Red Desert sense of the term,
but now his comment was an explosive exclamation naming the conventional
place of future punishment. It was the only word he could find
adequately to express his feelings.

The superintendent changed the subject.

"Who is your foreman, Mac?" he inquired, as a huge mass of the tangled
scrap was seen to rise at the end of the smaller derrick's grapple.

"Judson," said McCloskey shortly. "He asked leave to come along as a
laborer, and when I found that he knew more about train-scrapping than I
did, I promoted him." There was something like defiance in the
trainmaster's tone.

"From the way in which you say it, I infer that you don't expect me to
approve," said Lidgerwood judicially.

McCloskey had been without sleep for a good many hours, and his
patience was tenuous. The derby hat was tilted to its most contentious
angle when he said:

"I can't fight for you when you're right, and not fight against you when
I think you are wrong, Mr. Lidgerwood. You can have my head any time you
want it."

"You think I should break my word and take Judson back?"

"I think, and the few men who are still with us think, that you ought to
give the man who stood in the breach for you a chance to earn bread and
meat for his wife and babies," snapped McCloskey, who had gone too far
to retreat.

Lidgerwood was frowning when he replied: "You don't see the point
involved. I can't reward Judson for what you, yourself, admit was a
personal service. I have said that no drunkard shall pull a train on
this division. Judson is no less a drink-maniac for the fact that he
arrested Rufford when everybody else was afraid to."

McCloskey was mollified a little.

"He says he has quit drinking, and I believe him this time. But this job
I've given him isn't pulling trains."

"No; and if you have cooled off enough, you may remember that I haven't
yet disapproved your action. I don't disapprove. Give him anything you
like where a possible relapse on his part won't involve the lives of
other people. Is that what you want me to say?"

"I was hot," said the trainmaster, gruffly apologetic. "We've got none
too many friends to stand by us when the pinch comes, and we were losing
them every day you held out against Judson."

"I'm still holding out on the original count. Judson can't run an engine
for me until he has proved conclusively and beyond question that he has
quit the whiskey. Whatever other work you can find for him----"

McCloskey slapped his thigh. "By George! I've got a job right now! Why
on top of earth didn't I think of him before? He's the man to keep tab
on Hallock."

But now Lidgerwood was frowning again.

"I don't like that, Mac. It's a dirty business to be shadowing a man who
has a right to suppose that you are trusting him."

"But, good Lord! Mr. Lidgerwood, haven't you got enough to go on?
Hallock is the last man seen around the engine that disappears; he
spends a lot of his time swapping grievances with the rebels; and he is
out of town and within a few miles of here, as you know, when this
wreck happens. If all that isn't enough to earn him a little
suspicion----"

"I know; I can't argue the case with you, Mac, But I can't do it."

"You mean you won't do it. I respect your scruples, Mr. Lidgerwood. But
it is no longer a personal matter between you and Hallock: the company's
interests are involved."

Without suspecting it, the trainmaster had found the weak joint in the
superintendent's armor. For the company's sake the personal point of
view must be ignored.

"It is such a despicable thing," he protested, as one who yields
reluctantly. "And if, after all, Hallock is innocent----"

"That is just the point," insisted McCloskey. "If he is innocent, no
harm will be done, and Judson will become a witness for instead of
against him."

"Well," said Lidgerwood; and what more he would have said about the
conspiracy was cut off by the shrill whistle of a down-coming train.
"That's Williams with the special," he announced, when the whistle gave
him leave. "Is your flag out?"

"Sure. It's up around the hill, with a safe man to waggle it."

Lidgerwood cast an anxious glance toward Dawson's huge derrick-car,
which was still blocking the main line. The hoist tackle was swinging
free, and the jack-beams and outriggers were taken in.

"Better send somebody down to tell Dawson to pull up here to your
temporary siding, Mac," he suggested; but Dawson was one of those
priceless helpers who did not have to be told in detail. He had heard
the warning whistle, and already had his train in motion.

By a bit of quick shifting, the main line was cleared before Williams
swung cautiously around the hill with the private car. In obedience to
Lidgerwood's uplifted finger the brakes were applied, and the _Nadia_
came to a full stop, with its observation platform opposite the end of
the wrecking-track.

A big man, in a soft hat and loose box dust-coat, with twinkling little
eyes and a curling brown beard that covered fully three-fourths of his
face, stood at the hand-rail.

"Hello, Howard!" he called down to Lidgerwood. "By George! I'd totally
forgotten that you were out here. What are you trying to do? Got so many
cars and engines that you have to throw some of them away?"

Lidgerwood climbed up the embankment to the track, and McCloskey
carefully let him do it alone. The "Hello, Howard!" had not been thrown
away upon the trainmaster.

"It looks a little that way, I must admit, Cousin Ned," said the culprit
who had answered so readily to his Christian name. "We tried pretty hard
to get it cleaned up before you came along, but we couldn't quite make
it."

"Oho! tried to cover it up, did you? Afraid I'd fire you? You needn't
be. My job as president merely gets me passes over the road. Ford's your
man; he's the fellow you want to be scared of."

"I am," laughed Lidgerwood. The big man's heartiness was always
infectious. Then: "Coming over to camp with us awhile? If you are, I
hope you carry your commissary along. Angels will starve you,
otherwise."

"Don't tell me about that tin-canned tepee village, Howard--I _know_.
I've been there before. How are we doing over in the Timanyoni
foot-hills? Getting much ore down from the Copperette? Climb up here and
tell me all about it. Or, better still, come on across the desert with
us. They don't need you here."

The assertion was quite true. With Dawson, the trainmaster, and an
understudy Judson for bosses, there was no need of a fourth. Yet
intuition, or whatever masculine thing it is that stands for intuition,
prompted Lidgerwood to say:

"I don't know as I ought to leave. I've just come out from Angels, you
know."

But the president was not to be denied.

"Climb up here and quit trying to find excuses. We'll give you a better
luncheon than you'll get out of the dinner-pails; and if you carry
yourself handsomely, you may get a dinner invitation after we get in.
That ought to tempt any man who has to live in Angels the year round."

Lidgerwood marked the persistent plural of the personal pronoun, and a
great fear laid hold upon him. None the less, the president's invitation
was a little like the king's--it was, in some sense, a command.
Lidgerwood merely asked for a moment's respite, and went down to
announce his intention to McCloskey and Dawson. Curiously enough, the
draftsman seemed to be trying to ignore the private car. His back was
turned upon it, and he was glooming out across the bare hills, with his
square jaw set as if the ignoring effort were painful.

"I'm going back to Angels with the president," said the superintendent,
speaking to both of them. "You can clean up here without me."

The trainmaster nodded, but Dawson seemed not to have heard. At all
events, he made no sign. Lidgerwood turned and ascended the embankment,
only to have the sudden reluctance assail him again as he put his foot
on the truck of the _Nadia_ to mount to the platform. The hesitation was
only momentary, this time. Other guests Mr. Brewster might have, without
including the one person whom he would circle the globe to avoid.

"Good boy!" said the president, when Lidgerwood swung over the high
hand-rail and leaned out to give Williams the starting signal. And when
the scene of the wreck was withdrawing into the rearward distance, the
president felt for the door-knob, saying: "Let's go inside, where we
shan't be obliged to see so much of this God-forsaken country at one
time."

One half-minute later the superintendent would have given much to be
safely back with McCloskey and Dawson at the vanishing curve of
scrap-heaps. In that half-minute Mr. Brewster had opened the car door,
and Lidgerwood had followed him across the threshold.

The comfortable lounging-room of the _Nadia_ was not empty; nor was it
peopled by a group of Mr. Brewster's associates in the copper combine,
the alternative upon which Lidgerwood had hopefully hung the "we's" and
the "us's."

Seated on a wicker divan drawn out to face one of the wide side-windows
were two young women, with a curly-headed, clean-faced young man between
them. A little farther along, a rather austere lady, whose pose was of
calm superiority to her surroundings, looked up from her magazine to
say, as her husband had said: "Why, Howard! are you here?" Just beyond
the austere lady, and dozing in his chair, was a white-haired man whose
strongly marked features proclaimed him the father of one of the young
women on the divan.

And in the farthest corner of the open compartment, facing each other
companionably in an "S"-shaped double chair, were two other young
people--a man and a woman.... Truly, the heavens had fallen! For the
young woman filling half of the _tête-à-tête_ chair was that one person
whom Lidgerwood would have circled the globe to avoid meeting.



XIII

BITTER-SWEET


Taking his cue from certain passages in the book of painful memories,
Lidgerwood meant to obey his first impulse, which prompted him to follow
Mr. Brewster to the private office state-room in the forward end of the
car, disregarding the couple in the _tête-à-tête_ contrivance. But the
triumphantly beautiful young woman in the nearer half of the
crooked-backed seat would by no means sanction any such easy solution of
the difficulty.

"Not a word for me, Howard?" she protested, rising and fairly compelling
him to stop and speak to her. Then: "For pity's sake! what have you been
doing to yourself to make you look so hollow-eyed and anxious?" After
which, since Lidgerwood seemed at a loss for an answer to the
half-solicitous query, she presented her companion of the "S"-shaped
chair. "Possibly you will shake hands a little less abstractedly with
Mr. Van Lew. Herbert, this is Mr. Howard Lidgerwood, my cousin, several
times removed. He is the tyrant of the Red Butte Western, and I can
assure you that he is much more terrible than he looks--aren't you,
Howard?"

Lidgerwood shook hands cordially enough with the tall young athlete who,
it seemed, would never have done increasing his magnificent stature as
he rose up out of his half of the lounging-seat.

"Glad to meet you, Mr. Lidgerwood, I'm sure," said the young man,
gripping the given hand until Lidgerwood winced. "Miss Eleanor has been
telling me about you--marooned out here in the Red Desert. By Jove!
don't you know I believe I'd like to try it awhile myself. It's ages
since I've had a chance to kill a man, and they tell me----"

Lidgerwood laughed, recognizing Miss Brewster's romancing gift, or the
results of it.

"We shall have to arrange a little round-up of the bad men from Bitter
Creek for you, Mr. Van Lew. I hope you brought your armament along--the
regulation 45's, and all that."

Miss Brewster laughed derisively.

"Don't let him discourage you, Herbert," she mocked. "Bitter Creek is in
Wyoming--or is it in Montana?" this with a quick little eye-stab for
Lidgerwood, "and the name of Mr. Lidgerwood's refuge is Angels. Also,
papa says there is a hotel there called the 'Celestial.' Do you live at
the Celestial, Howard?"

"No, I never properly lived there. I existed there for a few weeks until
Mrs. Dawson took pity on me. Mrs. Dawson is from Massachusetts."

"Hear him!" scoffed Miss Eleanor, still mocking. "He says that as if to
be 'from Massachusetts' were a patent of nobility. He knows I had the
cruel misfortune to be born in Colorado. But tell me, Howard, is Mrs.
Dawson a charming young widow?"

"Mrs. Dawson is a very charming middle-aged widow, with a grown son and
a daughter," said Lidgerwood, a little stiffly. It seemed entirely
unnecessary that she should ridicule him before the athlete.

"And the daughter--is she charming, too? But that says itself, since she
must also date 'from Massachusetts.'" Then to Van Lew: "Every one out
here in the Red Desert is 'from' somewhere, you know."

"Miss Dawson is quite beneath your definition of charming, I imagine,"
was Lidgerwood's rather crisp rejoinder; and for the third time he made
as if he would go on to join the president in the office state-room.

"You are staying to luncheon with us, aren't you?" asked Miss Brewster.
"Or do you just drop in and out again, like the other kind of angels?"

"Your father commands me, and he says I am to stay. And now, if you will
excuse me----"

This time he succeeded in getting away, and up to the luncheon hour
talked copper and copper prospects to Mr. Brewster in the seclusion of
the president's office compartment. The call for the midday meal had
been given when Mr. Brewster switched suddenly from copper to silver.

"By the way, there were a few silver strikes over in the Timanyonis
about the time of the Red Butte gold excitement," he remarked. "Some of
them have grown to be shippers, haven't they?"

"Only two, of any importance," replied the superintendent: "the Ruby, in
Ruby Gulch, and Flemister's Wire-Silver, at Little Butte. You couldn't
call either of them a bonanza, but they are both shipping fair ore in
good quantities."

"Flemister," said the president reflectively. "He's a character. Know
him personally, Howard?"

"A little," the superintendent admitted.

"A little is a-plenty. It wouldn't pay you to know him very well,"
laughed the big man good-naturedly. "He has a somewhat paralyzing way
of getting next to you financially. I knew him in the old Leadville
days; a born gentleman, and also a born buccaneer. If the men he has
held up and robbed were to stand in a row, they'd fill a Denver street."

"He is in his proper longitude out here, then," said Lidgerwood rather
grimly. "This is the 'hold-up's heaven.'"

"I'll bet Flemister is doing his share of the looting," laughed the
president. "Is he alone in the mine?"

"I don't know that he has any partners. Somebody told me, when I first
came over here, that Gridley, our master-mechanic, was in with him; but
Gridley says that is a mistake--that he thinks too much of his
reputation to be Flemister's partner."

"Hank Gridley," mused the president; "Hank Gridley and 'his reputation'!
It would certainly be a pity if that were to get corroded in any way.
There is a man who properly belongs to the Stone Age--what you might
call an elemental 'scoundrel."

"You surprise me!" exclaimed Lidgerwood. "I didn't like him at first,
but I am convinced now that it was only unreasoning prejudice. He
appeals to me as being anything but a scoundrel."

"Well, perhaps the word is a bit too savage," admitted Gridley's
accuser. "What I meant was that he has capabilities that way, and not
much moral restraint. He is the kind of man to wade through fire and
blood to gain his object, without the slightest thought of the
consequences to others. Ever hear the story of his marriage? No? Remind
me of it some time, and I'll tell you. But we were speaking of
Flemister. You say the Wire-Silver has turned out pretty well?"

"Very well indeed, I believe. Flemister seems to have money to burn."

"He always has, his own or somebody else's. It makes little difference
to him. The way he got the Wire-Silver would have made Black-Beard the
pirate turn green with envy. Know anything about the history of the
mine?"

Lidgerwood shook his head.

"Well, I do; just happen to. You know how it lies--on the western slope
of Little Butte ridge?"

"Yes."

"That is where it lies now. But the original openings were made on the
eastern slope of the butte. They didn't pan out very well, and Flemister
began to look for a victim to whom he could sell. About that time a man,
whose name I can never recall, took up a claim on the western slope of
the ridge directly opposite Flemister. This man struck it pretty rich,
and Flemister began to bully him on the plea that the new discovery was
only a continuation of his own vein straight through the hill. You can
guess what happened."

"Fairly well," said Lidgerwood. "Flemister lawed the other man out."

"He did worse than that; he drove straight into the hill, past his own
lines, and actually took the money out of the other man's mine to use as
a fighting fund. I don't know how the courts sifted it out, finally; I
didn't follow it up very closely. But Flemister put the other man to the
wall in the end--'put it all over him,' as your man Bradford would say.
There was some domestic tragedy involved, too, in which Flemister played
the devil with the other man's family; but I don't know any of the
details."

"Yet you say Flemister is a born gentleman, as well as a born
buccaneer?"

"Well, yes; he behaves himself well enough in decent company. He isn't
exactly the kind of man you can turn down short--he has education, good
manners, and all that, you know; but if he were hard up I shouldn't let
him get within roping distance of my pocket-book, or, if I had given him
occasion to dislike me, within easy pistol range."

"Wherein he is neither better nor worse than a good many others who
take the sunburn of the Red Desert," was Lidgerwood's comment, and just
then the waiter opened the door a second time to say that luncheon was
served.

"Don't forget to remind me that I'm to tell you Gridley's story,
Howard," said the president, rising out of the depths of his
lounging-chair and stripping off the dust-coat, "Reads like a
romance--only I fancy it was anything but a romance for poor Lizzie
Gridley. Let's go and see what the cook has done for us."

At luncheon Lidgerwood was made known to the other members of the
private-car party. The white-haired old man who had been dozing in his
chair was Judge Holcombe, Van Lew's uncle and the father of the prettier
of the two young women who had been entertaining Jefferis, the
curly-headed collegian. Jefferis laughingly disclaimed relationship with
anybody; but Miss Carolyn Doty, the less pretty but more talkative of
the two young women, confessed that she was a cousin, twice removed, of
Mrs. Brewster.

Quite naturally, Lidgerwood sought to pair the younger people when the
table gathering was complete, and was not entirely certain of his
prefiguring. Eleanor Brewster and Van Lew sat together and were
apparently absorbed in each other to the exclusion of all things
extraneous. Jefferis had Miss Doty for a companion, and the affliction
of her well-balanced tongue seemed to affect neither his appetite nor
his enjoyment of what the young woman had to say.

Miriam Holcombe had fallen to Lidgerwood's lot, and at first he thought
that her silence was due to the fact that young Jefferis had gotten upon
the wrong side of the table. But after she began to talk, he changed his
mind.

"Tell me about the wrecked train we passed a little while ago, Mr.
Lidgerwood," she began, almost abruptly. "Was any one killed?"

"No; it was a freight, and the crew escaped. It was a rather narrow
escape, though, for the engineer, and fireman."

"You were putting it back on the track?" she asked.

"There isn't much of it left to put back, as you may have observed,"
said Lidgerwood. Then he told her of the explosion and the fire.

She was silent for a few moments, but afterward she went on,
half-gropingly he thought.

"Is that part of your work--to get the trains on the track when they run
off?"

He laughed. "I suppose it is--or at least, in a certain sense, I'm
responsible for it. But I am lucky enough to have a wrecking-boss--two
of them, in fact, and both good ones."

She looked up quickly, and he was sure that he surprised something more
than a passing interest in the serious eyes--a trouble depth, he would
have called it, had their talk been anything more than the ordinary
conventional table exchange.

"We saw you go down to speak to two of your men: one who wore his hat
pulled down over his eyes and made dreadful faces at you as he
talked----"

"That was McCloskey, our trainmaster," he cut in.

"And the other----?"

"Was wrecking-boss Number Two," he told her, "my latest apprentice, and
a very promising young subject. This was his first time out under my
administration, and he put McCloskey and me out of the running at once."

"What did he do?" she asked, and again he saw the groping wistfulness in
her eyes, and wondered at it.

"I couldn't explain it without being unpardonably technical. But perhaps
it can best be summed up in saying that he is a fine mechanical
engineer with the added gift of knowing how to handle men."

"You are generous, Mr. Lidgerwood, to--to a subordinate. He ought to be
very loyal to you."

"He is. And I don't think of him as a subordinate--I shouldn't even if
he were on my pay-roll instead of on that of the motive-power
department. I am glad to be able to call him my friend, Miss Holcombe."

Again a few moments of silence, during which Lidgerwood was staring
gloomily across at Miss Brewster and Van Lew. Then another curiously
abrupt question from the young woman at his side.

"His college, Mr. Lidgerwood; do you chance to know where he was
graduated?"

At another moment Lidgerwood might have wondered at the young woman's
persistence. But now Benson's story of Dawson's terrible misfortune was
crowding all purely speculative thoughts out of his mind.

"He took his engineering course in Carnegie, but I believe he did not
stay through the four years," he said gravely.

Miss Holcombe was looking down the table, down and across to where her
father was sitting, at Mr. Brewster's right. When she spoke again the
personal note was gone; and after that the talk, what there was of it,
was of the sort that is meant to bridge discomforting gaps.

In the dispersal after the meal, Lidgerwood attached himself to Miss
Doty; this in sheer self-defense. The desert passage was still in its
earlier stages, and Miss Carolyn's volubility promised to be the less of
two evils, the greater being the possibility that Eleanor Brewster might
seek to re-open a certain spring of bitterness at which he had been
constrained to drink deeply and miserably in the past.

The self-defensive expedient served its purpose admirably. For the
better part of the desert run, the president slept in his state-room,
Mrs. Brewster and the judge dozed in their respective easy-chairs, and
Jefferis and Miriam Holcombe, after roaming for an uneasy half-hour from
the rear platform to the cook's galley forward, went up ahead, at one of
the stops, to ride--by the superintendent's permission--in the engine
cab with Williams. Miss Brewster and Van Lew were absorbed in a book of
plays, and their corner of the large, open compartment was the one
farthest removed from the double divan which Lidgerwood had chosen for
Miss Carolyn and himself.

Later, Van Lew rolled a cigarette and went to the smoking-compartment,
which was in the forward end of the car; and when next Lidgerwood broke
Miss Doty's eye-hold upon him, Miss Brewster had also disappeared--into
her state-room, as he supposed. Taking this as a sign of his release, he
gently broke the thread of Miss Carolyn's inquisitiveness, and went out
to the rear platform for a breath of fresh air and surcease from the
fashery of a neatly balanced tongue.

When it was quite too late to retreat, he found the deep-recessed
observation platform of the _Nadia_ occupied. Miss Brewster was not in
her state-room, as he had mistakenly persuaded himself. She was sitting
in one of the two platform camp-chairs, and she was alone.

"I thought you would come, if I only gave you time enough," she said,
quite coolly. "Did you find Carolyn very persuasive?"

He ignored the query about Miss Doty, replying only to the first part of
her speech.

"I thought you had gone to your state-room. I hadn't the slightest idea
that you were out here."

"Otherwise you would not have come? How magnificently churlish you can
be, upon occasion, Howard!"

"It doesn't deserve so hard a name," he rejoined patiently. "For the
moment I am your father's guest, and when he asked me to go to Angels
with him----"

--"He didn't tell you that mamma and Judge Holcombe and Carolyn and
Miriam and Herbert and Geof. Jefferis and I were along," she cut in
maliciously. "Howard, don't you know you are positively spiteful, at
times!"

"No," he denied.

"Don't contradict me, and don't be silly." She pushed the other chair
toward him. "Sit down and tell me how you've been enduring the interval.
It is more than a year, isn't it?"

"Yes. A year, three months, and eleven days." He had taken the chair
beside her because there seemed to be nothing else to do.

"How mathematically exact you are!" she gibed. "To-morrow it will be a
year, three months, and twelve days; and the day after to-morrow--mercy
me! I should go mad if I had to think back and count up that way every
day. But I asked you what you had been doing."

He spread his hands. "Existing, one way and another. There has always
been my work."

"'All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,'" she quoted. "You are
excessively dull to-day, Howard. Hasn't it occurred to you?"

"Thank you for expressing it so delicately. It seems to be my
misfortune to disappoint you, always."

"Yes," she said, quite unfeelingly. Then, with a swift relapse into pure
mockery: "How many times have you fallen in love during the one year,
three months, and eleven days?"

His frown was almost a scowl. "Is it worth while to make an unending
jest of it, Eleanor?"

"A jest?--of your falling in love? No, my dear cousin, several times
removed, no one would dare to jest with you on that subject. But tell
me; I am really and truly interested. Will you confess to three times?
That isn't so very many, considering the length of the interval."

"No."

"Twice, then? Think hard; there must have been at least two little
quickenings of the heartbeats in all that time."

"No."

"Still no? That reduces it to one--the charming Miss Dawson----"

"You might spare her, even if you are not willing to spare me. You know
well enough there has never been any one but you, Eleanor; that there
never will be any one but you."

The train was passing the western confines of the waterless tract, and a
cool breeze from the snowcapped Timanyonis was sweeping across the open
platform. It blew strands of the red-brown hair from beneath the closely
fitting travelling-hat; blew color into Miss Brewster's cheeks and a
daring brightness into the laughing eyes.

"What a pity!" she said in mock sympathy.

"That I can't measure up to your requirements of the perfect man? Yes,
it is a thousand pities," he agreed.

"No; that isn't precisely what I meant. The pity is that I seem to you
to be unable to appreciate your many excellencies and your--constancy."

"I think you were born to torment me," he rejoined gloomily. "Why did
you come out here with your father? You must have known that I was
here."

"Not from any line you have ever written," she retorted. "Alicia Ford
told me, otherwise I shouldn't have known."

"Still, you came. Why? Were you curious?"

"Why should I be curious, and what about?--the Red Desert? I've seen
deserts before."

"I thought you might be curious to know what disposition the Red Desert
was making of such a failure as I am," he said evenly. "I can forgive
that more easily than I can forgive your bringing of the other man along
to be an on-looker."

"Herbert, you mean? He is a good boy, a nice boy--and perfectly
harmless. You'll like him immensely when you come to know him better."

"You like him?" he queried.

"How can you ask--when you have just called him 'the other man'?"

Lidgerwood turned in his chair and faced her squarely.

"Eleanor, I had my punishment over a year ago, and I have been hoping
you would let it suffice. It was hard enough to lose you without being
compelled to stand by and see another man win you. Can't you understand
that?"

She did not answer him. Instead, she whipped aside from that phase of
the subject to ask a question of her own.

"What ever made you come out here, Howard?"

"To the superintendency of the Red Butte Western? You did."

"I?"

"Yes, you."

"It is ridiculous!"

"It is true."

"Prove it--if you can; but you can't."

"I am proving it day by day, or trying to. I didn't want to come, but
you drove me to it."

"I decline to take any such hideous responsibility," she laughed
lightly. "There must have been some better reason; Miss Dawson,
perhaps."

"Quite likely, barring the small fact that I didn't know there was a
Miss Dawson until I had been a month in Angels."

"Oh!" she said half spitefully. And then, with calculated malice,
"Howard, if you were only as brave as you are clever!... Why can't you
be a man and strike back now and then?"

"Strike back at the woman I love? I'm not quite down to that, I hope,
even if I was once too cowardly to strike for her."

"Always _that!_ Why won't you let me forget?"

"Because you must not forget. Listen: two weeks ago--only two weeks
ago--one of the Angels--er--peacemakers stood up in his place and shot
at me. What I did made me understand that I had gained nothing in a
year."

"Shot at you?" she echoed, and now he might have discovered a note of
real concern in her tone if his ear had been attuned to hear it. "Tell
me about it. Who was it? and why did he shoot at you?"

His answer seemed to be indirection itself.

"How long do you expect to stay in Angels and its vicinity?" he asked.

"I don't know. This is partly a pleasure trip for us younger folk.
Father was coming out alone, and I--that is, mamma decided to come and
make a car-party of it. We may stay two or three weeks, if the others
wish it. But you haven't answered me. I want to know who the man was,
and why he shot at you."

"Exactly; and you have answered yourself. If you stay two weeks, or two
days, in Angels you will doubtless hear all you care to about my
troubles. When the town isn't talking about what it is going to do to
me, it is gossiping about the dramatic arrest of my would-be assassin."

"You are most provoking!" she declared. "Did you make the arrest?"

"Don't shame me needlessly; of course I didn't. One of our locomotive
engineers, a man whom I had discharged for drunkenness, was the hero. It
was a most daring thing. The desperado is known in the Red Desert as
'The Killer,' and he has had the entire region terrorized so completely
that the town marshal of Angels, a man who has never before shirked his
duty, refused to serve the warrant. Judson, the engineer, made the
capture--took the 'terror' from his place in a gambling-den, disarmed
him, and brought him in. Judson himself was unarmed, and he did the
trick with a little steel wrench such as engineers use about a
locomotive."

Miss Brewster, being Colorado-born, was deeply interested.

"Now you are no longer dull, Howard!" she exclaimed. "Tell me in words
just how Mr. Judson did it."

"It was an old dodge, so old that it seemed new to everybody. As I told
you, Judson was discharged for drunkenness. All Angels knows him for a
fighter to the finish when he is sober, and for the biggest fool and the
most harmless one when he is in liquor. He took advantage of this,
reeled into the gambling-place as if he were too drunk to see straight,
played the fool till he got behind his man--after which the matter
simplified itself. Rufford, the desperado, had no means of knowing that
the cold piece of metal Judson was pressing against his back was not the
muzzle of a loaded revolver, and he had every reason for supposing that
it was; hence, he did all the things Judson told him to do."

Miss Eleanor did not need to vocalize her approval of Judson; the dark
eyes were alight with excitement.

"How fine!" she applauded. "Of course, after that, you took Mr. Judson
back into the railway service?"

"Indeed, I did nothing of the sort; nor shall I, until he demonstrates
that he means what he says about letting the whiskey alone."

"'Until he demonstrates'--don't be so cold-blooded, Howard! Possibly he
saved your life."

"Quite probably. But that has nothing to do with his reinstatement as an
engineer of passenger-trains. It would be much better for Rufford to
kill me than for me to let Judson have the chance to kill a train-load
of innocent people."

"And yet, a few moments ago, you called yourself a coward, cousin mine.
Could you really face such an alternative without flinching?"

"It doesn't appeal to me as a question involving any special degree of
courage," he said slowly. "I am a great coward, Eleanor--not a little
one, I hope."

"It doesn't appeal to you?--dear God!" she said. "And I have been
calling you ... but would you do it, Howard?"

He smiled at her sudden earnestness.

"How generous your heart is, Eleanor, when you let it speak for itself!
If you will promise not to let it change your opinion of me--you
shouldn't change it, you know, for I am the same man whom you held up to
scorn the day we parted--if you will promise, I'll tell you that for
weeks I have gone about with my life in my hands, knowing it. It hasn't
required any great amount of courage; it merely comes along in the line
of my plain duty to the company--it's one of the things I draw my salary
for."

"You haven't told me why this desperado wanted to kill you--why you are
in such a deep sea of trouble out here, Howard," she reminded him.

"No; it is a long story, and it would bore you if I had time to tell it.
And I haven't time, because that is Williams's whistle for the Angels
yard."

He had risen and was helping his companion to her feet when Mrs.
Brewster came to the car door to say:

"Oh, you are out here, are you, Howard? I was looking for you to let you
know that we dine in the _Nadia_ at seven. If your duties will
permit----"

Lidgerwood's refusal was apologetic but firm.

"I am very sorry, Cousin Jessica," he protested. "But I left a deskful
of stuff when I ran away to the wreck this morning, and really I'm
afraid I shall have to beg off."

"Oh, don't be so dreadfully formal!" said the president's wife
impatiently. "You are a member of the family, and all you have to do is
to say bluntly that you can't come, and then come whenever you can while
we are here. Carolyn Doty is dying to ask you a lot more questions about
the Red Desert. She confided to me that you were the most interesting
talker----"

Miss Eleanor's interruption was calculated to temper the passed-on
praise.

"He has been simply boring me to death, mamma, until just a few minutes
ago. I shall tell Carolyn that she is too easily pleased."

Mrs. Brewster, being well used to Eleanor's flippancies, paid no
attention to her daughter.

"You will come to us whenever you can, Howard; that is understood," she
said. And so the social matter rested.

Lidgerwood was half-way down the platform of the Crow's Nest, heading
for his office and the neglected desk, when Williams's engine came
backing through one of the yard tracks on its way to the roundhouse. At
the moment of its passing, a little man with his cap pulled over his
eyes dropped from the gangway step and lounged across to the
head-quarters building.

It was Judson; and having seen him last toiling away man-fashion at the
wreck in the Crosswater Hills, Lidgerwood hailed him.

"Hello, Judson! How did you get here? I thought you were doing a turn
with McCloskey."

The small man's grin was ferocious.

"I was, but Mac said he didn't have any further use for me--said I was
too much of a runt to be liftin' and pullin' along with growed-up men. I
came down with Williams on the '66."

Lidgerwood turned away. He remembered his reluctant consent to
McCloskey's proposal touching the espial upon Hallock, and was sorry he
had given it. It was too late to recall it now; but neither by word nor
look did the superintendent intimate to the discharged engineer that he
knew why McCloskey had sent him back to Angels on the engine of the
president's special.



XIV

BLIND SIGNALS


Lidgerwood was not making the conventional excuse when he gave the
deskful of work as a reason for not accepting the invitation to dine
with the president's party in the _Nadia_. Being the practical as well
as the nominal head of the Red Butte line, and the only official with
complete authority west of Copah, his daily mail was always heavy, and
during his frequent absences the accumulations stored up work for every
spare hour he could devote to it.

It was this increasing clerical burden which had led him to ask the
general manager for a stenographer, and during one of the later absences
the young man had come--a rapid, capable young fellow with the gift of
knowing how to make himself indispensable to a superior, coupled with
the ability to take care of much of the routine correspondence without
specific instructions, and with a disposition to be loyal to his salt.

Climbing the stair to his office on the second floor of the Crow's Nest
after the brief exchange of question and answer with Judson, Lidgerwood
found his new helper hard at work grinding through the day's train mail.

"Don't scamp your meals, Grady," was his greeting to the stenographer,
as he opened his own desk. "This is a pretty busy shop, but it is well
to remember that there is always another day coming, and if there isn't,
it won't make any difference how much or how little is left undone."

"Colgan wired that you were on Mr. Brewster's special, and I was waiting
on the chance that you might want to rush something through when you got
in," returned the young Irishman, reaching mechanically for his
note-book.

"I shall want to rush a lot of it through after a while, but you'd
better go and get your supper now and come back fresh for it," said the
superintendent, who was always humane to every one but himself. "Was
there anything special in to-day's mail?"

"Only this," turning up a letter marked "Immediate" and bearing the
cancellation stamp of the postal car which had passed eastward on Train
202.

Lidgerwood read the marked letter twice before he placed it face down
in the "unanswered" basket. It was from Flemister, and it called for a
decision which the superintendent was willing to postpone for the
moment. After he had read thoughtfully through everything else on the
waiting list, he took up the mine-owner's letter again. All things
considered, it was a little puzzling. He had not seen Flemister since
the day of the rather spiteful conversation, with the building-and-loan
theft for a topic, and on that occasion the mine-owner had gone away
with threats in his mouth. Yet his letter was distinctly friendly,
conveying an offer of neighborly help.

The occasion for the neighborliness arose upon a right-of-way
involvement. Acting under instructions from Vice-President Ford,
Lidgerwood had already begun to move in the matter of extending the Red
Butte Western toward the Nevada gold-fields, and Benson had been running
preliminary surveys and making estimates of cost. Of the two more
feasible routes, that which left the main line at Little Butte, turning
southward up the Wire-Silver gulch, had been favorably reported on by
the engineer. The right of way over this route, save for a few miles
through an upland valley of cattle ranches, could be acquired from the
government, and among the ranch owners only one was disposed to fight
the coming of the railroad--for a purely mercenary purpose, Benson
declared.

It was about this man, James Grofield, that Flemister wrote. The
ranchman, so the letter stated, had passed through Little Butte early in
the day, on his way to Red Butte. He would be returning by the
accommodation late in the afternoon, and would stop at the Wire-Silver
mine, where he had stabled his horses. For some reason he had taken a
dislike to Benson, but if Lidgerwood could make it convenient to come
over to Little Butte on the evening passenger-train from Angels, the
writer of the letter would arrange to keep Grofield over-night, and the
right-of-way matter could doubtless be settled satisfactorily.

This was the substance of the mine-owner's letter, and if Lidgerwood
hesitated it was partly because he was suspicious of Flemister's sudden
friendliness. Then the motive--Flemister's motive--suggested itself, and
the suspicion was put to sleep. The Wire-Silver mine was five miles
distant from the main line at Little Butte, at the end of a spur; if the
extension should be built, it would be a main-line station, with all the
advantages accruing therefrom. Flemister was merely putting the
personal animosities aside for a good and sufficient business reason.

Lidgerwood looked at his watch. If Grady should not be gone too long, he
might be able to work through the pile of correspondence and get away on
the evening passenger; and when the stenographer came back the work was
attacked with that end in view. But after an hour's rapid dictating, a
long-drawn whistle signal announced the incoming of the train he was
trying to make and warned him that the race against time had failed.

"It's no use; we'll have to make two bites of it," he said to Grady, and
then he left his desk to go downstairs for a breathing moment and the
cup of coffee which he meant to substitute for the dinner which the lack
of time had made him forego.

Train 205, the train Flemister had suggested that he might take, was
just pulling in from the long run across the desert when he reached the
foot of the stairs. That it was too late to take this means of reaching
Little Butte and the Wire-Silver mine was a small matter; it merely
meant that he would be obliged to order out the service-car and go
special, if he should finally decide to act upon Flemister's suggestion.

Angels being a meal station, there was a twenty-minute stop for all
trains, and the passengers from 205 were crowding the platform and
hurrying to the dining-room and lunch-counter when Lidgerwood made his
way to the station end of the building. In the men's room, whither he
went to order his cup of coffee, there was a mixed throng of travellers,
with a sprinkling of trainmen and town idlers, among the latter a number
of the lately discharged railroad employees. Lidgerwood marked a group
of the trouble-makers withdrawing to a corner of the room as he entered,
and while the waiter was serving his coffee, he saw Hallock join the
group. It was only a straw, but straws are significant when the wind is
blowing from a threatening quarter. Once again Lidgerwood remembered
McCloskey's proposal, and his own reluctant assent to it, and now he was
not too greatly conscience-stricken when he saw Judson quietly working
his way through the crowded room to a point of espial upon the group in
the corner.

"Your coffee's getting cold, Mr. Lidgerwood," the man behind the counter
warned him, and Lidgerwood whirled around on the pivot stool and turned
his back upon the malcontents and their watcher. The keen inner sense,
which neither the physiologists nor the psychologists have yet been
able to define or to name, apprised him of a threat developing in the
distant corner, but he resolutely ignored it, drank his coffee, and
presently went his way around the peopled end of the building and back
to the office entrance, meaning to go above stairs and put in another
hour with Grady before he should decide definitely about making the
night run to Little Butte.

His foot was on the threshold of the stairway door when Judson overtook
him.

"Mac told me to report to you when I couldn't get at him," the
ex-engineman began abruptly. "There's something hatching, but I can't
find out what it is. Are you thinking about goin' out on the road
anywhere to-night, Mr. Lidgerwood?"

Lidgerwood's decision was taken on the instant.

"Yes; I think I shall go west in my car in an hour or so. Why?"

"There ain't any 'why,' I guess, if you feel like goin'. But what I
don't savvy is why them fellows back yonder in the waitin'-room are so
dead anxious to find out if you _are_ goin'."

As he spoke, a man who had been skulking behind a truck-load of express
freight, so near that he could have touched either of them with an
out-stretched arm, withdrew silently in the direction of the lunch-room.
He was a tall man with stooping shoulders, and his noiseless retreat
was cautiously made, yet not quite cautiously enough, since Judson's
sharp eyes marked the shuffling figure vanishing in the shadow cast by
the over-hanging shelter roof of the station.

"By cripes!--look at that, will you?" he exclaimed, pointing to the
retreating figure. "That's Hallock, and he was listening!"

Lidgerwood shook his head.

"No, that isn't Hallock," he denied. And then, with a bit of the
man-driving rasp in his voice: "See here, Judson, don't you let
McCloskey's prejudices run away with you; make a memorandum of that and
paste it in your hat. I know what you have been instructed to do, and I
have given my consent, but it is with the understanding that you will be
at least as fair as you would be if McCloskey's bias happened to run the
other way. I don't want you to make a case against Hallock unless you
can get proof positive that he is disloyal to the company and to me; and
I'll tell you here and now that I shall be much better pleased if you
can bring me the assurance that he is a true man."

"But that _was_ Hallock," insisted Judson, "or else it was his livin'
double."

"No; follow him and you'll see for yourself. It was more like that Ruby
Gulch operator who quit in a quarrel with McCloskey a week or two ago.
What is his name?--Sheffield."

Judson hastened down the platform to satisfy himself, and Lidgerwood
mounted the stair to his office. Grady was still pounding the keys of
the type-writer on the batch of letters given him in the busy hour
following his return from supper, and the superintendent turned his back
upon the clicking activities and went to stand at the window, from which
he could look down upon the platform with the waiting passenger-train
drawn up beside it.

Seeing the cheerful lights in the side-tracked _Nadia_, he fell to
thinking of Eleanor, opening the door of conscious thought to her and
saying to himself that she was never more than a single step beyond the
threshold of that door. Looking across to the _Nadia_, he knew now why
he had hesitated so long before deciding to go on the night trip to
Timanyoni Park. Chilled hearts follow the analogy of cold hands. When
the fire is near, a man will go and spread his fingers to the blaze,
though he may be never so well assured that they will ache for it
afterward.

But with this thought came another and a more manly one--the woman he
loved was in Angels, and she would doubtless remain in Angels or its
immediate vicinity for some time; that was unpreventable; but he could
still resolve that there should not be a repetition of the old tragedy
of the moth and the candle. It was well that at the very outset a duty
call had come to enable him to break the spell of her nearness, and it
was also well that he had decided not to disregard it.

The train conductor's "All aboard!" shouted on the platform just below
his window, drew his attention from the _Nadia_ and the distracting
thought of Eleanor's nearness. Train 205 was ready to resume its
westward flight, and the locomotive bell was clanging musically. A
half-grown moon, hanging low in the black dome of the night, yellowed
the glow of the platform incandescents. The last few passengers were
hurrying up the steps of the cars, and the conductor was swinging his
lantern in the starting signal for the engineer.

At the critical moment, when the train was fairly in motion, Lidgerwood
saw Hallock--it was unmistakably Hallock this time--spring from the
shadow of a baggage-truck and whip up to the step of the smoker, and a
scant half-second later he saw Judson race across the wide platform and
throw himself like a self-propelled projectile against and through the
closing doors of the vestibule at the forward end of the sleeper.

Judson's dash and his capture of the out-going train were easily
accounted for: he had seen Hallock. But where was Hallock going?
Lidgerwood was still asking himself the question half-abstractedly when
he crossed to his desk and touched the buzzer-push which summoned an
operator from the despatcher's room.

"Wire Mr. Pennington Flemister, care of Goodloe, at Little Butte, that I
am coming out with my car, and should be with him by eleven o'clock.
Then call up the yard office and tell Matthews to let me have the car
and engine by eight-thirty, sharp," he directed.

The operator made a note of the order and went out, and the
superintendent settled himself in his desk-chair for another hour's hard
work with the stenographer. At twenty-five minutes past eight he heard
the wheel-grindings of the up-coming service-car, and the weary
short-hand man snapped a rubber band upon the notes of the final letter.

"That's all for to-night, Grady, and it's quite enough," was the
superintendent's word of release. "I'm sorry to have to work you so
late, but I'd like to have those letters written out and mailed before
you lock up. Are you good for it?"

"I'm good for anything you say, Mr. Lidgerwood," was the response of the
one who was loyal to his salt, and the superintendent put on his light
coat and went out and down the stair.

At the outer door he turned up the long platform, instead of down, and
walked quickly to the _Nadia_, persuading himself that he must, in
common decency, tell the president that he was going away; persuading
himself that it was this, and not at all the desire to warm his hands at
the ungrateful fire of Eleanor's mockery, that was making him turn his
back for the moment upon the waiting special train.



XV

ELEANOR INTERVENES


The president's private car was side-tracked on the short spur at the
eastern end of the Crow's Nest, and when Lidgerwood reached it he found
the observation platform fully occupied. The night was no more than
pleasantly cool, and the half-grown moon, which was already dipping to
its early extinguishment behind the upreared bulk of the Timanyonis,
struck out stark etchings in silver and blackest shadow upon a ground of
fallow dun and vanishing grays. On such nights the mountain desert hides
its forbidding face, and the potent spell of the silent wilderness had
drawn the young people of the _Nadia's_ party to the out-door
trysting-place.

"Hello, Mr. Lidgerwood, is that you?" called Van Lew, when the
superintendent came across to the spur track. "I thought you said this
was a bad man's country. We have been out here for a solid hour, and
nobody has shot up the town or even whooped a single lonesome war-whoop;
in fact, I think your village with the heavenly name has gone
ingloriously to bed. We're defrauded."

"It does go to bed pretty early--that part of it which doesn't stay up
pretty late," laughed Lidgerwood. Then he came closer and spoke to Miss
Brewster. "I am going west in my car, and I don't know just when I shall
return. Please tell your father that everything we have here is entirely
at his service. If you don't see what you want, you are to ask for it."

"Will there be any one to ask when you are gone?" she inquired, neither
sorrowing nor rejoicing, so far as he could determine.

"Oh, yes; McCloskey, my trainmaster, will be in from the wreck before
morning, and he will turn flip-flaps trying to make things pleasant for
you, if you will give him the chance."

She made the adorable little grimace which always carried him swiftly
back to a certain summer of ecstatic memories; to a time when her
keenest retort had been no more than a playful love-thrust and there had
been no bitterness in her mockery.

"Will he make dreadful faces at me, as he did at you this morning when
you went down among the smashed cars at the wreck to speak to him?" she
asked.

"So you were looking out of the window, too, were you? You are a close
observer and a good guesser. That was Mac, and--yes, he will probably
make faces at you. He can't help it any more than he can help
breathing."

Miss Brewster was running her fingers along the hand-rail as if it were
the key-board of a piano. "You say you don't know how long you will be
away?" she asked.

"No; but probably not more than the night. I was only providing for the
unexpected, which some people say is what always happens."

"Will your run take you as far as the Timanyoni Canyon?"

"Yes; through it, and some little distance beyond."

"You have just said that we are to ask for what we want. Did you mean
it?"

"Surely," he replied unguardedly.

"Then we may as well begin at once," she said coolly; and turning
quickly to the others: "O all you people; listen a minute, will you?
Hush, Carolyn! What do you say to a moonlight ride through one of the
grandest canyons in the West in Mr. Lidgerwood's car? It will be
something to talk about as long as you live. Don't all speak at once,
please."

But they did. There was an instant and enthusiastic chorus of approval,
winding up rather dolefully, however, with Miss Doty's, "But your mother
will never consent to it, Eleanor!"

"Mr. Lidgerwood will never consent, you mean," put in Miriam Holcombe
quietly.

Lidgerwood said what he might without being too crudely inhospitable.
His car was entirely at the service of the president's party, of course,
but it was not very commodious compared with the _Nadia_. Moreover, he
was going on a business trip, and at the end of it he would have to
leave them for an hour or two, or maybe longer. Moreover, again, if they
got tired they would have to sleep as they could, though possibly his
state-room in the service-car might be made to accommodate the three
young women. All this he said, hoping and believing that Mrs. Brewster
would not only refuse to go herself but would promptly veto an
unchaperoned excursion.

But this was one time when his distantly related kinswoman disappointed
him. Mrs. Brewster, cajoled by her daughter, yielded a reluctant
consent, going to the car door to tell Lidgerwood that she would hold
him responsible for the safe return of the trippers.

"See, now, how fatally easy it is for one to promise more--oh, so very
much more!--than one has any idea of performing," murmured the
president's daughter, dropping out to walk beside the victim when the
party trooped down the long platform of the Crow's Nest to the
service-car. And when he did not reply: "Please don't be grumpy."

"It was the maddest notion!" he protested. "Whatever made you suggest
it?"

"More churlishness?" she said reproachfully. And then, with ironical
sentiment: "There was a time when you would have moved heaven and earth
for a chance to take me somewhere with you, Howard."

"To be with you; yes, that is true. But----"

Her rippling laugh was too sweet to be shrill; none the less it held in
it a little flick of the whip of malice.

"Listen," she said. "I did it out of pure hatefulness. You showed so
plainly this afternoon that you wished to be quit of me--of the entire
party--that I couldn't resist the temptation to pay you back with good,
liberal interest. Possibly you will think twice before you snub me
again, Howard, dear."

Quickly he stopped and faced her. The others were a few steps in
advance; were already boarding the service-car.

"One word, Eleanor--and for Heaven's sake let us make it final. There
are some things that I can endure and some others that I cannot--will
not. I love you; what you said to me the last time we were together made
no difference; nothing you can ever say will make any difference. You
must take that fact into consideration while you are here and we are
obliged to meet."

"Well?" she said, and there was nothing in her tone to indicate that she
felt more than a passing interest in his declaration.

"That is all," he ended shortly. "I am, as I told you this afternoon,
the same man that I was a year ago last spring, as deeply infatuated
and, unhappily, just as far below your ideal of what your lover should
be. In justice to me, in justice to Van Lew--"

"I think your conductor is waiting to speak to you," she broke in
sweetly, and he gave it up, putting her on the car and turning to
confront the man with the green-shaded lantern who proved to be
Bradford.

"Any special orders, Mr. Lidgerwood?" inquired the reformed
cattle-herder, looking stiff and uncomfortable in his new service
uniform--one of Lidgerwood's earliest requirements for men on duty in
the train service.

"Yes. Run without stop to Little Butte, unless the despatcher calls you
down. Time yourself to make Little Butte by eleven o'clock, or a little
later. Who is on the engine?"

"Williams."

"Williams? How does it come that he is doubling out with me? He has just
made the run over the Desert Division with the president's car."

"So have I, for that matter," said Bradford calmly; "but we both got a
hurry call about fifteen minutes ago."

Lidgerwood held his watch to the light of the green-shaded lantern. If
he meant to keep the wire appointment with Flemister, there was no time
to call out another crew.

"I don't like to ask you and Williams to double out of your turn,
especially when I know of no necessity for it. But I'm in a rush. Can
you two stand it?"

"Sure," said the ex-cow-man. Then he ventured a word of his own. "I'll
ride up ahead with Williams--you're pretty full up, back here in the
car, anyway--and then you'll know that two of your own men are keepin'
tab on the run. With the wrecks we're enjoying----"

Lidgerwood was impatient of mysteries.

"What do you mean, Andy?" he broke in. "Anything new?"

"Oh, nothing you could put your finger on. Same old rag-chewin' going on
up at Cat Biggs's and the other waterin' troughs about how you've got to
be done up, if it costs money."

"That isn't new," objected Lidgerwood irritably.

"Tumble-weeds," said Bradford, "rollin' round over the short-grass. But
they show which way the wind's comin' from, and give you the jumps when
you wouldn't have 'em natural. Williams had a spell of 'em a few minutes
ago when he went over to take the 266 out o' the roundhouse and found
one of the back-shop men down under her tinkerin' with her trucks."

"What's that?" was the sharp query.

"That's all there was to it," Bradford went on imperturbably. "Williams
asked the shopman politely what in hell he was doing under there, and
the fellow crawled out and said he was just lookin' her over to see if
she was all right for the night run. Now, you wouldn't think there was
any tumble-weed in that to give a man the jumps, but Williams had 'em,
all the same. Says he to me, tellin' me about it just now: 'That's all
right, Andy, but how in blue blazes did he, or anybody else except
Matthews and the caller, know that the 266 was goin' out? that's what
I'd like to know.' And I had to pass it up."

Lidgerwood asked a single question.

"Did Williams find that anything had been tampered with?"

"Nothing that you could shoot up the back-shop man for. One of the truck
safety-chains--the one on the left side, back--was loose. But it
couldn't have hurt anything if it had been taken off. We ain't runnin'
on safety-chains these days."

"Safety-chain loose, you say?--so if the truck should jump and swing it
would keep on swinging? You tell Williams when you go up ahead that I
want that machinist's name."

"H'm," said Bradford; "reckon it was meant to do that?"

"God only knows what isn't meant, these times, Andy. Hold on a minute
before you give Williams the word to go." Then he turned to young
Jefferis, who had come out on the car platform to light a cigarette.
"Will you ask Miss Brewster to step out here for a moment?"

Eleanor came at the summons, and Jefferis gave the superintendent a
clear field by dropping off to ask Bradford for a match.

"You sent for me, Howard?" said the president's daughter, and honey
could not have matched her tone for sweetness.

"Yes. I shall have to anticipate the Angels gossips a little by telling
you that we are in the midst of a pretty bitter labor fight. That is why
people go gunning for me. I can't take you and your friends over the
road to-night."

"Why not?" she inquired.

"Because it may not be entirely safe."

"Nonsense!" she flashed back. "What could happen to us on a little
excursion like this?"

"I don't know, but I wish you would reconsider and go back to the
_Nadia_."

"I shall do nothing of the sort," she said, wilfully. And then, with
totally unnecessary cruelty, she added: "Is it a return of the old
malady? Are you afraid again, Howard?"

The taunt was too much. Wheeling suddenly, Lidgerwood snapped out a
summons to Jefferis: "Get aboard, Mr. Jefferis; we are going."

At the word Bradford ran forward, swinging his lantern, and a moment
later the special train shot away from the Crow's Nest platform and out
over the yard switches, and began to bore its way into the westward
night.



XVI

THE SHADOWGRAPH


Forty-two miles south-west of Angels, at a point where all further
progress seems definitely barred by the huge barrier of the great
mountain range, the Red Butte Western, having picked its devious way to
an apparent _cul-de-sac_ among the foot-hills and hogbacks, plunges
abruptly into the echoing canyon of the Eastern Timanyoni.

For forty added miles the river chasm, throughout its length a narrow,
tortuous crevice, with sheer and towering cliffs for its walls, affords
a precarious footing for the railway embankment, leading the double line
of steel with almost sentient reluctance, as it seems, through the
mighty mountain barrier. At its western extremity the canyon forms the
gate-way to a shut-in valley of upheaved hills and inferior mountains
isolated by wide stretches of rolling grassland. To the eastward and
westward of the great valley rise the sentinel peaks of the two
enclosing mountain ranges; and across the shut-in area the river
plunges from pool to pool, twisting and turning as the craggy and
densely forested lesser heights constrain it.

Red Butte, the centre of the evanescent mining excitement which was
originally responsible for the building of the railroad, lies
high-pitched among the shouldering spurs of the western boundary range.
Seeking the route promising the fewest cuts and fills and the easiest
grades, Chandler, the construction chief of the building company, had
followed the south bank of the river to a point a short distance beyond
the stream-fronting cliffs of the landmark hill known as Little Butte;
and at the station of the same name he had built his bridge across the
Timanyoni and swung his line in a great curve for the northward climb
among the hogbacks to the gold-mining district in which Red Butte was
the principal camp.

Elsewhere than in a land of sky-piercing peaks and continent-cresting
highlands, Little Butte would have been called a true mountain. On the
engineering maps of the Red Butte Western its outline appears as a
roughly described triangle with five-mile sides, the three angles of the
figure marked respectively by Silver Switch, Little Butte station and
bridge, and the Wire-Silver mine.

Between Silver Switch and the bridge station, the main line of the
railroad follows the base of the triangle, with the precipitous bluffs
of the big hill on the left and the torrenting flood of the Timanyoni on
the right. Along the eastern side of the triangle, and leaving the main
track at Silver Switch, ran the spur which had formerly served the
Wire-Silver when the working opening of the mine had been on the eastern
slope of the ridge-like hill. For some years previous to the summer of
overturnings this spur had been disused, though its track, ending among
a group of the old mine buildings five miles away, was still in
commission.

Along the western side of the triangle, with Little Butte station for
its point of divergence from the main line, ran the new spur, built to
accommodate Flemister after he had dug through the hill, ousted the
rightful owner of the true Wire-Silver vein, and had transferred his
labor hamlet and his plant--or the major part of both--to the western
slope of the butte, at this point no more than a narrow ridge separating
the eastern and western gulches.

Train 205, with ex-engineer Judson apparently sound asleep in one of the
rearward seats of the day coach, was on time when it swung out of the
lower canyon portal and raced around the curves and down the grades in
its crossing of Timanyoni Park. At Point-of-Rocks Judson came awake
sufficiently to put his face to the window, with a shading hand to cut
off the car lights; but having thus located the train's placement in the
Park-crossing race, he put his knees up against the back of the
adjoining seat, pulled his cap over his eyes, and to all outward
appearances went to sleep again. Four or five miles farther along,
however, there came a gentle grinding of brake-shoes upon the chilled
wheel-treads that aroused him quickly. Another flattening of his nose
against the window-pane showed him the familiar bulk of Little Butte
looming black in the moonlight, and a moment later he had let himself
silently into the rear vestibule of the day coach, and was as silently
opening the folding doors of the vestibule itself.

Hanging off by the hand-rails, he saw the engine's headlight pick up the
switch-stand of the old spur. The train was unmistakably slowing now,
and he made ready to jump if the need should arise, picking his place at
the track side as the train lights showed him the ground. As the speed
was checked, Judson saw what he was expecting to see. Precisely at the
instant of the switch passing, a man dropped from the forward step of
the smoker and walked swiftly away up the disused track of the old
spur. Judson's turn came a moment later, and when his end of the day
coach flicked past the switch-stand he, too, dropped to the ground, and,
waiting only until he could follow without being detected, set out after
the tall figure, which was by that time scarcely more than an indistinct
and retreating blur in the moonlight.

The chase led directly up the old spur, but it did not continue quite to
the five-mile-distant end of it. A few hundred yards short of the
stockade enclosing the old buildings the shadowy figure took to the
forest and began to climb the ridge, going straight up, as nearly as
Judson could determine. The ex-engineer followed, still keeping his
distance. From the first bench above the valley level he looked back and
down into the stockade enclosure. All of the old buildings were dark,
but one of the two new and unpainted ones was brilliantly lighted, and
there were sounds familiar enough to Judson to mark it as the
Wire-Silver power-house. Notwithstanding his interest in the chase,
Judson was curious enough to stand a moment listening to the sharply
defined exhausts of the high-speeded steam-engine driving the
generators.

"Say!" he ejaculated, under his breath, "if that engine ain't a dead
match for the old 216 pullin' a grade, I don't want a cent! Double
cylinder, set on the quarter, and _choo-chooin_' like it ought to have a
pair o' steel rails under it. If I had time I'd go down yonder and break
a winder in that power-shack; blamed if I wouldn't!"

But, unhappily, there was no time to spare; as it was, he had lingered
too long, and when he came out upon the crest of the narrow ridge and
attained a point of view from which he could look down upon the
buildings clustering at the foot of the western slope, he had lost the
scent. The tall man had disappeared as completely and suddenly as if the
earth had opened and swallowed him.

This, in Judson's prefiguring, was a small matter. The tall man, whom
the ex-engineer had unmistakably recognized at the moment of
train-forsaking as Rankin Hallock, was doubtless on his way to
Flemister's head-quarters at the foot of the western slope. Why he
should take the roundabout route up the old spur and across the
mountain, when he might have gone on the train to Little Butte station
and so have saved the added distance and the hard climb, was a question
which Judson answered briefly: for some reason of his own, Hallock did
not wish to be seen going openly to the Wire-Silver head-quarters. Hence
the drop from the train at Silver Switch and the long tramp up the
gulch and over the ridge.

Forecasting it thus, Judson lost no time on the summit of mysterious
disappearances. Choosing the shortest path he could find which promised
to lead him down to the mining hamlet at the foot of the
westward-fronting slope, he set his feet in it and went stumbling down
the steep declivity, bringing up, finally, on a little bench just above
the mine workings. Here he stopped to get his breath and his bearings.
From his halting-place the mine head-quarters building lay just below
him, at the right of the tunnel entrance to the mine. It was a long log
building of one story, with warehouse doors in the nearer gable and
lighted windows to mark the location of the offices at the opposite end.

Making a détour to dodge the electric-lighted tunnel mouth, Judson
carefully reconnoitred the office end of the head-quarters building.
There was a door, with steps giving upon the down-hill side, and there
were two windows, both of which were blank to the eye by reason of the
drawn-down shades. Two persons, at least, were in the lighted room;
Judson could hear their voices, but the thick log walls muffled the
sounds to an indistinct murmur. On the mountain-facing side of the
building, which was in shadow, the ex-engineer searched painstakingly
for some open chink or cranny between the logs, but there was no avenue
of observation either for the eye or the ear. Just as he had made up his
mind to risk the moonlight on the other side of the head-quarters, a
sound like the moving of chairs on a bare floor made him dodge quickly
behind the bole of a great mountain pine which had been left standing at
the back of the building. The huge tree was directly opposite one of the
windows, and when Judson looked again the figure of a man sitting in a
chair was sharply silhouetted on the drawn window-shade.

Judson stared, rubbed his eyes, and stared again. It had never occurred
to him before that the face of a man, viewed in blank profile, could
differ so strikingly from the same face as seen eye to eye. That the man
whose shadow was projected upon the window-shade was Rankin Hallock, he
could not doubt. The bearded chin, the puffy lips, the prominent nose
were all faithfully outlined in the exaggerated shadowgraph. But the hat
was worn at an unfamiliar angle, and there was something in the erect,
bulking figure that was still more unfamiliar. Judson backed away and
stared again, muttering to himself. If he had not traced Hallock almost
to the door of Flemister's quarters, there might have been room for the
thin edge of the doubt wedge. The unfamiliar pose and the rakish tilt of
the soft hat were not among the chief clerk's remembered
characteristics; but making due allowance for the distortion of the
magnified facial outline, the profile was Hallock's.

Having definitely settled for himself the question of identity, Judson
renewed his search for some eavesdropping point of vantage. Risking the
moonlight, he twice made the circuit of the occupied end of the
building. There was a line of light showing under the ill-fitting door,
and with the top step of the down-hill flight for a perching-place one
might lay an ear to the crack and overhear. But door and steps were
sharply struck out in the moonlight, and they faced the mining hamlet
where the men of the day shift were still stirring.

Judson knew the temper of the Timanyoni miners. To be seen crouching on
the boss's doorstep would be to take the chance of making a target of
himself for the first loiterer of the day shift who happened to look his
way. Dismissing the risky expedient, he made a third circuit from
moon-glare to shadow, this time upon hands and knees. To the lowly come
the rewards of humility. Framed level upon stout log pillars on the
down-hill side, the head-quarters warehouse and office sheltered a space
beneath its floor which was roughly boarded up with slabs from the
log-sawing. Slab by slab the ex-engineer sought for his rat-hole, trying
each one softly in its turn. When there remained but three more to be
tugged at, the loosened one was found. Judson swung it cautiously aside
and wriggled through the narrow aperture left by its removal. A crawling
minute later he was crouching beneath the loosely jointed floor of the
lighted room, and the avenue of the ear had broadened into a fair
highway.

Almost at once he was able to verify his guess that there were only two
men in the room above. At all events, there were only two speakers. They
were talking in low tones, and Judson had no difficulty in identifying
the rather high-pitched voice of the owner of the Wire-Silver mine. The
man whose profile he had seen on the window-shade had the voice which
belonged to the outlined features, but the listener under the floor had
a vague impression that he was trying to disguise it. Judson knew
nothing about the letter in which Flemister had promised to arrange for
a meeting between Lidgerwood and the ranchman Grofield. What he did know
was that he had followed Hallock almost to the door of Flemister's
office, and that he had seen a shadowed face on the office window-shade
which could be no other than the face of the chief clerk. It was in
spite of all this that the impression that the second speaker was trying
to disguise his voice persisted. But the ex-engineer of fast
passenger-trains was able to banish the impression after the first few
minutes of eavesdropping.

Judson had scarcely found his breathing space between the floor timbers,
and had not yet overheard enough to give him the drift of the low-toned
talk, when the bell of the private-line telephone rang in the room
above. It was Flemister who answered the bell-ringer.

"Hello! Yes; this is Flemister.... Yes, I say; _this_ is Flemister;
you're talking to him.... What's that?--a message about Mr.
Lidgerwood?... All right; fire away."

"Who is it?" came the inquiry, in the grating voice which fitted, and
yet did not fit, the man whom Judson had followed from his boarding of
the train at Angels to Silver Switch, and from the gulch of the old spur
to his disappearance on the wooded slope of Little Butte ridge.

The listener heard the click of the telephone ear-piece replacement.

"It's Goodloe, talking from his station office at Little Butte,"
replied the mine owner. "The despatcher has just called him up to say
that Lidgerwood left Angels in his service-car, running special, at
eight-forty, which would figure it here at about eleven, or a little
later."

"Who is running it?" inquired the other man rather anxiously, Judson
decided.

"Williams and Bradford. A fool for luck, every time. We might have had
to _écraser_ a couple of our friends."

The French was beyond Judson, but the mine-owner's tone supplied the
missing meaning, and the listener under the floor had a sensation like
that which might be produced by a cold wind blowing up the nape of his
neck.

"There is no such thing as luck," rasped the other voice. "My time was
damned short--after I found out that Lidgerwood wasn't coming on the
passenger. But I managed to send word to Matthews and Lester, telling
them to make sure of Williams and Bradford. We could spare both of them,
if we have to."

"Good!" said Flemister. "Then you had some such alternative in mind as
that I have just been proposing?"

"No," was the crusty rejoinder. "I was merely providing for the
hundredth chance. I don't like your alternative."

"Why don't you?"

"Well, for one thing, it's needlessly bloody. We don't have to go at
this thing like a bull at a gate. I've had my finger on the pulse of
things ever since Lidgerwood took hold. The dope is working all right in
a purely natural way. In the ordinary run of things, it will be only a
few days or weeks before Lidgerwood will throw up his hands and quit,
and when he goes out, I go in. That's straight goods this time."

"You thought it was before," sneered Flemister, "and you got beautifully
left." Then: "You're talking long on 'naturals' and the 'ordinary run of
things,' but I notice you schemed with Bart Rufford to put him out of
the fight with a pistol bullet!"

Judson felt a sudden easing of strains. He had told McCloskey that he
would be willing to swear to the voice of the man whom he had overheard
plotting with Rufford in Cat Biggs's back room. Afterward, after he had
sufficiently remembered that a whiskey certainty might easily lead up to
a sober perjury, he had admitted the possible doubt. But now Flemister's
taunt made assurance doubly sure. Moreover, the arch-plotter was not
denying the fact of the conspiracy with "The Killer."

"Rufford is a blood-thirsty devil--like yourself," the other man was
saying calmly. "As I have told you before, I've discovered Lidgerwood's
weakness--he can't call a sudden bluff. Rufford's play--the play I told
him to make--was to get the drop on him, scare him up good, and chase
him out of town--out of the country. He overran his orders--and went to
jail for it."

"Well?" said the mine-owner.

"Your scheme, as you outlined it to me in your cipher wire this
afternoon, was built on this same weakness of Lidgerwood's, and I agreed
to it. As I understood it, you were to toll him up here with some lie
about meeting Grofield, and then one of us was to put a pistol in his
face and bluff him into throwing up his job. As I say, I agreed to it.
He'll have to go when the fight with the men gets hot enough; but he
might hold on too long for our comfort."

"Well?" said Flemister again, this time more impatiently, Judson
thought.

"He queered your lay-out by carefully omitting to come on the passenger,
and now you propose to fall back upon Rufford's method. I don't
approve."

Again the mine-owner said "Why don't you?" and the other voice took up
the question argumentatively.

"First, because it is unnecessary, as I have explained. Lidgerwood is
officially dead, right now. When the grievance committees tell him what
has been decided upon, he will put on his hat and go back to wherever it
was that he came from."

"And secondly?" suggested Flemister, still with the nagging sneer in his
tone.

There was a little pause, and Judson listened until the effort grew
positively painful.

"The secondly is a weakness of mine, you'll say, Flemister. I want his
job; partly because it belongs to me, but chiefly because if I don't get
it a bunch of us will wind up breaking stone for the State. But I
haven't anything against the man himself. He trusts me; he has defended
me when others have tried to put him wise; he has been damned white to
me, Flemister."

"Is that all?" queried the mine-owner, in the tone of the prosecuting
attorney who gives the criminal his full length of the rope with which
to hang himself.

"All of that part of it--and you are saying to yourself that it is a
good deal more than enough. Perhaps it is; but there is still another
reason for thinking twice before burning all the bridges behind us.
Lidgerwood is Ford's man; if he throws up his job of his own accord, I
may be able to swing Ford into line to name me as his successor. On the
other hand, if Lidgerwood is snuffed out and there is the faintest
suspicion of foul play.... Flemister, I'm telling you right here and now
that that man Ford will neither eat nor sleep until he has set the dogs
on us!"

There was another pause, and Judson shifted his weight cautiously from
one elbow to the other. Then Flemister began, without heat and equally
without compunction. The ex-engineer shivered, as if the measured words
had been so many drops of ice-water dribbling through the cracks in the
floor to fall upon his spine.

"You say it is unnecessary; that Lidgerwood will be pushed out by the
labor fight. My answer to that is that you don't know him quite as well
as you think you do. If he's allowed to live, he'll stay--unless
somebody takes him unawares and scares him off, as I meant to do
to-night when I wired you. If he continues to live, and stay, you know
what will happen, sooner or later. He'll find you out for the
double-faced cur that you are--and after that, the fireworks."

At this the other voice took its turn at the savage sneering.

"You can't put it all over me that way, Flemister; you can't, and, by
God, you sha'n't! You're in the hole just as deep as I am, foot for
foot!"

"Oh, no, my friend," said the cooler voice. "I haven't been stealing in
car-load lots from the company that hires me; I have merely been buying
a little disused scrap from you. You may say that I have planned a few
of the adverse happenings which have been running the loss-and-damage
account of the road up into the pictures during the past few
weeks--possibly I have; but you are the man who has been carrying out
the plans, and you are the man the courts will recognize. But we're
wasting time sitting here jawing at each other like a pair of old women.
It's up to us to obliterate Lidgerwood; after which it will be up to you
to get his job and cover up your tracks as you can. If he lives, he'll
dig; and if he digs, he'll turn up things that neither of us can stand
for. See how he hangs onto that building-and-loan ghost. He'll tree
somebody on that before he's through, you mark my words! And it runs in
my mind that the somebody will be you."

"But this trap scheme of yours," protested the other man; "it's a frost,
I tell you! You say the night passenger from Red Butte is late. I know
it's late, now; but Cranford's running it, and it is all down-hill from
Red Butte to the bridge. Cranford will make up his thirty minutes, and
that will put his train right here in the thick of things. Call it off
for to-night, Flemister. Meet Lidgerwood when he comes and tell him an
easy lie about your not being able to hold Grofield for the right-of-way
talk."

Judson heard the creak and snap of a swing-chair suddenly righted, and
the floor dust jarred through the cracks upon him when the mine-owner
sprang to his feet.

"Call it off and let you drop out of it? Not by a thousand miles, my
cautious friend! Want to stay here and keep your feet warm while I go
and do it? Not on your tintype, you yapping hound! I'm about ready to
freeze you, anyway, for the second time--mark that, will you?--for the
second time. No, keep your hands where I can see 'em, or I'll knife you
right where you sit! You can bully and browbeat a lot of railroad
buckies when you're playing the boss act, _but I know you_! You come
with me or I'll give the whole snap away to Vice-President Ford. I'll
tell him how you built a street of houses in Red Butte out of company
material and with company labor. I'll prove to him that you've scrapped
first one thing and then another--condemned them so you might sell them
for your own pocket. I'll----"

"Shut up!" shouted the other man hoarsely. And then, after a moment
that Judson felt was crammed to the bursting point with murderous
possibilities: "Get your tools and come on. We'll see who's got the
yellows before we're through with this!"



XVII

THE DIPSOMANIAC


There are moments when the primal instincts assert themselves with a
sort of blind ferocity, and to Judson, jammed under the floor timbers of
Flemister's head-quarters office, came one of these moments when he
heard the two men in the room above moving to depart, and found himself
caught between the timbers so that he could not retreat.

What had happened he was unable, in the first fierce struggle for
freedom, fully to determine. It was as if a living hand had reached down
to pin him fast in the tunnel-like space. Then he discovered that a huge
splinter on one of the joists was thrust like a great barb into his
coat. Ordinarily cool and collected in the face of emergencies, the
ex-engineer lost his head for a second or so and fought like a trapped
animal. Then the frenzy fit passed and the quick wit reasserted itself.
Extending his arms over his head and digging his toes into the dry earth
for a purchase, he backed, crab-wise, out of the entangled coat, freed
the coat, and made for the narrow exit in a sweating panic of
excitement.

Notwithstanding the excitement, however, the recovered wit was taking
note of the movements of the men who were leaving the room overhead.
They were not going out by the direct way--out of the door facing the
moonlight and the mining hamlet. They were passing out through the
store-room in the rear. Also, there were other foot-falls--cautious
treadings, these--as of some third person hastening to be first at the
more distant door of egress.

Judson was out of his dodge-hole and flitting from pine to pine on the
upper hill-side in time to see a man leap from the loading platform at
the warehouse end of the building and run for the sheltering shadows of
the timbering at the mine entrance. Following closely upon the heels of
their mysterious file leader came the two whose footsteps Judson had
been timing, and these, too, crossed quickly to the tunnel mouth of the
mine and disappeared within it.

Judson pursued swiftly and without a moment's hesitation. Happily for
him, the tunnel was lighted at intervals by electric incandescents,
their tiny filaments glowing mistily against the wet and glistening
tunnel roof. Going softly, he caught a glimpse of the two men as they
passed under one of the lights in the receding tunnel depths, and a
moment later he could have sworn that a third, doubtless the man who had
leaped from the loading platform to run and hide in the shadows at the
mine mouth, passed the same light, going in the same direction.

A hundred yards deeper into the mountain there was a confirming
repetition of the flash-light picture for the ex-engineer. The two men,
walking rapidly now, one a step in advance of the other, passed under
another of the overhead light bulbs, and this time Judson, watching for
the third man, saw him quite plainly. The sight gave him a start. The
third man was tall, and he wore a soft hat drawn low over his face.

"Well, I'll be jiggered!" muttered the trailer, pulling his cap down to
his ears and quickening his pace. "If I didn't know better, I'd swear
that was Hallock again--or Hallock's shadder follerin' him at a good
long range!"

The chase was growing decidedly mysterious. The two men in the lead
could be no others than Flemister and the chief clerk, presumably on
their way to the carrying out of whatever plot they had agreed upon,
with Lidgerwood for the potential victim. But since this plot evidently
turned upon the nearing approach of Lidgerwood's special train, why were
they plunging on blindly into the labyrinthine depths of the Wire-Silver
mine? This was an even half of the mystery, and the other half was quite
as puzzling. Who was the third man? Was he a confederate in the plot, or
was he also following to spy upon the conspirators?

Judson was puzzled, but he did not let his bewilderment tangle the feet
of his principal purpose, which was to keep Flemister and his reluctant
accomplice in sight. This purpose was presently defeated in a most
singular manner. At the end of one of the longer tunnel levels, a black
and dripping cavern, lighted only by a single incandescent shining like
a star imprisoned in the dismal depths, the ex-engineer saw what
appeared to be a wooden bulkhead built across the passage and
effectively blocking it. When the two men came to this bulkhead they
passed through it and disappeared, and the shock of the confined air in
the tunnel told of a door slammed behind them.

Judson broke into a stumbling run, and then stopped short in increasing
bewilderment. At the slamming of the door the third man had darted
forward out of the shadows to fling himself upon the wooden barrier,
beating upon it with his fists and cursing like a madman. Judson saw,
understood, and acted, all with the instinctive instantaneousness born
of his trade of engine-driving. The two men in advance were merely
taking the short cut through the mountain to the old workings on the
eastern slope, and the door in the bulkhead, which was doubtless one of
the airlocks in the ventilating system of the mine, had fastened itself
automatically after Flemister had released it.

Judson was a hundred yards down the tunnel, racing like a trained
sprinter for the western exit, before he thought to ask himself why the
third man was playing the madman before the locked door. But that was a
matter negligible to him; his affair was to get out of the mine with the
loss of the fewest possible seconds of time--to win out, to climb the
ridge, and to descend the eastern slope to the old workings before the
two plotters should disappear beyond the hope of rediscovery.

He did his best, flying down the long tunnel reaches with little regard
for the precarious footing, tripping over the cross-ties of the
miniature tramway and colliding with the walls, now and then, between
the widely separated electric bulbs. Far below, in the deeper levels, he
could hear the drumming chatter of the power-drills and the purring of
the compressed air, but the upper gangway was deserted, and it was not
until he was stumbling through the timbered portal that a watchman rose
up out of the shadows to confront and halt him. There was no time to
spare for soft words or skilful evasions. With a savage upper-cut that
caught the watchman on the point of the jaw and sent him crashing among
the picks and shovels of the mine-mouth tool-room, Judson darted out
into the moonlight. But as yet the fierce race was only fairly begun.
Without stopping to look for a path, the ex-engineer flung himself at
the steep hill-side, running, falling, clambering on hands and knees,
bursting by main strength through the tangled thickets of young pines,
and hurling himself blindly over loose-lying bowlders and the trunks of
fallen trees. When, after what seemed like an eternity of lung-bursting
struggles, he came out upon the bare summit of the ridge, his tongue was
like a dry stick in his mouth, refusing to shape the curses that his
soul was heaping upon the alcohol which had made him a wind-broken,
gasping weakling in the prime of his manhood.

For, after all the agonizing strivings, he was too late. It was a rough
quarter-mile down to the shadowy group of buildings whence the humming
of the dynamo and the quick exhausts of the high-speeded steam-engine
rose on the still night air. Judson knew that the last lap was not in
his trembling muscles or in the thumping heart and the wind-broken
lungs. Moreover, the path, if any there were, was either to the right or
the left of the point to which he had attained; fronting him there was a
steep cliff, trifling enough as to real heights and depths, but an
all-sufficient barrier for a spent runner.

The ex-engineer crawled cautiously to the edge of the barrier cliff,
rubbed the sweat out of his smarting eyes, and peered down into the
half-lighted shadows of the stockaded enclosure. It was not very long
before he made them out--two indistinct figures moving about among the
disused and dilapidated ore sheds clustering at the track end of the old
spur. Now and again a light glowed for an instant and died out, like the
momentary brilliance of a gigantic fire-fly, by which the watcher on the
cliff's summit knew that the two were guiding their movements by the
help of an electric flash-lamp.

What they were doing did not long remain a mystery. Judson heard a
distance-diminished sound, like the grinding of rusty wheels upon iron
rails, and presently a shadowy thing glided out of one of the ore sheds
and took its place upon the track of the old spur. Followed a series of
clankings still more familiar to the watcher--the _ting_ of metal upon
metal, as of crow-bars and other tools cast carelessly, one upon the
other, in the loading of the shadowy vehicle. Making a telescope of his
hands to shut out the glare from the lighted windows of the power-house,
Judson could dimly discern the two figures mounting to their places on
the deck of the thing which he now knew to be a hand-car. A moment
later, to the musical _click-click_ of wheels passing over rail-joints,
the little car shot through the gate-way in the stockade and sped away
down the spur, the two indistinct figures bowing alternately to each
other like a pair of grotesque automatons.

Winded and leg-weary as he was, Judson's first impulse prompted him to
seek for the path to the end that he might dash down the hill and give
chase. But if he would have yielded, another pursuer was before him to
show him the futility of that expedient. While the clicking of the
hand-car wheels was still faintly audible, a man--the door-hammering
madman, Judson thought it must be--materialized suddenly from somewhere
in the under-shadows to run down the track after the disappearing
conspirators. The engineer saw the racing foot-pursuer left behind so
quickly that his own hope of overtaking the car died almost before it
had taken shape.

"That puts it up to me again," he groaned, rising stiffly. Then he faced
once more toward the western valley and the point of the great triangle,
where the lights of Little Butte station and bridge twinkled uncertainly
in the distance. "If I can get down yonder to Goodloe's wire in time to
catch the super's special before it passes Timanyoni"--he went on, only
to drop his jaw and gasp when he held the face of his watch up to the
moonlight. Then, brokenly, "My God! I couldn't begin to do it unless I
had wings: he said eleven o'clock, and it's ten-ten right now!"

There was the beginning of a frenzied outburst of despairing curses
upbubbling to Judson's lips when he realized his utter helplessness and
the consequences menacing the superintendent's special. True, he did not
know what the consequences were to be, but he had overheard enough to be
sure that Lidgerwood's life was threatened. Then, at the climax of
despairing helplessness he remembered that there was a telephone in the
mine-owner's office--a telephone that connected with Goodloe's station
at Little Butte. Here was a last slender chance of getting a warning to
Goodloe, and through him, by means of the railroad wire, to the
superintendent's special. Instantly Judson forgot his weariness, and
raced away down the western slope of the mountain, prepared to fight his
way to the telephone if the entire night shift of the Wire-Silver should
try to stop him.

It cost ten of the precious fifty minutes to retrace his steps down the
mountain-side, and five more, were lost in dodging the mine watchman,
who, having recovered from the effects of Judson's savage blow, was
prowling about the mine buildings, revolver in hand, in search of his
mysterious assailant. After the watchman was out of the way, five other
minutes went to the cautious prying open of the window least likely to
attract attention--the window upon whose drawn shade the convincing
profile had been projected. Judson's lips were dry and his hands were
shaking again when he crept through the opening, and dropped into the
unfamiliar interior, where the darkness was but thinly diluted by the
moonlight filtering through the small, dingy squares of the opposite
window. To have the courage of a house-breaker, one must be a burglar in
fact; and the ex-engineer knew how swiftly and certainly he would pay
the penalty if any one had seen him climbing in at the forced window,
or should chance to discover him now that he was in.

But there was a stronger motive than fear, fear for himself, to set him
groping for the telephone. The precious minutes were flying, and he knew
that by this time the two men on the hand-car must have reached the main
line at Silver Switch. Whatever helpful chain of events might be set in
motion by communicating with Goodloe, must be linked up quickly.

He found the telephone without difficulty. It was an old-fashioned set,
with a crank and bell for ringing up the call at the other end of the
line. A single turn of the crank told him that it was cut off somewhere,
doubtless by a switch in the office wiring. In a fresh fever of
excitement he began a search for the switch, tracing with his fingers
the wires which led from the instrument and following where they ran
around the end of the room on the wainscoting. In the corner farthest
from his window of ingress he found the switch and felt it out. It was a
simple cut-out, designed to connect either the office instrument or the
mine telephones with the main wire, as might be desired. Under the
switch stood a corner cupboard, and in feeling for the wire connections
on top of the cupboard, Judson found his fingers running lightly over
the bounding surfaces of an object with which he was, unhappily, only
too familiar--a long-necked bottle with the seal blown in the glass. The
corner cupboard was evidently Flemister's sideboard.

Almost before he knew what he was doing, Judson had grasped the bottle
and had removed the cork. Here was renewed strength and courage, and a
swift clearing of the brain, to be had for the taking. At the drawing of
the cork the fine bouquet of the liquor seemed instantly to fill the
room with its subtle and intoxicating essence. With the smell of the
whiskey in his nostrils he had the bottle half-way to his lips before he
realized that the demon of appetite had sprung upon him out of the
darkness, taking him naked and unawares. Twice he put the bottle down,
only to take it up again. His lips were parched; his tongue rattled in
his mouth, and within there were cravings like the fires of hell,
threatening torments unutterable if they should not be assuaged.

"God have mercy!" he mumbled, and then, in a voice which the rising
fires had scorched to a hoarse whisper: "If I drink, I'm damned to all
eternity; and if I don't take just one swallow, I'll never be able to
talk so as to make Goodloe understand me!"

It was the supreme test of the man. Somewhere, deep down in the
soul-abyss of the tempted one, a thing stirred, took shape, and arose to
help him to fight the devil of appetite. Slowly the fierce thirst burned
itself out. The invisible hand at his throat relaxed its cruel grip, and
a fine dew of perspiration broke out thickly on his forehead. At the
sweating instant the newly arisen soul-captain within him whispered,
"Now, John Judson--once for all!" and staggering to the open window he
flung the tempting bottle afar among the scattered bowlders, waiting
until he had heard the tinkling crash of broken glass before he turned
back to his appointed task.

His hands were no longer trembling when he once more wound the crank of
the telephone and held the receiver to his ear. There was an answering
skirl of the bell, and then a voice said: "Hello! This is Goodloe:
what's wanted?"

Judson wasted no time in explanations. "This is Judson--John Judson. Get
Timanyoni on your wire, quick, and catch Mr. Lidgerwood's special. Tell
Bradford and Williams to run slow, looking for trouble. Do you get
that?"

A confused medley of rumblings and clankings crashed in over the wire,
and in the midst of the interruption Judson heard Goodloe put down the
receiver. In a flash he knew what was happening at Little Butte
station. The delayed passenger-train from the west had arrived, and the
agent was obliged to break off and attend to his duties.

Anxiously Judson twirled the crank, again and yet again. Since Goodloe
had not cut off the connection, the mingled clamor of the station came
to the listening ear; the incessant clicking of the telegraph
instruments on Goodloe's table, the trundling roar of a baggage-truck on
the station platform, the cacophonous screech of the passenger-engine's
pop-valve. With the _phut_ of the closing safety-valve came the
conductor's cry of "All aboard!" and then the long-drawn sobs of the big
engine as Cranford started the train. Judson knew that in all human
probability the superintendent's special had already passed Timanyoni,
the last chance for a telegraphic warning; and here was the passenger
slipping away, also without warning.

Goodloe came back to the telephone when the train clatter had died away,
and took up the broken conversation.

"Are you there yet, John?" he called. And when Judson's yelp answered
him: "All right; now, what was it you were trying to tell me about the
special?"

Judson did not swear; the seconds were too vitally precious. He merely
repeated his warning, with a hoarse prayer for haste.

There was another pause, a break in the clicking of Goodloe's telegraph
instruments, and then the agent's voice came back over the wire: "Can't
reach the special. It passed Timanyoni ten minutes ago."

Judson's heart was in his mouth, and he had to swallow twice before he
could go on.

"Where does it meet the passenger?" he demanded.

"You can search me," replied the Little Butte agent, who was not of
those who go out of their way to borrow trouble. Then, suddenly: "Hold
the 'phone a minute; the despatcher's calling me, right now."

There was a third trying interval of waiting for the man in the darkened
room at the Wire-Silver head-quarters; an interval shot through with
pricklings of feverish impatience, mingled with a lively sense of the
risk he was running; and then Goodloe called again.

"Trouble," he said shortly. "Angels didn't know that Cranford had made
up so much time. Now he tries to give me an order to hold the
passenger--after it's gone by. So long. I'm going to take a lantern and
mog along up the track to see where they come together."

Judson hung up the receiver, reset the wire switch to leave it as he had
found it, climbed out through the open window and replaced the sash; all
this methodically, as one who sets the death chamber in order after the
sheet has been drawn over the face of the corpse. Then he stumbled down
the hill to the gulch bottom and started out to walk along the new spur
toward Little Butte station, limping painfully and feeling mechanically
in his pocket for his pipe, which had apparently been lost in some one
of the many swift and strenuous scene-shiftings.



XVIII

AT SILVER SWITCH


Like that of other railroad officials, whose duties constrain them to
spend much time in transit, Lidgerwood's desk-work went with him up and
down and around and about on the two divisions, and before leaving his
office in the Crow's Nest to go down to the waiting special, he had
thrust a bunch of letters and papers into his pocket to be ground
through the business-mill on the run to Little Butte.

It was his surreptitious transference of the rubber-banded bunch of
letters to the oblivion of the closed service-car desk, observed by Miss
Brewster, that gave the president's daughter an opportunity to make
partial amends for having turned his business trip into a car-party.
Before the special was well out of the Angels yard she was commanding
silence, and laying down the law for the others, particularizing Carolyn
Doty, though only by way of a transfixing eye.

"Listen a moment, all of you," she called. "We mustn't forget that this
isn't a planned excursion for us; it's a business trip for Mr.
Lidgerwood, and we are here by our own invitation. We must make
ourselves small, accordingly, and not bother him. _Savez vous?_"

Van Lew laughed, spread his long arms, and swept them all out toward the
rear platform. But Miss Eleanor escaped at the door and went back to
Lidgerwood.

"There, now!" she whispered, "don't ever say that I can't do the really
handsome thing when I try. Can you manage to work at all, with these
chatterers on the car?"

She was steadying herself against the swing of the car, with one shapely
hand on the edge of the desk, and he covered it with one of his own.

"Yes, I can work," he asserted. "The one thing impossible is not to love
you, Eleanor. It's hard enough when you are unkind; you mustn't make it
harder by being what you used always to be to me."

"What a lover you are when you forget to be self-conscious!" she said
softly; none the less she freed the imprisoned hand with a hasty little
jerk. Then she went on with playful austerity: "Now you are to do
exactly what you were meaning to do when you didn't know we were coming
with you. I'll make them all stay away from you just as long as I can."

She kept her promise so well that for an industrious hour Lidgerwood
scarcely realized that he was not alone. For the greater part of the
interval the sight-seers were out on the rear platform, listening to
Miss Brewster's stories of the Red Desert. When she had repeated all she
had ever heard, she began to invent; and she was in the midst of one of
the most blood-curdling of the inventions when Lidgerwood, having worked
through his bunch of papers, opened the door and joined the platform
party. Miss Brewster's animation died out and her voice trailed away
into--"and that's all; I don't know the rest of it."

Lidgerwood's laugh was as hearty as Van Lew's or the collegian's.

"Please go on," he teased. Then quoting her: "'And after they had shot
up all the peaceable people in the town, they fell to killing each
other, and'--Don't let me spoil the dramatic conclusion."

"You are the dramatic conclusion to that story," retorted Miss Brewster,
reproachfully. Whereupon she immediately wrenched the conversation aside
into a new channel by asking how far it was to the canyon portal.

"Only a mile or two now," was Lidgerwood's rejoinder. "Williams has
been making good time." And two minutes later the one-car train, with
the foaming torrent of the Timanyoni for its pathfinder, plunged between
the narrow walls of the upper canyon, and the race down the grade of the
crooked water-trail through the heart of the mountains began.

There was little chance for speech, even if the overawing grandeurs of
the stupendous crevice, seen in their most impressive presentment as
alternating vistas of stark, moonlighted crags and gulches and depths of
blackest shadow, had encouraged it. The hiss and whistle of the
air-brakes, the harsh, sustained note of the shrieking wheel-flanges
shearing the inner edges of the railheads on the curves, and the
stuttering roar of the 266's safety-valve were continuous; a deafening
medley of sounds multiplied a hundred-fold by the demoniac laughter of
the echoes.

Miss Carolyn clung to the platform hand-rail, and once Lidgerwood
thought he surprised Van Lew with his arm about her; thought it, and
immediately concluded that he was mistaken. Miriam Holcombe had the
opposite corner of the platform, and Jefferis was making it his business
to see to it that she was not entirely crushed by the grandeurs.

Miss Brewster, steadying herself by the knob of the closed door, was
not overawed; she had seen Rocky Mountain canyons at their best and
their worst, many times before. But excitement, and the relaxing of the
conventional leash that accompanies it, roused the spirit of daring
mockery which was never wholly beyond call in Miss Brewster's mental
processes. With her lips to Lidgerwood's ear she said: "Tell me, Howard;
how soon should a chaperon begin to make a diversion? I'm only an
apprentice, you know. Does it occur to you that these young persons need
to be shocked into a better appreciation of the conventions?"

There was a small Pintsch globe in the hollow of the "umbrella roof,"
with its single burner turned down to a mere pea of light. Lidgerwood's
answer was to reach up and flood the platform with a sudden glow of
artificial radiance. The chorus of protest was immediate and
reproachful.

"Oh, Mr. Lidgerwood! don't spoil the perfect moonlight that way!" cried
Miss Doty, and the others echoed the beseeching.

"You'll get used to it in a minute," asserted Lidgerwood, in
good-natured sarcasm. "It is so dark here in the canyon that I'm afraid
some of you might fall overboard or get hit by the rocks, or something."

"The idea!" scoffed Miss Carolyn. Then, petulantly, to Van Lew: "We may
as well go in. There is nothing more to be seen out here."

Lidgerwood looked to Eleanor for his cue, or at least for a whiff of
moral support. But she turned traitor.

"You can do the meanest things in the name of solicitude, Howard," she
began; but before she could finish he had reached up and turned the gas
off with a snap, saying, "All right; anything to please the children."
After which, however, he spoke authoritatively to Van Lew and Jefferis.
"Don't let your responsibilities lean out over the railing, you two.
There are places below here where the rocks barely give a train room to
pass."

"_I'm_ not leaning out," said Miss Brewster, as if she resented his
care-taking. Then, for his ear alone: "But I shall if I want to."

"Not while I am here to prevent you."

"But you couldn't prevent me, you know."

"Yes, I could."

"How?"

The special was rushing through the darkest of the high-walled clefts in
the lower part of the canyon. "This way," he said, his love suddenly
breaking bounds, and he took her in his arms.

She freed herself quickly, breathless and indignantly reproachful.

"I am ashamed for you!" she panted. And then, with carefully calculated
malice: "What if Herbert had been looking?"

"I shouldn't care if all the world had been looking," was the stubborn
rejoinder. Then, passionately: "Tell me one thing before we go any
farther, Eleanor: have you given him the right to call me out?"

"How can you doubt it?" she said; but now she was laughing at him again.

There was safety only in flight, and he fled; back to his desk and the
work thereon. He was wading dismally through a thick mass of
correspondence, relating to a cattleman's claim for stock killed, and
thinking of nothing so little as the type-written words, when the roar
of the echoing canyon walls died away, and the train came to a stand at
Timanyoni, the first telegraph station in the shut-in valley between the
mountain ranges. A minute or two later the wheels began to revolve
again, and Bradford came in.

"More maverick railroading," he said disgustedly. "Timanyoni had his red
light out, and when I asked for orders he said he hadn't any--thought
maybe we'd want to ask for 'em ourselves, being as we was running wild."

"So he thoughtfully stopped us to give us the chance!" snapped
Lidgerwood in wrathful scorn. "What did you do?"

"Oh, as long as he had done it, I had him call up the Angels despatcher
to find out where we were at. We're on 204's time, you know--ought to
have met her here."

"Why didn't we?" asked the superintendent, taking the time-card from its
pigeon-hole and glancing at Train 204's schedule.

"She was late out of Red Butte; broke something and had to stop and tie
it up; lost a half-hour makin' her get-away."

"Then we reach Little Butte before 204 gets there--is that it?"

"That's about the way the night despatcher has it ciphered out. He gave
the Timanyoni plug operator hot stuff for holdin' us up."

Lidgerwood shook his head. The artless simplicity of Red-Butte-Western
methods, or unmethods, was dying hard, inexcusably hard.

"Does the night despatcher happen to know just where 204 is, at this
present moment?" he inquired with gentle irony.

Bradford laughed.

"I'd be willing to bet a piebald pinto against a no-account yaller dog
that he don't. But I reckon he won't be likely to let her get past
Little Butte, comin' this way, when he has let us get by Timanyoni
goin' t'other way."

"That's all right, Andy; that is the way you would have a right to
figure it out if you were running a special on a normally healthy
railroad--you'd be justified in running to your next telegraph station,
regardless. But the Red Butte Western is an abnormally unhealthy
railroad, and you'd better feel your way--pretty carefully, too. From
Point-of-Rocks you can see well down toward Little Butte. Tell Williams
to watch for 204's headlight, and if he sees it, to take the siding at
Silver Switch, the old Wire-Silver spur."

Bradford nodded, and when Lidgerwood reimmersed himself in the
cattleman's claim papers, went forward to share Williams's watch in the
cab of the 266.

Twenty minutes farther on, the train slowed again, made a momentary
stop, and began to screech and grind heavily around a sharp curve.
Lidgerwood looked out of the window at his right. The moon had gone
behind a huge hill, a lantern was pricking a point in the shadows some
little distance from the track, and the tumultuous river was no longer
sweeping parallel with the embankment. He shut his desk and went to the
rear platform, projecting himself into the group of sight-seers just as
the train stopped for the second time.

"Where are we now?" asked Miss Brewster, looking up at the dark mass of
the hill whose forested ramparts loomed black in the near foreground.

"At Silver Switch," replied Lidgerwood; and when the bobbing lantern
came nearer he called to the bearer of it. "What is it, Bradford?"

"The passenger, I reckon," was the answer. "Williams thought he saw it
as we came around Point-o'-Rocks, and he was afraid the despatcher had
got balled up some and let 'em get past Little Butte without a
meet-order."

For a moment the group on the railed platform was silent, and in the
little interval a low, humming sound made itself felt rather than heard;
a shuddering murmur, coming from all points of the compass at once, as
it seemed, and filling the still night air with its vibrations.

"Williams was right!" rejoined the superintended sharply. "She's
coming!" And even as he spoke, the white glare of an electric headlight
burst into full view on the shelf-like cutting along the northern face
of the great hill, pricking out the smallest details of the waiting
special, the closed switch, and the gleaming lines of the rails.

With this powerful spot-light to project its cone of dazzling
brilliance upon the scene, the watchers on the railed platform of the
superintendent's service-car saw every detail in the swift outworking of
the tragic spectacle for which the hill-facing curve was the
stage-setting.

When the oncoming passenger-train was within three or four hundred yards
of the spur track switch and racing toward it at full speed, a man, who
seemed to the onlookers to rise up out of the ground in the train's
path, ran down the track to meet the uprushing headlight, waving his
arms frantically in the stop signal. For an instant that seemed an age,
the passenger engineer made no sign. Then came a short, sharp
whistle-scream, a spewing of sparks from rail-head and tire at the clip
of the emergency brakes, a crash as of the ripping asunder of the
mechanical soul and body, and a wrecked train lay tilted at an angle of
forty-five degrees against the bank of the hill-side cutting.

It was a moment for action rather than for words, and when he cleared
the platform hand-rail and dropped, running, Lidgerwood was only the
fraction of a second ahead of Van Lew and Jefferis. With Bradford
swinging his lantern for Williams and his fireman to come on, the four
men were at the wreck before the cries of fright and agony had broken
out upon the awful stillness following the crash.

There was quick work and heart-breaking to be done, and, for the first
few critical minutes, a terrible lack of hands to do it. Cranford, the
engineer, was still in his cab, pinned down by the coal which had
shifted forward at the shock of the sudden stop. In the wreck of the
tender, the iron-work of which was rammed into shapeless crumplings by
the upreared trucks of the baggage-car, lay the fireman, past human
help, as a hasty side-swing of Bradford's lantern showed.

The baggage-car, riding high upon the crushed tender, was body-whole,
but the smoker, day-coach, and sleeper were all more or less shattered,
with the smoking-car already beginning to blaze from the broken lamps.
It was a crisis to call out the best in any gift of leadership, and
Lidgerwood's genius for swift and effective organization came out strong
under the hammer-blow of the occasion.

"Stay here with Bradford and Jefferis, and get that engineer out!" he
called to Van Lew. Then, with arms outspread, he charged down upon the
train's company, escaping as it could through the broken windows of the
cars. "This way, every man of you!" he yelled, his shout dominating the
clamor of cries, crashing glass, and hissing steam. "The fire's what
we've got to fight! Line up down to the river, and pass water in
anything you can get hold of! Here, Groner"--to the train conductor, who
was picking himself up out of the ditch into which the shock had thrown
him--"send somebody to the Pullman for blankets. Jump for it, man,
before this fire gets headway!"

Luckily, there were by this time plenty of willing hands to help. The
Timanyoni is a man's country, and there were few women in the train's
passenger list. Quickly a line was formed to the near-by margin of the
river, and water, in hats, in buckets improvised out of pieces of tin
torn from the wrecked car-roofs, in saturated coats, cushion covers, and
Pullman blankets, hissed upon the fire, beat it down, and presently
extinguished it.

Then the work of extricating the imprisoned ones began, light for it
being obtained by the backing of Williams's engine to the main line
above the switch so that the headlight played upon the scene.

Lidgerwood was fairly in the thick of the rescue work when Miss
Brewster, walking down the track from the service-car and bringing the
two young women who were afraid to be left behind, launched herself and
her companions into the midst of the nerve-racking horror.

"Give us something to do," she commanded, when he would have sent them
back; and he changed his mind and set them at work binding up wounds and
caring for the injured quite as if they had been trained nurses sent
from heaven at the opportune moment.

In a very little time the length and breadth of the disaster were fully
known, and its consequences alleviated, so far as they might be with the
means at hand. There were three killed outright in the smoker, two in
the half-filled day-coach, and none in the sleeper; six in all,
including the fireman pinned beneath the wreck of the tender. Cranford,
the engineer, was dug out of his coal-covered grave by Van Lew and
Jefferis, badly burned and bruised, but still living; and there were a
score of other woundings, more or less dreadful.

Red Butte was the nearest point from which a relief-train could be sent,
and Lidgerwood promptly cut the telegraph wire, connected his pocket set
of instruments, and sent in the call for help. That done he transferred
the pocket relay to the other end of the cut wire, and called up the
night despatcher at Angels. Fortunately, McCloskey and Dawson were just
in with the two wrecking-trains from the Crosswater Hills, and the
superintendent ordered Dawson to come out immediately with his train
and a fresh crew, if it could be obtained.

Dawson took the wire and replied in person. His crew was good for
another tussle, he said, and his train was still in readiness. He would
start west at once, or the moment the despatcher could clear for him,
and would be at Silver Switch as soon as the intervening miles would
permit.

Eleanor Brewster and her guests were grouped beside Lidgerwood when he
disconnected the pocket set from the cut wire, and temporarily repaired
the break. The service-car had been turned into a make-shift hospital
for the wounded, and the car-party was homeless.

"We are all waiting to say how sorry we are that we insisted on coming
and thus adding to your responsibilities, Howard," said the president's
daughter, and now there was no trace of mockery in her voice.

His answer was entirely sympathetic and grateful.

"I'm only sorry that you have been obliged to see and take part in such
a frightful horror, that's all. As for your being in the way--it's quite
the other thing. Cranford owes his life to Mr. Van Lew and Jefferis; and
as for you three," including Eleanor and the two young women, "your
work is beyond any praise of mine. I'm anxious now merely because I
don't know what to do with you while we wait for the relief-train to
come."

"Ignore us completely," said Eleanor promptly. "We are going over to
that little level place by the side-track and make us a camp-fire. We
were just waiting to be comfortably forgiven for having burdened you
with a pleasure party at such a time."

"We couldn't foresee this, any of us," he made haste to say. "Now, if
you'll do what you suggested--go and build a fire to wait by?--I hope it
won't be very long."

Freed of the more crushing responsibilities, Lidgerwood found Bradford
and Groner, and with the two conductors went down the track to the point
of derailment to make the technical investigation of causes.

Ordinarily, the mere fact of a destructive derailment leaves little to
be discovered when the cause is sought afterward. But, singularly
enough, the curved track was torn up only on the side toward the hill;
the outer rail was still in place, and the cross-ties, deeply bedded in
the hard gravel of the cutting, showed only the surface mutilation of
the grinding wheels.

"Broken flange under the 215, I'll bet," said Groner, holding his
lantern down to the gashed ties. But Bradford denied it.

"No," he contradicted: "Cranford was able to talk a little after we
toted him back to the service-car. He says it was a broken rail; says he
saw it and saw the man that was flaggin' him down, all in good time to
give her the air before he hit it."

"What man was that?" asked Groner, whose point of view had not been that
of an onlooker.

Lidgerwood answered for himself and Bradford.

"That is one of the things we'd like to know, Groner. Just before the
smash a man, whom none of us recognized, ran down the track and tried to
give Cranford the stop signal."

They had been walking on down the line, looking for the actual point of
derailment. When it was found, it proved Cranford's assertion--in part.
There was a gap in the rail on the river side of the line, but it was
not a fracture. At one of the joints the fish-plates were missing, and
the rail-ends were sprung apart sidewise sufficiently to let the wheel
flanges pass through. Groner went down on his hands and knees with the
lantern held low, and made another discovery.

"This ain't no happen-so, Mr. Lidgerwood," he said, when he got up. "The
spikes are pulled!"

Lidgerwood said nothing. There are discoveries which are beyond speech.
But he stooped to examine for himself. Groner was right. For a distance
of eight or ten feet the rail had been loosened, and the spikes were
gone out of the corresponding cross-ties. After it was loosened, the
rail had been sprung aside, and the bit of rock inserted between the
parted ends to keep them from springing together was still in place.

Lidgerwood's eyes were bloodshot when he rose and said:

"I'd like to ask you two men, as men, what devil out of hell would set a
trap like this for a train-load of unoffending passengers?"

Bradford's slow drawl dispelled a little of the mystery.

"It wasn't meant for Groner and his passenger-wagons, I reckon. In the
natural run of things, it was the 266 and the service-car that ought
to've hit this thing first--204 bein' supposed to be a half-hour off her
schedule. It was aimed for us, all right enough. And it wasn't meant to
throw us into the hill, neither. If we'd hit it goin' west, we'd be in
the river. That's why it was sprung out instead of in."

Lidgerwood's right hand, balled into a fist, smote the air, and his
outburst was a fierce imprecation. In the midst of it Groner said,
"Listen!" and a moment later a man, walking rapidly up the track from
the direction of Little Butte station, came into the small circle of
lantern-light. Groner threw the light on the new-comer, revealing a
haggard face--the face of the owner of the Wire-Silver mine.

"Heavens and earth, Mr. Lidgerwood--this is awful!" he exclaimed. "I
heard of it by 'phone, and hurried over to do what I could. My men of
the night-shift are on the way, walking up the track, and the entire
Wire-Silver outfit is at your disposal."

"I am afraid you are a little late, Mr. Flemister," was Lidgerwood's
rejoinder, unreasoning antagonism making the words sound crisp and
ungrateful. "Half an hour ago----"

"Yes, certainly; Goodloe should have 'phoned me, if he knew," cut in the
mine-owner. "Anybody hurt?"

"Half of the number involved, and six dead," said the superintendent
soberly; then the four of them walked slowly and in silence up the track
toward the two camp-fires, where the unhurt survivors and the
service-car's guests were fighting the chill of the high-mountain
midnight.



XIX

THE CHALLENGE


Lidgerwood was unpleasantly surprised to find that the president's
daughter knew the man whom her father had tersely characterized as "a
born gentleman and a born buccaneer," but the fact remained. When he
came with Flemister into the circle of light cast by the smaller of the
two fires, Miss Brewster not only welcomed the mine-owner; she
immediately introduced him to her friends, and made room for him on the
flat stone which served her for a seat.

Lidgerwood sat on a tie-end a little apart, morosely observant. It is
the curse of the self-conscious soul to find itself often at the
meeting-point of comparisons. The superintendent knew Flemister a
little, as he had admitted to the president; and he also knew that some
of his evil qualities were of the sort which appeal, by the law of
opposites, to the normal woman, the woman who would condemn evil in the
abstract, perhaps, only to be irresistibly drawn by some of its purely
masculine manifestations. The cynical assertion that the worst of men
can win the love of the best of women is something both more and less
than a mere contradiction of terms; and since Eleanor Brewster's manly
ideal was apparently builded upon physical courage as its pedestal,
Flemister, in his dare-devil character, was quite likely to be the man
to embody it.

But just now the "gentleman buccaneer" was not living up to the full
measure of his reputation in the dare-devil field, as Lidgerwood was not
slow to observe. His replies to Miss Brewster and the others were not
always coherent, and his face, seen in the flickering firelight, was
almost ghastly. True, the talk was low-toned and fragmentary; desultory
enough to require little of any member of the group sitting around the
smouldering fire on the spur embankment. Death, in any form, insists
upon its rights, of silence and of respect, and the six motionless
figures lying under the spread Pullman-car sheets on the other side of
the spur track were not to be ignored.

Yet Lidgerwood fancied that of the group circling the fire, Flemister
was the one whose eyes turned oftenest toward the sheeted figures across
the track; sometimes in morbid starings, but now and again with the
haggard side-glance of fear. Why was the mine-owner afraid? Lidgerwood
analyzed the query shrewdly. Was he implicated in the matter of the
loosened rail? Remembering that the trap had been set, not for the
passenger train, but for the special, the superintendent dismissed the
charge against Flemister. Thus far he had done little to incur the
mine-owner's enmity--at least, nothing to call for cold-blooded murder
in reprisal. Yet the man was acting very curiously. Much of the time he
scarcely appeared to hear what Miss Brewster was saying to him.
Moreover, he had lied. Lidgerwood recalled his glib explanation at the
meeting beside the displaced rail. Flemister claimed to have had the
news of the disaster by 'phone: where had he been when the 'phone
message found him? Not at his mine, Lidgerwood decided, since he could
not have walked from the Wire-Silver to the wreck in an hour. It was all
very puzzling, and what little suppositional evidence there was, was
conflicting. Lidgerwood put the query aside finally, but with a mental
reservation. Later he would go into this newest mystery and probe it to
the bottom. Judson would doubtless have a report to make, and this might
help in the probing.

Fortunately, the waiting interval was not greatly prolonged;
fortunately, since for the three young women the reaction was come and
the full horror of the disaster was beginning to make itself felt.
Lidgerwood contrived the necessary diversion when the relief-train from
Red Butte shot around the curve of the hillside cutting.

"Van Lew, suppose you and Jefferis take the women out of the way for a
few minutes, while we are making the transfer," he suggested quietly.
"There are enough of us to do the work, and we can spare you."

This left Flemister unaccounted for, but with a very palpable effort he
shook himself free from the spell of whatever had been shackling him.

"That's right," he assented briskly. "I was just going to suggest that."
Then, indicating the men pouring out of the relief train: "I see that my
buckies have come up on your train to lend a hand; command us just the
same as if we belonged to you. That is what we are here for."

Van Lew and the collegian walked the three young women a little way up
the old spur while the wrecked train's company, the living, the injured,
and the dead, were transferring down the line to the relief-train to be
taken back to Red Butte. Flemister helped with the other helpers, but
Lidgerwood had an uncomfortable feeling that the man was always at his
elbow; he was certainly there when the last of the wounded had been
carried around the wreck, and the relief-train was ready to back away to
Little Butte, where it could be turned upon the mine-spur "Y." It was
while the conductor of the train was gathering his volunteers for
departure that Flemister said what he had apparently been waiting for a
chance to say.

"I can't help feeling indirectly responsible for this, Mr. Lidgerwood,"
he began, with something like a return of his habitual self-possession.
"If I hadn't asked you to come over here to-night----"

Lidgerwood interrupted sharply: "What possible difference would that
have made, Mr. Flemister?"

It was not a special weakness of Flemister's to say the damaging thing
under pressure of the untoward and unanticipated event; it is rather a
common failing of human nature. In a flash he appeared to realize that
he had admitted too much.

"Why--I understood that it was the unexpected sight of your special
standing on the 'Y' that made the passenger engineer lose his head," he
countered lamely, evidently striving to recover himself and to efface
the damaging admission.

It chanced that they were standing directly opposite the break in the
track where the rail ends were still held apart by the small stone.
Lidgerwood pointed to the loosened rail, plainly visible under the
volleying play of the two opposing headlights.

"There is the cause of the disaster, Mr. Flemister," he said hotly; "a
trap set, not for the passenger-train, but for my special. Somebody set
it; somebody who knew almost to a minute when we should reach it. Mr.
Flemister, let me tell you something: I don't care any more for my own
life than a sane man ought to care, but the murdering devil who pulled
the spikes on that rail reached out, unconsciously perhaps, but none the
less certainly, after a life that I would safe-guard at the price of my
own. Because he did that, I'll spend the last dollar of the fortune my
father left me, if needful, in finding that man and hanging him!"

It was the needed flick of the whip for the shaken nerve of the
mine-owner.

"Ah," said he, "I am sure every one will applaud that determination, Mr.
Lidgerwood; applaud it, and help you to see it through." And then, quite
as calmly: "I suppose you will go back from here with your special,
won't you? You can't get down to Little Butte until the track is
repaired, and the wreck cleared. Your going back will make no
difference in the right-of-way matter; I can arrange for a meeting with
Grofield at any time--in Angels, if you prefer."

"Yes," said Lidgerwood absently, "I am going back from here."

"Then I guess I may as well ride down to my jumping-off place with my
men; you don't need us any longer. Make my adieux to Miss Brewster and
the young ladies, will you, please?"

Lidgerwood stood at the break in the track for some minutes after the
retreating relief-train had disappeared around the steep shoulder of the
great hill; was still standing there when Bradford, having once more
side-tracked the service-car on the abandoned mine spur, came down to
ask for orders.

"We'll hold the siding until Dawson shows up with the wrecking-train,"
was the superintendent's reply, "He ought to be here before long. Where
are Miss Brewster and her friends?"

"They are all up at the bonfire. I'm having the Jap launder the car a
little before they move in."

There was another interval of delay, and Lidgerwood held aloof from the
group at the fire, pacing a slow sentry beat up and down beside the
ditched train, and pausing at either turn to listen for the signal of
Dawson's coming. It sounded at length: a series of shrill
whistle-shrieks, distance-softened, and presently the drumming of
hasting wheels.

The draftsman was on the engine of the wrecking-train, and he dropped
off to join the superintendent.

"Not so bad for my part of it, this time," was his comment, when he had
looked the wreck over. Then he asked the inevitable question: "What did
it?"

Lidgerwood beckoned him down the line and showed him the sprung rail.
Dawson examined it carefully before he rose up to say: "Why didn't they
spring it the other way, if they wanted to make a thorough job of it?
That would have put the train into the river."

Lidgerwood's reply was as laconic as the query. "Because the trap was
set for my car, going west; not for the passenger, going east."

"Of course," said the draftsman, as one properly disgusted with his own
lack of perspicacity. Then, after another and more searching scrutiny,
in which the headlight glare of his own engine was helped out by the
burning of half a dozen matches: "Whoever did that, knew his business."

"How do you know?"

"Little things. A regular spike-puller claw-bar was used--the marks of
its heel are still in the ties; the place was chosen to the exact
rail-length--just where your engine would begin to hug the outside of
the curve. Then the rail is sprung aside barely enough to let the wheel
flanges through, and not enough to attract an engineer's attention
unless he happened to be looking directly at it, and in a good light."

The superintendent nodded. "What is your inference?" he asked.

"Only what I say; that the man knew his business. He is no ordinary
hobo; he is more likely in your class, or mine."

Lidgerwood ground his heel into the gravel, and with the feeling that he
was wasting precious time of Dawson's which should go into the
track-clearing, asked another question.

"Fred, tell me; you've known John Judson longer than I have: do you
trust him--when he's sober?"

"Yes." The answer was unqualified.

"I think I do, but he talks too much. He is over here, somewhere,
to-night, shadowing the man who may have done this. He--and the
man--came down on 205 this evening. I saw them both board the train at
Angels as it was pulling out."

Dawson looked up quickly, and for once the reticence which was his
customary shield was dropped.

"You're trusting me, now, Mr. Lidgerwood: who was the man? Gridley?"

"Gridley? No. Why, Dawson, he is the last man I should suspect!"

"All right; if you think so."

"Don't you think so?"

It was the draftsman's turn to hesitate.

"I'm prejudiced," he confessed at length. "I know Gridley; he is a worse
man than a good many people think he is--and not so bad as some others
believe him to be. If he thought you, or Benson, were getting in his
way--up at the house, you know----"

Lidgerwood smiled.

"You don't want him for a brother-in-law; is that it, Fred?"

"I'd cheerfully help to put my sister in her coffin, if that were the
alternative," said Dawson quite calmly.

"Well," said the superintendent, "he can easily prove an alibi, so far
as this wreck is concerned. He went east on 202 yesterday. You knew
that, didn't you?"

"Yes, I knew it, but----"

"But what?"

"It doesn't count," said the draftsman, briefly. Then: "Who was the
other man, the man who came west on 205?"

"I hate to say it, Fred, but it was Hallock. We saw the wreck, all of
us, from the back platform of my car. Williams had just pulled us out on
the old spur. Just before Cranford shut off and jammed on his
air-brakes, a man ran down the track, swinging his arms like a madman.
Of course, there wasn't the time or any chance for me to identify him,
and I saw him only for the second or two intervening, and with his back
toward us. But the back looked like Hallock's; I'm afraid it was
Hallock's."

"But why should he weaken at the last moment and try to stop the train?"
queried Dawson.

"You forget that it was the special, and not the passenger, that was to
be wrecked."

"Sure," said the draftsman.

"I've told you this, Fred, because, if the man we saw were Hallock,
he'll probably turn up while you are at work; Hallock, with Judson at
his heels. You'll know what to do in that event?"

"I guess so: keep a sharp eye on Hallock, and make Judson hold his
tongue. I'll do both."

"That's all," said the superintendent. "Now I'll have Bradford pull us
up on the spur to give you room to get your baby crane ahead; then you
can pull down and let us out."

The shifting took some few minutes, and more than a little skill. While
it was in progress Lidgerwood was in the service-car, trying to
persuade the young women to go to his state-room for a little rest and
sleep on the return run. In the midst of the argument, the door opened
and Dawson came in. From the instant of his entrance it was plain that
he had expected to find the superintendent alone; that he was visibly
and painfully embarrassed.

Lidgerwood excused himself and went quickly to the embarrassed one, who
was still anchoring himself to the door-knob. "What is it, Fred?" he
asked.

"Judson: he has just turned up, walking from Little Butte, he says, with
a pretty badly bruised ankle. He is loaded to the muzzle with news of
some sort, and he wants to know if you'll take him with you to An--" The
draftsman, facing the group under the Pintsch globe at the other end of
the open compartment, stopped suddenly and his big jaw grew rigid. Then
he said, in an awed whisper, "God! let me get out of here!"

"Tell Judson to come aboard," said Lidgerwood; and the draftsman was
twisting at the door-knob when Miriam Holcombe came swiftly down the
compartment.

"Wait, Fred," she said gently. "I have come all the way out here to ask
my question, and you mustn't try to stop me: are you going to keep on
letting it make us both desolate--for always?" She seemed not to see or
to care that Lidgerwood made a listening third.

Dawson's face had grown suddenly haggard, and he, too, ignored the
superintendent.

"How can you say that to me, Miriam?" he returned almost gruffly. "Day
and night I am paying, paying, and the debt never grows less. If it
wasn't for my mother and Faith ... but I must go on paying. I killed
your brother----"

"No," she denied, "that was an accident for which you were no more to
blame than he was: but you are killing me."

Lidgerwood stood by, man-like, because he did not know enough to vanish.
But Miss Brewster suddenly swept down the compartment to drag him out of
the way of those who did not need him.

"You'd spoil it all, if you could, wouldn't you?" she whispered, in a
fine feminine rage; "and after I have moved heaven and earth to get
Miriam to come out here for this one special blessed moment! Go and
drive the others into a corner, and keep them there."

Lidgerwood obeyed, quite meekly; and when he looked again, Dawson had
gone, and Miss Holcombe was sobbing comfortably in Eleanor's arms.

Judson boarded the service-car when it was pulled up to the switch; and
after Lidgerwood had disposed of his passengers for the run back to
Angels, he listened to the ex-engineer's report, sitting quietly while
Judson told him of the plot and of the plotters. At the close he said
gravely: "You are sure it was Hallock who got off of the night train at
Silver Switch and went up the old spur?"

It was a test question, and the engineer did not answer it off-hand.

"I'd say yes in a holy minute if there wasn't so blamed much else tied
on to it, Mr. Lidgerwood. I was sure, at the time, that it was Hallock;
and besides, I heard him talking to Flemister afterward, and I saw his
mug shadowed out on the window curtain, just as I've been telling you.
All I can say crosswise, is that I didn't get to see him face to face
anywhere; in the gulch, or in the office, or in the mine, or any place
else."

"Yet you are convinced, in your own mind?"

"I am."

"You say you saw him and Flemister get on the hand-car and pump
themselves down the old spur; of course, you couldn't identify either of
them from the top of the ridge?"

"That's a guess," admitted the ex-engineer frankly. "All I could see
was that there were two men on the car. But it fits in pretty good: I
hear 'em plannin' what-all they're going to do; foller 'em a good bit
more'n half-way through the mine tunnel; hike back and hump myself over
the hill, and get there in time to see two men--_some_ two men--rushin'
out the hand-car to go somewhere. That ain't court evidence, maybe, but
I've seen more'n one jury that'd hang both of 'em on it."

"But the third man, Judson; the man you saw beating with his fists on
the bulkhead air-lock: who was he?" persisted Lidgerwood.

"Now you've got me guessin' again. If I hadn't been dead certain that I
saw Hallock go on ahead with Flemister--but I did see him; saw 'em both
go through the little door, one after the other, and heard it slam
before the other dub turned up. No," reading the question in the
superintendent's eye, "not a drop, Mr. Lidgerwood; I ain't touched not,
tasted not, n'r handled not--'r leastwise, not to drink any," and here
he told the bottle episode which had ended in the smashing of
Flemister's sideboard supply.

Lidgerwood nodded approvingly when the modest narrative reached the
bottle-smashing point.

"That was fine, John," he said, using the ex-engineer's Christian name
for the first time in the long interview. "If you've got it in you to do
such a thing as that, at such a time, there is good hope for you. Let's
settle this question once for all: all I ask is that you prove up on
your good intentions. Show me that you have quit, not for a day or a
week, but for all time, and I shall be only too glad to see you pulling
passenger-trains again. But to get back to this crime of to-night: when
you left Flemister's office, after telephoning Goodloe, you walked down
to Little Butte station?"

"Yes; walked and run. There was nobody there but the bridge watchman.
Goodloe had come on up the track to find out what had happened."

"And you didn't see Flemister or Hallock again?"

"No."

"Flemister told us he got the news by 'phone, and when he said it the
wreck was no more than an hour old. He couldn't have walked down from
the mine in that time. Where could he have got the message, and from
whom?"

Judson was shaking his head.

"He didn't need any message--and he didn't get any. I'd put it up this
way: after that rail-joint was sprung open, they'd go back up the old
spur on the hand-car, wouldn't they? And on the way they'd be pretty
sure to hear Cranford when he whistled for Little Butte. That'd let 'em
know what was due to happen, right then and there. After that, it'd be
easy enough. All Flemister had to do was to rout out his miners over his
own telephones, jump onto the hand-car again, and come back in time to
show up to you."

Lidgerwood was frowning thoughtfully.

"Then both of them must have come back; or, no--that must have been your
third man who tried to flag Cranford down. Judson, I've got to know who
that third man is. He has complicated things so that I don't dare move,
even against Flemister, until I know more. We are not at the ultimate
bottom of this thing yet."

"We're far enough to put the handcuffs onto Mr. Pennington Flemister any
time you say," asserted Judson. "There was one little thing that I
forgot to put in the report: when you get ready to take that missing
switch-engine back, you'll find it _choo-chooin'_ away up yonder in
Flemister's new power-house that he's built out of boards made from Mr.
Benson's bridge-timbers."

"Is that so? Did you see the engine?" queried the superintendent
quickly.

"No, but I might as well have. She's there, all right, and they didn't
care enough to even muffle her exhaust."

Lidgerwood took a slender gold-banded cigar from his desk-box, and
passed the box to the ex-engineer.

"We'll get Mr. Pennington Flemister--and before he is very many hours
older," he said definitely. And then: "I wish we were a little more
certain of the other man."

Judson bit the end from his cigar, but he forbore to light it. The Red
Desert had not entirely effaced his sense of the respect due to a
superintendent riding in his own private car.

"It's a queer sort of a mix-up, Mr. Lidgerwood," he said, fingering the
cigar tenderly. "Knowin' what's what, as some of us do, you'd say them
two'd never get together, unless it was to cut each other's throats."

Lidgerwood nodded. "I've heard there was bad blood between them: it was
about that building-and-loan business, wasn't it?"

"Shucks! no; that was only a drop in the bucket," said Judson, surprised
out of his attitude of rank-and-file deference. "Hallock was the
original owner of the Wire-Silver. Didn't you know that?"

"No."

"He was, and Flemister beat him out of it--lock, stock, and barrel: just
simply reached out an' took it. Then, when he'd done that, he reached
out and took Hallock's wife--just to make it a clean sweep, was the way
he bragged about it."

"Heavens and earth!" ejaculated the listener. Then some of the hidden
things began to define themselves in the light of this astounding
revelation: Hallock's unwillingness to go to Flemister for the proof of
his innocence in the building-and-loan matter; his veiled warning that
evil, and only evil, would come upon all concerned if Lidgerwood should
insist; the invasion of the service-car at Copah by the poor demented
creature whose cry was still for vengeance upon her betrayer. Truly,
Flemister had many crimes to answer for. But the revelation made
Hallock's attitude all the more mysterious. It was unaccountable save
upon one hypothesis--that Flemister was able to so play upon the man's
weaknesses as to make him a mere tool in his hands. But Judson was going
on to elucidate.

"First off, we all thought Hallock'd kill Flemister. Rankin was never
much of a bragger or much of a talker, but he let out a few hints, and,
accordin' to Red Desert rulin's, Flemister wasn't much better than a
dead man, right then. But it blew over, some way, and now----"

"Now he is Flemister's accomplice in a hanging matter, you would say.
I'm afraid you are right, Judson," was the superintendent's comment; and
with this the subject was dropped.

The early dawn of the summer morning was graying over the desert when
the special drew into the Angels yard. Lidgerwood had the yard crew
place the service-car on the same siding with the _Nadia_, and near
enough so that his guests, upon rising, could pass across the platforms.

That done, and he saw to the doing of it himself, he climbed the stair
in the Crow's Nest, meaning to snatch a little sleep before the labors
and hazards of a new day should claim him. But McCloskey, the
dour-faced, was waiting for him in the upper corridor--with news that
would not wait.

"The trouble-makers have sent us their ultimatum at last," he said
gruffly. "We cancel the new 'Book of Rules' and reinstate all the men
that have been discharged, or a strike will be declared and every wheel
on the line will stop at midnight to-night."

Weary to the point of mental stagnation, Lidgerwood still had resilience
enough left to rise to the new grapple.

"Is the strike authorized by the labor union leaders?" he asked.

McCloskey shook his head. "I've been burning the wires to find out. It
isn't; the Brotherhoods won't stand for it, and our men are pulling it
off by their lonesome. But it'll materialize, just the same. The
strikers are in the majority, and they'll scare the well-affected
minority to a standstill. Business will stop at twelve o'clock to-night."

"Not entirely," said the superintendent, with anger rising. "The mails
will be carried, and perishable freight will continue moving. Get every
man you can enlist on our side, and buy up all the guns you can find and
serve them out; we'll prepare to fight with whatever weapons the other
side may force us to use. Does President Brewster know anything about
this?"

"I guess not. They had all gone to bed in the _Nadia_ when the grievance
committee came up."

"That's good; he needn't know it. He is going over to the Copperette,
and we must arrange to get him and his party out of town at once. That
will eliminate the women. See to engaging the buckboards for them, and
call me when the president's party is ready to leave. I'm going to rest
up a little before we lock horns with these pirates, and you'd better
do the same after you get things shaped up for to-night's hustle."

"I'm needing it, all right," admitted the trainmaster. And then; "Was
this passenger wreck another of the 'assisted' ones?"

"It was. Two men broke a rail-joint on Little Butte side-cutting for my
special--and caught the delayed passenger instead. Flemister was one of
the two."

"And the other?" said McCloskey.

Lidgerwood did not name the other.

"We'll get the other man in good time, and if there is any law in this
God-forsaken desert we'll hang both of them. Have you unloaded it all?
If you have, I'll turn in."

"All but one little item, and maybe you'll rest better if I don't tell
you that right now."

"Give it a name," said Lidgerwood crisply.

"Bart Rufford has broken jail, and he is here, in Angels."

McCloskey was watching his chief's face, and he was sorry to see the
sudden pallor make it colorless. But the superintendent's voice was
quite steady when he said:

"Find Judson, and tell him to look out for himself. Rufford won't
forgive the episode of the 'S'-wrench. That's all--I'm going to bed."



XX

STORM SIGNALS


Though Lidgerwood had been up for the better part of two nights, and the
day intervening, it was apparent to at least one member of the
head-quarters force that he did not go to bed immediately after the
arrival of the service-car from the west; the proof being a freshly
typed telegram which Operator Dix found impaled upon his sending-hook
when he came on duty in the despatcher's office at seven o'clock in the
morning.

The message was addressed to Leckhard, superintendent of the Pannikin
Division of the Pacific Southwestern system, at Copah. It was in cipher,
and it contained two uncodified words--"Fort" and "McCook," which small
circumstance set Dix to thinking--Fort McCook being the army post,
twelve miles as the crow flies, down the Pannikin from Copah.

Now Dix was not one of the rebels. On the contrary, he was one of the
few loyal telegraphers who had promised McCloskey to stand by the
Lidgerwood management in case the rebellion grew into an organized
attempt to tie up the road. But the young man had, for his chief
weakness, a prying curiosity which had led him, in times past, to
experiment with the private office code until he had finally discovered
the key to it.

Hence, a little while after the sending of the Leckhard message,
Callahan, the train despatcher, hearing an emphatic "Gee whiz!" from
Dix's' corner, looked up from his train-sheet to say, "What hit you,
brother?"

"Nothing," said Dix shortly, but Callahan observed that he was hastily
folding and pocketing the top sheet of the pad upon which he had been
writing. Dix went off duty at eleven, his second trick beginning at
three in the afternoon. It was between three and four when McCloskey,
having strengthened his defenses in every way he could devise, rapped at
the door of his chief's sleeping-room. Fifteen minutes later Lidgerwood
joined the trainmaster in the private office.

"I couldn't let you sleep any longer," McCloskey began apologetically,
"and I don't know but you'll give me what-for as it is. Things are
thickening up pretty fast."

"Put me in touch," was the command.

"All right. I'll begin at the front end. Along about ten o'clock this
morning Davidson, the manager of the Copperette, came down to see Mr.
Brewster. He gave the president a long song and dance about the tough
trail and the poor accommodations for a pleasure-party up at the mine,
and the upshot of it was that Mr. Brewster went out to the mine with him
alone, leaving the party in the _Nadia_ here."

Lidgerwood said "Damn!" and let it go at that for the moment. The thing
was done, and it could not be undone. McCloskey went on with his report,
his hat tilted to the bridge of his nose.

"Taking it for granted that you mean to fight this thing to a cold
finish, I've done everything I could think of. Thanks to Williams and
Bradford, and a few others like them, we can count on a good third of
the trainmen; and I've got about the same proportion of the operators in
line for us. Taking advantage of the twenty-four-hour notice the
strikers gave us, I've scattered these men of ours east and west on the
day trains to the points where the trouble will hit us at twelve o'clock
to-night."

"Good!" said Lidgerwood briefly. "How will you handle it?"

"It will handle itself, barring too many broken heads. At midnight, in
every important office where a striker throws down his pen and grounds
his wire, one of our men will walk in and keep the ball rolling. And on
every train in transit at that time, manned by men we're not sure of,
there will be a relief crew of some sort, deadheading over the road and
ready to fall in line and keep it coming when the other fellows fall
out."

Again the superintendent nodded his approval. The trainmaster was
showing himself at his loyal best.

"That brings us down to Angels and the present, Mac. How do we stand
here?"

"That's what I'd give all my old shoes to know," said McCloskey, his
homely face emphasizing his perplexity. "They say the shopmen are
against us, and if that's so we're outnumbered here, six to one. I can't
find out anything for certain. Gridley is still away, and Dawson hasn't
got back, and nobody else knows anything about the shop force."

"You say Dawson isn't in? He didn't have more than five or six hours'
work on that wreck. What is the matter?"

"He had a bit of bad luck. He got the main line cleared early this
morning, but in shifting his train and the 'cripples' on the abandoned
spur, a culvert broke and let the big crane off. He has been all day
getting it on again, but he'll be in before dark--so Goodloe says."

"And how about Benson?" queried Lidgerwood.

"He's on 203. I caught him on the other side of Crosswater, and took the
liberty of signing your name to a wire calling him in."

"That was right. With this private-car party on our hands, we may need
every man we can depend upon. I wish Gridley were here. He could handle
the shop outfit. I'm rather surprised that he should be away. He must
have known that the volcano was about ready to spout."

"Gridley's a law to himself," said the trainmaster. "Sometimes I think
he's all right, and at other times I catch myself wondering if he
wouldn't tread on me like I was a cockroach, if I happened to be in his
way."

Having had exactly the same feeling, and quite without reason,
Lidgerwood generously defended the absent master-mechanic.

"That is prejudice, Mac, and you mustn't give it room. Gridley's all
right. We mustn't forget that his department, thus far, is the only one
that hasn't given us trouble and doesn't seem likely to give us trouble.
I wish I could say as much for the force here in the Crows' Nest."

"With a single exception, you can--to-day," said McCloskey quickly.
"I've cleaned house. There is only one man under this roof at this
minute who won't fight for you at the drop of the hat."

"And that one is----?"

The trainmaster jerked his head toward the outer office. "It's the man
out there--or who was out there when I came through; the one you and I
haven't been agreeing on."

"Hallock? Is he here?"

"Sure; he's been here since early this morning."

"But how--" Lidgerwood's thought went swiftly backward over the events
of the preceding night. Judson's story had left Hallock somewhere in the
vicinity of the Wire-Silver mine and the wreck at some time about
midnight, or a little past, and there had been no train in from that
time on until the regular passenger, reaching Angels at noon. It was
McCloskey who relieved the strain of bewilderment.

"How did he get here? you were going to say. You brought him from
somewhere down the road on your special. He rode on the engine with
Williams."

Lidgerwood pushed his chair back and got up. It was high time for a
reckoning of some sort with the chief clerk.

"Is there anything else, Mac?" he asked, closing his desk.

"Yes; one more thing. The grievance committee is in session up at the
Celestial. Tryon, who is heading it, sent word down a little while ago
that the men would wreck every dollar's worth of company property in
Angels if you didn't countermand your wire of this morning to
Superintendent Leckhard."

"I haven't wired Leckhard."

"They say you did; and when I asked 'em what about it, they said you'd
know."

The superintendent's hand was on the knob of the corridor door.

"Look it up in Callahan's office," he said. "If any message has gone to
Leckhard to-day, I didn't write it."

When he closed the door of his private office behind him, Lidgerwood's
purpose was to go immediately to the _Nadia_ to warn the members of the
pleasure-party, and to convince them, if possible, of the advisability
of a prompt retreat to Copah. But there was another matter which was
even more urgent. After the events of the night, it had not been
unreasonable to suppose that Hallock would scarcely be foolhardy enough
to come back and take his place as if nothing had happened. Since he
had come back, there was only one thing to be done, and the safety of
all demanded it.

Lidgerwood left the Crow's Nest and walked quickly uptown. Contrary to
his expectations, he found the avenue quiet and almost deserted, though
there was a little knot of loungers on the porch of the Celestial, and
Biggs's bar-room, and Red-Light Sammy's, were full to overflowing.
Crossing to the corner opposite the hotel, the superintendent entered
the open door of Schleisinger's "Emporium." At the moment there was a
dearth of trade, and the round-faced little German who had weathered all
the Angelic storms was discovered shaving himself before a triangular
bit of looking-glass, stuck up on the packing-box which served him by
turns as a desk and a dressing-case.

"How you vas, Mr. Litchervood?" was his greeting, offered while the
razor was on the upward sweep. "Don'd tell me you vas come aboud some
more of dose chustice businesses. Me, I make oud no more of dem
warrants, _nichts_. Dot _teufel_ Rufford iss come back again, alretty,
and----"

Lidgerwood broke the refusal in the midst.

"You are an officer of the law, Schleisinger--more is the pity, both for
you and the law--and you must do your duty. I have come to swear out
another warrant. Get your blank and fill it in."

The German shopkeeper put down his razor with only one side of his face
shaven. "Oh, _mein Gott!_" was his protest; but he rummaged in the
catch-all packing-box and found the pad of blank warrants. Lidgerwood
dictated slowly, in charity for the trembling fingers that held the pen.
Knowing his own weakness, he could sympathize with others. When it came
to the filling in of Hallock's name, Schleisinger stopped, open-mouthed.

"_Donnerwetter!_" he gasped, "you don'd mean dot, Mr. Litchervood; you
don'd neffer mean dot?"

"I am sorry to say that I do; sorrier than you or any one else can
possibly be."

"Bud--bud----"

"I know what you would say," interrupted Lidgerwood hastily. "You are
afraid of Hallock's friends--as you were afraid of Rufford and his
friends. But you must do your sworn duty."

"_Nein, nein_, dot ain'd it," was the earnest denial. "Bud--bud nobody
vould serve a warrant on Mr. Hallock, Mr. Litchervood! I----"

"I'll find some one to serve it," said the complainant curtly, and
Schleisinger made no further objections.

With the warrant in his pocket, a magistrate's order calling for the
arrest and detention of Rankin Hallock on the double charge of
train-wrecking and murder, Lidgerwood left Schleisinger's, meaning to go
back to the Crow's Nest and have McCloskey put the warrant in Judson's
hands. But there was a thing to come between; a thing not wholly
unlooked for, but none the less destructive of whatever small hope of
regeneration the victim of unreadiness had been cherishing.

When the superintendent recrossed to the Celestial corner, Mesa Avenue
was still practically deserted, though the group on the hotel porch had
increased its numbers. Three doors below, in front of Biggs's, a bunch
of saddled cow-ponies gave notice of a fresh accession to the bar-room
crowd which was now overflowing upon the steps and the plank sidewalk.
Lidgerwood's thoughts shuttled swiftly. He argued that a brave man would
neither hurry nor loiter in passing the danger nucleus, and he strove
with what determination there was in him to keep even step with the
reasoned-out resolution.

But once more his weakness tricked him. When the determined stride had
brought him fairly opposite Biggs's door, a man stepped out of the
sidewalk group and calmly pushed him to a stand with the flat of his
hand. It was Rufford, and he was saying quite coolly: "Hold up a
minute, pardner; I'm going to cut your heart out and feed it to that pup
o Schleisinger's that's follerin' you. He looks mighty hungry."

With reason assuring him that the gambler was merely making a
grand-stand play for the benefit of the bar-room crowd wedging itself in
Biggs's doorway, Lidgerwood's lips went dry, and he knew that the
haunting terror was slipping its humiliating mask over his face. But
before he could say or do any fear-prompted thing a diversion came. At
the halting moment a small man, red-haired, and with his cap pulled down
over his eyes, had separated himself from the group of loungers on the
Celestial porch to make a swift détour through the hotel bar, around the
rear of Biggs's, and so to the street and the sidewalk in front. As once
before, and under somewhat less hazardous conditions, he came up behind
Rufford, and again the gambler felt the pressure of cold metal against
his spine.

"It ain't an S-wrench this time, Bart," he said gently, and the crowd on
Biggs's doorstep roared its appreciation of the joke. Then: "Keep your
hands right where they are, and side-step out o' Mr. Lidgerwood's
way--that's business." And when the superintendent had gone on: "That's
all for the present, Bart. After I get a little more time and ain't so
danged busy I'll borrow another pair o' clamps from Hepburn and take you
back to Copah. So long."

By all the laws of Angelic procedure, Judson should have been promptly
shot in the back when he turned and walked swiftly down the avenue to
overtake the superintendent. But for once the onlookers were
disappointed. Rufford was calmly relighting his cigar, and when he had
sufficiently cursed the bar-room audience for not being game enough to
stop the interference, he kicked Schleisinger's dog, and turned his back
upon Biggs's and its company.

It was a bit of common human perverseness that kept Lidgerwood from
thanking Judson when the engineer overtook him at the corner of the
plaza. Uppermost in his thoughts at the moment was the keen sense of
humiliation arising upon the conviction that the plucky little man had
surprised his secret and would despise him accordingly. Hence his first
word to Judson was the word of authority.

"Go back to Schleisinger and have him swear you in as a deputy
constable," he directed tersely. "When you are sworn in, come down here
and serve this," and he gave Judson the warrant for Hallock's arrest.

The engineer glanced at the name in the body of the warrant and nodded.

"So you've made up your mind?" he said.

Lidgerwood was frowning abstractedly up at the windows of Hallock's
office in the head-quarters building.

"I don't know," he said, half hesitantly. "But he is implicated in that
murderous business of last night--that we both know--and now he is back
here. McCloskey told you that, didn't he?"

Judson nodded again, and Lidgerwood went on, irresistibly impelled to
justify his own action.

"It would be something worse than folly to leave him at liberty when we
are on the ragged edge of a fight. Arrest him wherever you can find him,
and take him over to Copah on the first train that serves. He'll have to
clear himself, if he can; that's all."

When Judson, with his huge cow-boy pistol sagging at his hip, had turned
back to do the first part of his errand, Lidgerwood went on around the
Crow's Nest and presented himself at the door of the _Nadia_. Happily,
for his purpose, he found only Mrs. Brewster and Judge Holcombe in
possession, the young people having gone to climb one of the bare mesa
hills behind the town for an unobstructed view of the Timanyonis.

The superintendent left Judge Holcombe out of the proposal which he
urged earnestly upon Mrs. Brewster. Telling her briefly of the
threatened strike and its promise of violence and rioting, he tried to
show her that the presence of the private-car party was a menace, alike
to its own members and to him. The run to Copah could be made on a
special schedule and the party might be well outside of the danger zone
before the armistice expired. Would she not defer to his judgment and
let him send the _Nadia_ back to safety while there was yet time?

Mrs. Brewster, the placid, let him say his say without interruption. But
when he finished, the placidity became active opposition. The
president's wife would not listen for a moment to an expedient which did
not--could not--include the president himself.

"I know, Howard, you're nervous--you can't help being nervous," she
said, cutting him to the quick when nothing was farther from her
intention. "But you haven't stopped to think what you're asking. If
there is any real danger for us--which I can't believe--that is all the
more reason why we shouldn't run away and leave your cousin Ned behind.
I wouldn't think of it for an instant, and neither would any of the
others."

Being hurt again in his tenderest part by the quite unconscious gibe,
Lidgerwood did not press his proposal further.

"I merely wished to state the case and to give you a chance to get out
and away from the trouble while we could get you out," he said, a little
stiffly. Then: "It is barely possible that the others may agree with me
instead of with you: will you tell them about it when they come back to
the car, and send word to my office after you have decided in open
council what you wish to do? Only don't let it be very late; a delay of
two or three hours may make it impossible for us to get the _Nadia_ over
the Desert Division."

Mrs. Brewster promised, and the superintendent went upstairs to his
office. A glance into Hallock's room in passing showed him the chief
clerk's box-like desk untenanted, and he wondered if Judson would find
his man somewhere in the town. He hoped so. It would be better for all
concerned if the arrest could be made without too many witnesses. True,
Hallock had few friends in the railroad service, at least among those
who professed loyalty to the management, but with explosives lying about
everywhere underfoot, one could not be too careful of matches and fire.

The superintendent had scarcely closed the door upon his entrance into
his own room when it was opened again with McCloskey's hand on the
latch. The trainmaster came to report that a careful search of
Callahan's files had not disclosed any message to Leckhard. Also, he
added that Dix, who should have come on duty at three o'clock, was still
absent.

"What do you make out of that?" queried Lidgerwood.

McCloskey's scowl was grotesquely horrible.

"Bullying or bribery," he said shortly. "They've got Dix hid away uptown
somewhere. But there was a message, all right, and with your name signed
to it. Callahan saw it on Dix's hook this morning before the boy came
down. It was in code, your private code."

"Call up the Copah offices and have it repeated back," ordered the
superintendent. "Let's find out what somebody has been signing my name
to."

McCloskey shook his grizzled head. "You won't mind if I say that I beat
you to it, this time, will you? I got Orton, a little while ago, on the
Copah wire and pumped him. He says there was a code message, and that
Dix sent it. But when I asked him to repeat it back here, he said he
couldn't--that Mr. Leckhard had taken it with him somewhere down the
main line."

Lidgerwood's exclamation was profane. The perversity of things, animate
and inanimate, was beginning to wear upon him.

"Go and tell Callahan to keep after Orton until he gets word that Mr.
Leckhard has returned. Then have him get Leckhard himself at the other
end of the wire and call me," he directed. "Since there is only one man
besides myself in Angels who knows the private-office code, I'd like to
know what that message said."

McCloskey nodded. "You mean Hallock?"

"Yes."

The trainmaster was half-way to the door when he turned suddenly to say:
"You can fire me if you want to, Mr. Lidgerwood, but I've got to say my
say. You're going to let that yellow dog run loose until he bites you."

"No, I am not."

"By gravies! I'd have him safe under lock and key before the shindy
begins to-night, if it was my job."

Lidgerwood had turned to his desk and was opening it.

"He will be," he announced quietly. "I have sworn out a warrant for his
arrest, and Judson has it and is looking for his man."

McCloskey smote fist into palm and gritted out an oath of
congratulation. "That's where you hit the proper nail on the head!" he
exclaimed. "He's the king-pin of the whole machine, and if you can pull
him out, the machine will fall to pieces. What charge did you put in the
warrant? I only hope it's big enough to hold him."

"Train-wrecking and murder," said Lidgerwood, without looking around;
and a moment later McCloskey went out, treading softly as one who finds
himself a trespasser on forbidden ground.

The afternoon sun was poising for its plunge behind the western barrier
range and Lidgerwood had sent Grady, the stenographer, up to the cottage
on the second mesa to tell Mrs. Dawson that he would not be up for
dinner, when the door opened to admit Miss Brewster.

"'And the way into my parlor is up a winding stair,'" she quoted
blithely and quite as if the air were not thick with threatening
possibilities. "So this is where you live, is it? What a dreary, bleak,
blank place!"

"It was, a moment ago; but it isn't, now," he said, and his soberness
made the saying something more than a bit of commonplace gallantry. Then
he gave her his swing-chair as the only comfortable one in the bare
room, adding, "I hope you have come to tell me that your mother has
changed her mind."

"Indeed I haven't! What do you take us for, Howard?"

"For an exceedingly rash party of pleasure-hunters--if you have decided
to stay here through what is likely to happen before to-morrow morning.
Besides, you are making it desperately hard for me."

She laughed lightly. "If you can't be afraid for yourself, you'll be
afraid for other people, won't you? It seems to be one of your
necessities."

He let the taunt go unanswered.

"I can't believe that you know what you are facing, any of you, Eleanor.
I'll tell you what I told your mother: there will be battle, murder, and
sudden death let loose here in Angels before to-morrow morning. And it is
so utterly unnecessary for any of you to be involved."

She rose and stood before him, putting a comradely hand on his shoulder,
and looking him fairly in the eyes.

"There was a ring of sincerity in that, Howard. Do you really mean that
there is likely to be violence?"

"I do; it is almost certain to come. The trouble has been brewing for a
long time--ever since I came here, in fact. And there is nothing we can
do to prevent it. All we can do is to meet it when it does come, and
fight it out."

"'We,' you say; who else besides yourself, Howard?" she asked.

"A little handful of loyal ones."

"Then you will be outnumbered?"

"Six to one here in town if the shopmen go out. They have already
threatened to burn the company's buildings if I don't comply with their
demands, and I know the temper of the outfit well enough to give it full
credit for any violence it promises. Won't you go and persuade the
others to consent to run for it, Eleanor? It is simply the height of
folly for you to hold the _Nadia_ here. If I could have had ten words
with your father this morning before he went out to the mine, you would
all have been in Copah, long ago. Even now, if I could get word to him,
I'm sure he would order the car out at once."

She nodded.

"Perhaps he would; quite likely he would--and he would stay here
himself." Then, suddenly: "You may send the _Nadia_ back to Copah on one
condition--that you go with it."

At first he thought it was a deliberate insult; the cruelest indignity
she had ever put upon him. Knowing his weakness, she was good-natured
enough, or solicitous enough, to try to get him out of harm's way. Then
the steadfast look in her eyes made him uncertain.

"If I thought you could say that, realizing what it means--" he began,
and then he looked away.

"Well?" she prompted, and the hand slipped from his shoulder.

His eyes were coming back to hers. "If I thought you meant that," he
repeated; "if I believed that you could despise me so utterly as to
think for a moment that I would deliberately turn my back upon my
responsibilities here--go away and hunt safety for myself, leaving the
men who have stood by me to whatever----"

"You are making it a matter of duty," she interrupted quite gravely. "I
suppose that is right and proper. But isn't your first duty to yourself
and to those who--" She paused, and then went on in the same steady
tone: "I have been hearing some things to-day--some of the things you
said I would hear. You are well hated in the Red Desert, Howard--hated
so fiercely that this quarrel with your men will be almost a personal
one."

"I know," he said.

"They will kill you, if you stay here and let them do it."

"Quite possibly."

"Howard! Do you tell me you can stay here and face all this without
flinching?"

"Oh, no; I didn't say that."

"But you are facing it!"

He smiled.

"As I told you yesterday--that is one of the things for which I draw my
salary. Don't mistake me; there is nothing heroic about it--the heroics
are due to come to-night. That is another thing, Eleanor--another reason
why I want you to go away. When the real pinch comes, I shall probably
disgrace myself and everybody remotely connected with me. I'd a good bit
rather be torn into little pieces, privately, than have you here to be
made ashamed--again."

She turned away.

"Tell me, in so many words, what you think will be done to-night--what
are you expecting?"

"I told you a few moments ago, in the words of the Prayer Book: battle,
and murder, and sudden death. A strike has been planned, and it will
fail. Five minutes after the first strike-abandoned train arrives, the
town will go mad."

She had come close to him again.

"Mother won't go and leave father; that is settled. You must do the best
you can, with us for a handicap. What will you do with us, Howard?"

"I have been thinking about that. The farther you can get away from the
shops and the yard, which will be the storm-centre, the safer you will
be. I can have the _Nadia_ set out on the Copperette switch, which is a
good half-mile below the town, with Van Lew and Jefferis to stand
guard----"

"They will both be here, with you," she interrupted.

"Then the alternative is to place the car as near as possible to this
building, which will be defended. If there is a riot, you can all come
up here and be out of the way of chance pistol-shots, at least."

"Ugh!" she shivered. "Is this really civilized America?"

"It's America--without much of the civilization. Now, will you go and
tell the others what to expect, and send Van Lew to me? I want to tell
him just what to do and how to do it, while there is time and an
undisturbed chance."



XXI

THE BOSS MACHINIST


Miss Brewster evidently obeyed her instructions precisely, since Van Lew
came almost immediately to tap on the door of the superintendent's
private room.

"Miss Eleanor said you wanted to see me," he began, when Lidgerwood had
admitted him; adding: "I was just about to chase out to see what had
become of her."

The frank confession of solicitude was not thrown away upon Lidgerwood,
and it cost him an effort to put the athlete on a plane of brotherly
equality as a comrade in arms. But he compassed it.

"Yes, I asked her to send you up," he replied. Then: "I suppose you know
what we are confronting, Mr. Van Lew?"

"Mrs. Brewster told us as soon as we came back from the hills. Is it
likely to be serious?"

"Yes. I wish I could have persuaded Mrs. Brewster to order the _Nadia_
out of it. But she has refused to go and leave Mr. Brewster behind."

"I know," said Van Lew; "we have all refused."

"So Miss Brewster has just told me," frowned Lidgerwood. "That being the
case, we must make the best of it. How are you fixed for arms in the
president's car?"

"I have a hunting rifle--a forty-four magazine; and Jefferis has a small
armory of revolvers--boy-like."

"Good! The defense of the car, if a riot materializes, will fall upon
you two. Judge Holcombe can't be counted in. I'll give you all the help
I can spare, but you'll have to furnish the brains. I suppose I don't
need to tell you not to take any chances?"

Van Lew shook his head and smiled.

"Not while the dear girl whom, God willing, I'm going to marry, is a
member of our car-party. I'm more likely to be over-cautious than
reckless, Mr. Lidgerwood."

Here, in terms unmistakable, was a deep grave in which to bury any poor
phantom of hope which might have survived, but Lidgerwood did not
advertise the funeral.

"She is altogether worthy of the most that you can do for her, and the
best that you can give her, Mr. Van Lew," he said gravely. Then he
passed quickly to the more vital matter. "The _Nadia_ will be placed on
the short spur track at this end of the building, close in, where you
can step from the rear platform of the car to the station platform. I'll
try to keep watch for you, but you must also keep watch for yourself. If
any firing begins, get your people out quietly and bring them up here.
Of course, none of you will have anything worse than a stray bullet to
fear, but the side walls of the _Nadia_ would offer no protection
against that."

Van Lew nodded understandingly.

"Call it settled," he said. "Shall I use my own judgment as to the
proper moment to make the break, or will you pass us the word?"

Lidgerwood took time to consider. Conditions might arise under which the
Crow's Nest would be the most unsafe place in Angels to which to flee
for shelter.

"Perhaps you would better sit tight until I give the word," he directed,
after the reflective pause. Then, in a lighter vein: "All of these
careful prefigurings may be entirely beside the mark, Mr. Van Lew; I
hope the event may prove that they were. And until the thing actually
hits us, we may as well keep up appearances. Don't let the women worry
any more than they have to."

"You can trust me for that," laughed the athlete, and he went his way
to begin the keeping up of appearances.

At seven o'clock, just as Lidgerwood was finishing the luncheon which
had been sent up to his office from the station kitchen, Train 203
pulled in from the east; and a little later Dawson's belated
wrecking-train trailed up from the west, bringing the "cripples" from
the Little Butte disaster. Not to leave anything undone, Lidgerwood
summoned McCloskey by a touch of the buzzer-push connecting with the
trainmaster's office.

"No word from Judson yet?" he asked, when McCloskey's homely face
appeared in the doorway.

"No, not yet," was the reply.

"Let me know when you hear from him; and in the meantime I wish you
would go downstairs and see if Gridley came in on 203. If he did, bring
him and Benson up here and we'll hold a council of war. If you see
Dawson, send him home to his mother and sister. He can report to me
later, if he finds it safe to leave his womankind."

The door of the outer office had barely closed behind McCloskey when
that opening into the corridor swung upon its hinges to admit the
master-mechanic. He was dusty and travel-stained, but nothing seemed to
stale his genial good-humor.

"Well, well, Mr. Lidgerwood! so the hoboes have asked to see your hand,
at last, have they?" he began sympathetically. "I heard of it over in
Copah, just in good time to let me catch 203. You're not going to let
them make you show down, are you?"

"No," said Lidgerwood.

"That's right; that's precisely the way to stack it up. Of course, you
know you can count on me. I've got a beautiful lot of pirates over in
the shops, but we'll try to hold them level." Then, in the same even
tone: "They tell me we went into the hole again last night, over at
Little Butte. Pretty bad?"

"Very bad; six killed outright, and as many more to bury later on, I am
told by the Red Butte doctors."

"Heavens and earth! The men are calling it a broken rail; was it?"

"A loosened rail," corrected Lidgerwood.

The master-mechanic's eyes narrowed.

"Natural?" he asked.

"No, artificial."

Gridley swore savagely.

"This thing's got to stop, Lidgerwood! Sift it, sift it to the bottom!
Whom do you suspect?"

It was a plain truth, though an unintentionally misleading one, that the
superintendent put into his reply.

"I don't suspect any one, Gridley," he began, and he was going on to say
that suspicion had grown to certainty, when the latch of the door
opening from the outer office clicked again and McCloskey came in with
Benson. The master-mechanic excused himself abruptly when he saw who the
trainmaster's follower was.

"I'll go and get something to eat," he said hurriedly; "after which I'll
pick up a few men whom we can depend upon and garrison the shops. Send
over for me if you need me."

Benson looked hard at the door which was still quivering under Gridley's
outgoing slam. And when the master-mechanic's tread was no longer
audible in the upper corridor, the young engineer turned to the man at
the desk to say: "What tickled the boss machinist, Lidgerwood?"

"I don't know. Why?"

Benson looked at McCloskey.

"Just as we came in, he was standing over you with a look in his eyes as
if he were about to murder you, and couldn't quite make up his mind as
to the simplest way of doing it. Then the look changed to his usual
cast-iron smile in the flirt of a flea's hind leg--at some joke you were
telling, I took it."

Being careful and troubled about many things, Lidgerwood missed the
point of Benson's remark; could not remember, when he tried, just what
it was that he had been saying to Gridley when the interruption came.
But the matter was easily dismissed. Having his two chief lieutenants
before him, the superintendent seized the opportunity to outline the
plan of campaign for the night. McCloskey was to stay by the wires, with
Callahan to share his watch. Dawson, when he should come down, was to
pick up a few of the loyal enginemen and guard the roundhouse. Benson
was to take charge of the yards, keeping his eye on the _Nadia_. At the
first indication of an outbreak, he was to pass the word to Van Lew, who
would immediately transfer the private-car party to the second-floor
offices in the head-quarters building.

"That is all," was Lidgerwood's summing up, when he had made his
dispositions like a careful commander-in-chief; "all but one thing. Mac,
have you seen anything of Hallock?"

"Not since the middle of the afternoon," was the prompt reply.

"And Judson has not yet reported?"

"No."

"Well--this is for you, Benson--Mac already knows it: Judson is out
looking for Hallock. He has a warrant for Hallock's arrest."

Benson's eyes narrowed.

"Then you have found the ringleader at last, have you?" he asked.

"I am sorry to say that there doesn't seem to be any doubt of Hallock's
guilt. The arrest will be made quietly. Judson understands that. There
is another man that we've got to have, and there is no time just now to
go after him."

"Who is the other man?" asked Benson.

"It is Flemister; the man who has the stolen switching-engine boxed up
in a power-house built out of planks sawed from your Gloria
bridge-timbers."

"I told you so!" exclaimed the young engineer. "By Jove! I'll never
forgive you if you don't send him to the rock-pile for that,
Lidgerwood!"

"I have promised to hang him," said the superintendent soberly--"him and
the man who has been working with him."

"And that's Rankin Hallock!" cut in the trainmaster vindictively, and
his scowl was grotesquely hideous. "Can you hang them, Mr. Lidgerwood?"

"Yes. Flemister, and a man whom Judson has identified as Hallock, were
the two who ditched 204 at Silver Switch last night. The charge in
Judson's warrant reads,'train-wrecking and murder.'"

The trainmaster smote the desk with his fist.

"I'll add one more strand to the rope--Hallock's rope," he gritted
ferociously. "You remember what I told you about that loosened rail that
caused the wreck in the Crosswater Hills? You said Hallock had gone to
Navajo to see Cruikshanks; he did go to Navajo, but he got there just
exactly four hours after 202 had gone on past Navajo, and he came on
foot, walking down the track from the Hills!"

"Where did you get that?" asked Lidgerwood quickly.

"From the agent at Navajo. I wasn't satisfied with the way it shaped up,
and I did a little investigating on my own hook."

"Pass him up," said Benson briefly, "and let's go over this lay-out for
to-night again. I shall be out of touch down in the yards, and I want to
get it straight in my head."

Lidgerwood went carefully over the details again, and again cautioned
Benson about the _Nadia_ and its party. From that the talk ran upon the
ill luck which had projected the pleasure-party into the thick of
things; upon Mrs. Brewster's obstinacy--which Lidgerwood most
inconsistently defended--and upon the probability of the president's
return from the Copperette--also in the thick of things, and it was
close upon eight o'clock when the two lieutenants went to their
respective posts.

It was fully an hour farther along, and the tense strain of suspense was
beginning to tell upon the man who sat thoughtful and alone in the
second-floor office of the Crow's Nest, when Benson ran up to report the
situation in the yards.

"Everything quiet so far," was the news he brought. "We've got the Nadia
on the east spur, where the folks can slip out and make their get-away,
if they have to. There are several little squads of the discharged men
hanging around, but not many more than usual. The east and west yards
are clear, and the three sections of the mid-night freight are crewed
and ready to pull out when the time comes. The folkses are playing dummy
whist in the Nadia; and Gridley is holding the fort at the shops with
the toughest-looking lot of myrmidons you ever laid your eyes on."

Once again Lidgerwood was making tiny squares on his desk blotter.

"I'm thankful that the news of the strike got to Copah in time to bring
Gridley over on 203," he said.

Benson's boyish eyes opened to their widest angle.

"Did he say he came in on Two-three?" he asked.

"He did."

"Well, that's odd--devilish odd! I was on that train, and I rambled it
from one end to the other--which is a bad habit I have when I'm trying
to kill travel-time. Gridley isn't a man to be easily overlooked. Reckon
he was riding on the brake-beams? He was dirty enough to make the guess
good. Hello, Fred"--this to Dawson, who had at that moment let himself
in through the deserted outer office--"we were just talking about your
boss, and wondering how he got here from Copah on Two-three without my
seeing him."

"He didn't come from Copah," said the draftsman briefly. "He came in
with me from the west, on the wrecking-train. He was in Red Butte, and
he had an engine bring him down to Silver Switch, where he caught us
just as we were pulling out."



XXII

THE TERROR


Engineer John Judson, disappearing at the moment when the superintendent
had sent him back to bully Schleisinger into appointing him constable,
from the ken of those who were most anxious to hear from him, was late
in reporting. But when he finally climbed the stair of the Crow's Nest
to tap at Lidgerwood's door, he brought the first authentic news from
the camp of the enemy.

When McCloskey had come at a push of the call-button, Lidgerwood snapped
the night-latch on the corridor door.

"Let us have it, Judson," he said, when the trainmaster had dragged his
chair into the circle of light described by the green cone shade of the
desk lamp. "We have been wondering what had become of you."

Summarized, Judson's story was the report of an intelligent scout. Since
he was classed with the discharged men, he had been able to find out
some of the enemy's moves in the game of coercion. The strikers had
transferred their head-quarters from the Celestial to Cat Biggs's place,
where the committees, jealously safeguarded, were now sitting "in
permanence" in the back room. Judson had not been admitted to the
committee-room; but the thronged bar-room was public, and the liquor
which was flowing freely had loosened many tongues.

From the bar-room talk Judson had gathered that the strikers knew
nothing as yet of McCloskey's plan to keep the trains moving and the
wires alive. Hence--unless the free-flowing whiskey should precipitate
matters--there would probably be no open outbreak before midnight. As an
offset to this, however, the engineer had overheard enough to convince
him that the Copah wire had been tapped; that Dix, the day operator, had
been either bribed or intimidated, and was now under guard at the
strikers' head-quarters, and that some important message had been
intercepted which was, in Judson's phrase, "raising sand" in the camp of
the disaffected. This recurrence of the mysterious message, of which no
trace could be found in the head-quarters record, opened a fresh field
of discussion, and it was McCloskey who put his finger upon the only
plausible conclusion.

"It is Hallock again," he rasped. "He is the only man who could have
used the private code. Dix probably picked out the cipher; he's got a
weakness for such things. Hallock's carrying double. He has fixed up
some trouble-making message, or faked one, and signed your name to it,
and then schemed to let it leak out through Dix."

"It's making the trouble, all right," was Judson's comment. "When I left
Biggs's a few minutes ago, Tryon was calling for volunteers to come down
here and steal an engine. From what he said, I took it they were aimin'
to go over into the desert to tear up the track and stop somebody or
something coming this way from Copah--all on account of that
make-believe message that you didn't send."

Thus far Judson's report had dealt with facts. But there were other
things deducible. He insisted that the strength of the insurrection did
not lie in the dissatisfied employees of the Red Butte Western, or even
in the ex-employees; it was rather in the lawless element of the town
which lived and fattened upon the earnings of the railroad men--the
saloon-keepers, the gamblers, the "tin-horns" of every stripe. Moreover,
it was certain that some one high in authority in the railroad service
was furnishing the brains. There was a chief to whom all the malcontents
deferred, and who figured in the bar-room talk as the "boss," or "the
big boss."

"And that same 'big boss' is sitting up yonder in Cat Biggs's back room,
right now, givin' his orders and tellin' 'em what to do," was Judson's
crowning guess, and since Hallock had not been visible since the early
afternoon, for the three men sitting under the superintendent's desk
lamp, Judson's inference stood as a fact assured. It was Hallock who had
fomented the trouble; it was Hallock who was now directing it.

"I suppose you didn't see anything of Grady, my stenographer?" inquired
Lidgerwood, when Judson had made an end.

The engineer shook his head. "Reckon they've got him cooped up along
with Dix?"

"I hope not. But he has disappeared. I sent him up to Mrs. Dawson's with
a message late this afternoon, and he hasn't shown up since."

"Of course, they've got him," said McCloskey, sourly. "Does he know
anything that he can tell?"

"Nothing that can make any difference now. They are probably holding him
to hamper me. The boy's loyal."

"Yes," growled McCloskey, "and he's Irish."

"Well, my old mother is Irish, too, for the matter of that," snapped
Judson. "If you don't like the Irish, you'll be finding a chip on my
shoulder any day in the week, except to-day, Jim McCloskey!"

Lidgerwood smiled. It brought a small relaxing of strains to hear these
two resurrecting the ancient race feud in the midst of the trouble
storm. And when the trainmaster returned to his post in the wire office,
and Judson had been sent back to Biggs's to renew his search for the
hidden ring-leader, it was the memory of the little race tiff that
cleared the superintendent's brain for the grapple with the newly
defined situation.

Judson's report was grave enough, but it brought a good hope that the
crucial moment might be postponed until many of the men would be too far
gone in liquor to take any active part. Lidgerwood took the precautions
made advisable by Tryon's threat to steal an engine, sending word to
Benson to double his guards on the locomotives in the yard, and to
Dawson to block the turn-table so that none might be taken from the
roundhouse.

Afterward he went out to look over the field in person. Everything was
quiet; almost suspiciously so. Gridley was found alone in his office at
the shops, smoking a cigar, with his chair tilted to a comfortable
angle and his feet on the desk. His guards, he said, were posted in and
around the shops, and he hoped they were not asleep. Thus far, there had
been little enough to keep them awake.

Lidgerwood, passing out through the door opening upon the
electric-lighted yard, surprised a man in the act of turning the knob to
enter. It was the merest incident, and he would not have remarked it if
the door, closing behind Gridley's visitor, had not bisected a violent
outburst of profanity, vocalizing itself in the harsh tones of the
master-mechanic, as thus: "You ---- ---- chuckle-headed fool! Haven't
you any better sense than to come--" At this point the closing door cut
the sentence of objurgation, and Lidgerwood continued his round of
inspection, trying vainly to recall the identity of the chance-met man
whose face, half hidden under the drooping brim of a worn campaign-hat,
was vaguely familiar. The recollection came at length, with the impact
of a blow. The "chuckle-headed fool" of Gridley's malediction was
Richard Rufford, the "Killer's" younger brother.

Lidgerwood said nothing of this incident to Dawson, whom he found
patrolling the roundhouse. Here, as at the shops and in the yard,
everything was quiet and orderly. The crews for the three sections of
the midnight freight were all out, guarding their trains and engines,
and Dawson had only Bradford and the roundhouse night-men for company.

"Nothing stirring, Fred?" inquired the superintendent.

"Less than nothing; it's almost too quiet," was the sober reply. And
then: "I see you haven't sent the _Nadia_ out; wouldn't it be a good
scheme to get a couple of buckboards and have the women and Judge
Holcombe driven up to our place on the mesa? The trouble, when it comes,
will come this way."

Lidgerwood shook his head.

"My stake in the _Nadia_ is precisely the same size as yours, Fred, and
I don't want to risk the buckboard business. We'll do a better thing
than that, if we have to let the president's party make a run for it.
Get your smartest passenger flyer out on the table, head it east, and
when I send for it, rush it over to couple on to the _Nadia_--with
Williams for engineer. Has Benson had any trouble in the yard?"

"There has been nobody to make any. Tryon came down a few minutes ago,
considerably more than half-seas over, and said he was ready to take
his engine and the first section of the east-bound midnight--which would
have been his regular run. But he went back uptown peaceably when Benson
told him he was down and out."

Lidgerwood did not extend his round to include Benson's post at the yard
office, which was below the coal chutes. Instead, he went over to the
Nadia, thinking pointedly of the two added mysteries: the fact that
Gridley had told a deliberate lie to account for his appearance in
Angels, and the other and more recent fact that the master-mechanic was
conferring, even in terms of profanity, with Rufford's brother, who was
not, and never had been, in his department.

Under the "umbrella roof" of the _Nadia's_ rear platform the young
people of the party were sitting out the early half of the perfect
summer night, the card-tables having been abandoned when Benson had
brought word of the tacit armistice. There was an unoccupied camp-chair,
and Miss Brewster pointed it out to the superintendent.

"Climb over and sit with us, Howard," she said, hospitably. "You know
you haven't a thing in the world to do."

Lidgerwood swung himself over the railing, and took the proffered chair.

"You are right; I haven't very much to do just now," he admitted.

"Has your strike materialized yet?" she asked.

"No; it isn't due until midnight."

"I don't believe there is going to be any."

"Don't you? I wish I might share your incredulity--with reason."

Miss Doty and the others were talking about the curious blending of the
moonlight with the masthead electrics, and the two in the shadowed
corner of the deep platform were temporarily ignored. Miss Brewster took
advantage of the momentary isolation to say, "Confess that you were a
little bit over-wrought this afternoon when you wanted to send us away:
weren't you?"

"I only hope that the outcome will prove that I was," he rejoined
patiently.

"You still believe there will be trouble?"

"Yes."

"Then I'm afraid you are still overwrought," she countered lightly.
"Why, the very atmosphere of this beautiful night breathes peace."

Before he could reply, a man came up to the platform railing, touched
his cap, and said, "Is Mr. Lidgerwood here?"

Lidgerwood answered in person, crossing to the railing to hear Judson's
latest report, which was given in hoarse whispers. Miss Brewster could
distinguish no word of it, but she heard Lidgerwood's reply. "Tell
Benson and Dawson, and say that the engine I ordered had better be sent
up at once."

When Lidgerwood had resumed his chair he was promptly put upon the
question rack of Miss Eleanor's curiosity.

"Was that one of your scouts?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Did he come to tell you that there wasn't going to be any strike?"

"No."

"How lucidly communicative you are! Can't you see that I am fairly
stifling with curiosity?"

"I'm sorry, but you shall not have the chance to say that I was
overwrought twice in the same half-day."

"Howard! Don't be little and spiteful. I'll eat humble pie and call
myself hard names, if you insist; only--gracious goodness! is that
engine going to smash into our car?"

The anxious query hinged itself upon the approach of a big,
eight-wheeled passenger flyer which was thundering down the yard on the
track occupied by the _Nadia_. Within half a car-length of collision,
the air-brake hissed, the siderods clanked and chattered, and the
shuddering monster rolled gently backward to a touch coupling with the
president's car.

Eleanor's hand was on her cousin's arm. "Howard, what does this mean?"
she demanded.

"Nothing, just at present; it is merely a precaution."

"You are not going to take us away from Angels?"

"Not now; not at all, unless your safety demands it." Then he rose and
spoke to the others. "I'm sorry to have to shut off your moon-vista with
that noisy beast, but it may be necessary to move the car, later on.
Don't get out of touch with the _Nadia_, any of you, please."

He had vaulted the hand-rail and was saying good-night, when Eleanor
left her chair and entered the car. He was not greatly surprised to find
her waiting for him at the steps of the forward vestibule when he had
gone so far on his way to his office.

"One moment," she pleaded. "I'll be good, Howard; and I know that there
_is_ danger. Be very careful of yourself, won't you, for my sake."

He stopped short, and his arms went out to her. Then his self-control
returned and his rejoinder was almost bitter.

"Eleanor, you must not! you tempt me past endurance! Go back to Van--to
the others, and, whatever happens, don't let any one leave the car."

"I'll do anything you say, only you _must_ tell me where you are going,"
she insisted.

"Certainly; I am going up to my office--where you found me this
afternoon. I shall be there from this on, if you wish to send any word.
I'll see that you have a messenger. Good-by."

He left her before her sympathetic mood should unman him, his soul
crying out at the kindness which cut so much more deeply than her
mockery. At the top of the corridor stair McCloskey was waiting for him.

"Judson has told you what's due to happen?" queried the trainmaster.

"He told me to look for swift trouble; that somebody had betrayed your
strike-breaking scheme."

"He says they'll try to keep the east-bound freights from going out."

"That would be a small matter. But we mustn't lose the moral effect of
taking the first trick in the game. Are the sections all in line on the
long siding?"

"Yes."

"Good. We'll start them a little ahead of time; and let them kill back
to schedule after they get out on the road. Send Bogard down with their
clearance orders, and 'phone Benson at the yard office to couple them up
into one train, engine to the caboose in front, and send them out solid.
When they have cleared the danger limit, they can split up and take the
proper time intervals--ten minutes apart."

"Call it done," said the trainmaster, and he went to carry out the
order. Two minutes later Bogard, the night-relief operator off duty,
darted out of the despatcher's room with the clearance-cards for the
three sections. Lidgerwood stopped him in mid-flight.

"One second, Robert: when you have done your errand, come back to the
president's car, ask for Miss Brewster, and say that I sent you. Then
stay within call and be ready to do whatever she wants you to do."

Bogard did the first part of his errand swiftly, and he was taking the
duplicate signatures of the engineer and conductor of the third and last
section when Benson came up to put the solid-train order into effect.
The couplings were made deftly and without unnecessary stir. Then Benson
stepped back and gave the starting signal, twirling his lantern in rapid
circles. Synchronized as perfectly as if a single throttle-lever
controlled them all, the three heavy freight-pullers hissed, strained,
belched fire, and the long train began to move out.

It was Lidgerwood's challenge to the outlaws, and as if the blasts of
the three tearing exhausts had been the signal it was awaiting, the
strike storm broke with the suddenness and fury of a tropical hurricane.
From a hundred hiding-places in the car-strewn yard, men came running,
some to swarm thickly upon the moving engines and cabooses, others
swinging by the drawheads to cut the air-brake hose.

Benson was swept aside and overpowered before he could strike a blow.
Bogard, speeding across to take his post beside the _Nadia_, was struck
down before he could get clear of the pouring hornet swarm. Shots were
fired; shrill yells arose. Into the midst of the clamor the great siren
whistle at the shops boomed out the fire alarm, and almost at the the
same instant a red glow, capped by a rolling nimbus of sooty oil smoke,
rose to beacon the destruction already begun in the shop yards. And
while the roar of the siren was still jarring upon the windless night
air, the electric-light circuits were cut out, leaving the yards and the
Crow's Nest in darkness, and the frantic battle for the trains to be
lighted only by the moon and the lurid glow of destruction spreading
slowly under its black canopy of smoke.

In the Crow's Nest the sudden coup of the strikers had the effect which
its originator had doubtless counted upon. It was some minutes after the
lights were cut off, and the irruption had swept past the captured and
disabled trains to the shops, before Lidgerwood could get his small
garrison together and send it, with McCloskey for its leader, to
reinforce the shop guard, which was presumably fighting desperately for
the control of the power plant and the fire pumps.

Only McCloskey's protest and his own anxiety for the safety of the
_Nadia's_ company, kept Lidgerwood from leading the little relief column
of loyal trainmen and head-quarters clerks in person. The lust of battle
was in his blood, and for the time the shrinking palsy of physical fear
held aloof.

When the sally of the trainmaster and his forlorn-hope squad had left
the office-story of the head-quarters building almost deserted, it was
the force of mere mechanical habit that sent Lidgerwood back to his room
to close his desk before going down to order the _Nadia_ out of the zone
of immediate danger. There was a chair in his way, and in the darkness
and in his haste he stumbled over it. When he recovered himself, two
men, with handkerchief masks over their faces, were entering from the
corridor, and as he turned at the sound of their footsteps, they sprang
upon him.

For the first rememberable time in his life, Howard Lidgerwood met the
challenge of violence joyfully, with every muscle and nerve singing the
battle-song, and a huge willingness to slay or be slain arming him for
the hand-to-hand struggle. Twice he drove the lighter of the two to the
wall with well-planted blows, and once he got a deadly wrestler's hold
on the tall man and would have killed him if the free accomplice had not
torn his locked fingers apart by main strength. But it was two against
one; and when it was over, the conflagration light reddening the
southern windows sufficed for the knotting of the piece of hemp lashing
with which the two masked garroters were binding their victim in his
chair.

Meanwhile, the pandemonium raging at the shops was beginning to surge
backward into the railway yard. Some one had fired a box-car, and the
upblaze centred a fresh fury of destruction. Up at the head of the
three-sectioned freight train a mad mob was cutting the leading
locomotive free.

Dawson, crouching in the roundhouse door directly opposite, knew all
that Judson could tell him, and he instantly divined the purpose of the
engine thieves. They were preparing to send the freight engine eastward
on the Desert Division main line to collide with and wreck whatever
coming thing it was that they feared.

The threatened deed wrought itself out before the draftsman could even
attempt to prevent it. A man sprang to the footboard of the freed
locomotive, jerked the throttle open, stayed at the levers long enough
to hook up to the most effective cut-off for speed, and jumped for his
life.

Dawson was deliberate, but not slow-witted. While the abandoned engine
was, as yet, only gathering speed for the eastward dash, he was dodging
the straggling rioters in the yard, racing purposefully for the only
available locomotive, ready and headed to chase the runaway--namely, the
big eight-wheeler coupled to the president's car. He set the switch to
the main line as he passed it, but there was no time to uncouple the
engine from the private car, even if he had been willing to leave the
woman he loved, and those with her, helpless in the midst of the
rioting.

So there was no more than a gasped-out word to Williams as he climbed to
the cab before the eight-wheeler, with the _Nadia_ in tow, shot away
from the Crow's Nest platform. And it was not until the car was
growling angrily over the yard-limit switches that Van Lew burst into
the central compartment like a man demented, to demand excitedly of the
three women who were clinging, terror-stricken, to Judge Holcombe:

"Who has seen Miss Eleanor? Where is Miss Eleanor?"



XXIII

THE CRUCIBLE


Only Miss Brewster herself could have answered the question of her
whereabouts at the exact moment of Van Lew's asking. She was left
behind, standing aghast in the midst of tumults, on the platform of the
Crow's Nest. Terrified, like the others, at the sudden outburst of
violence, she had ventured from the car to look for Lidgerwood's
messenger, and in the moment of frightened bewilderment the _Nadia_ had
been whisked away.

Naturally, her first impulse was to fly, and the only refuge that
offered was the superintendent's office on the second floor. The
stairway door was only a little distance down the platform, and she was
presently groping her way up the stair, praying that she might not find
the offices as dark and deserted as the lower story of the building
seemed to be.

The light of the shop-yard fire, and that of the burning box-car nearer
at hand, shone redly through the upper corridor windows, enabling her
to go directly to the open door of the superintendent's office. But when
she reached the door and looked within, the trembling terror returned
and held her spell-bound, speechless, unable to move or even to cry out.

What she saw fitted itself to nothing real; it was more like a scene
clipped from a play. Two masked men were covering with revolvers a
third, who was tied helpless in a chair. The captive's face was ghastly
and blood-stained, and at first she thought he was dead. Then she saw
his lips move in curious twitchings that showed his teeth. He seemed to
be trying to speak, but the ruffian at his right would not give him
leave.

"This is where you pass out, Mr. Lidgerwood," the man was saying
threateningly. "You give us your word that you will resign and leave the
Red Butte Western for keeps, or you'll sit in that chair till somebody
comes to take you out and bury you."

The twitching lips were controlled with what appeared to be an almost
superhuman effort, but the words came jerkily.

"What would my word, extorted--under such conditions--be worth to you?"

Eleanor could hear, in spite of the terror that would not let her cry
out or run for help. He was yielding to them, bargaining for his life!

"We'll take it," said the spokesman coolly. "If you break faith with us
there are more than two of us who will see to it that you don't live
long enough to brag about it. You've had your day, and you've got to
go."

"And if I refuse?" Eleanor made sure that the voice was steadier now.

"It's this, here and now," grated the taller man who had hitherto kept
silence, and he cocked his revolver and jammed the muzzle of it against
the bleeding temple of the man in the chair.

The captive straightened himself as well as his bonds would let him.

"You--you've let the psychological moment go by, gentlemen: I--I've got
my second wind. You may burn and destroy and shoot as you please, but
while I'm alive I'll stay with you. Blaze away, if that's what you want
to do."

The horror-stricken watcher at the door covered her face with her hands
to shut out the sight of the murder. It was not until Lidgerwood's
voice, calm and even-toned and taunting, broke the silence that she
ventured to look again.

[Illustration: "Well, gentlemen, I'm waiting. Why don't you shoot?"]

"Well, gentlemen, I'm waiting. Why don't you shoot? You are greater
cowards than I have ever been, with all my shiverings and
teeth-chatterings. Isn't the stake big enough to warrant your last
desperate play? I'll make it bigger. You are the two men who broke the
rail-joint at Silver Switch. Ah, that hits you, doesn't it?"

"Shut up!" growled the tall man, with a frightful imprecation. But the
smaller of the two was silent.

Lidgerwood's grin was ghastly, but it was nevertheless a teeth-baring of
defiance.

"You curs!" he scoffed. "You haven't even the courage of your own
necessities! Why don't you pluck up the nerve to shoot, and be done with
it? I'll make it still more binding upon you: if you don't kill me now,
while you have the chance, as God is my witness I'll hang you both for
those murders last night at Silver Switch. I know you, in spite of your
flimsy disguise: _I can call you both by name_!"

Out in the yard the yellings and shoutings had taken on a new note, and
the windows of the upper room were jarring with the thunder of incoming
trains. Eleanor Brewster heard the new sounds vaguely: the jangle and
clank of the trains, the quick, steady tramp of disciplined men,
snapped-out words of command, the sudden cessation of the riot clamor,
and now a shuffling of feet on the stairway behind her.

Still she could not move; still she was speechless and spell-bound, but
no longer from terror. Her cousin--her lover--how she had misjudged him!
He a coward? This man who was holding his two executioners at bay,
quelling them, cowing them, by the sheer force of the stronger will, and
of a courage that was infinitely greater than theirs?

The shuffling footsteps came nearer, and once again Lidgerwood
straightened himself in his chair, this time with a mighty struggle that
broke the knotted cords and freed him.

"I said I could name you, and I will!" he cried, springing to his feet.
"You," pointing to the smaller man, "you are Pennington Flemister; and
you," wheeling upon the tall man and lowering his voice, "you are Rankin
Hallock!"

The light of the fire in the shop yard had died down until its red glow
no longer drove the shadows from the corners of the room. Eleanor shrank
aside when a dozen men pushed their way into the private office. Then,
suddenly the electric lights went on, and a gruff voice said, "Drop them
guns, you two. The show's over."

It was McCloskey who gave the order, and it was obeyed sullenly. With
the clatter of the weapons on the floor, the door of the outer office
opened with a jerk, and Judson thrust a hand-cuffed prisoner of his own
capturing into the lighted room.

"There he is, Mr. Lidgerwood," snarled the engineer-constable. "I nabbed
him over yonder at the fire, workin' to put it out, just as if he hadn't
told his gang to go and set it!"

"Hallock!" exclaimed the superintendent, starting as if he had seen a
ghost. "How is this? Are there two of you?"

Hallock looked down moodily. "There were two of us who wanted your job,
and the other one needed it badly enough to wreck trains and to kill
people, and to lead a lot of pig-headed trainmen and mechanics into a
riot to cover his tracks."

Lidgerwood turned quickly. "Unmask those men, McCloskey."

It was the signal for a tumult. The tall man fought desperately to
preserve his disguise, but Flemister's mask was torn off in the first
rush. Then came a diversion, sudden and fiercely tragic. With a cry of
rage that was like the yell of a madman, Hallock flung himself upon the
mine-owner, beating him down with his manacled hands, choking him,
grinding him into the dust of the floor. And when the avenger of wrongs
was pulled off and dragged to his feet, Lidgerwood, looking past the
death grapple, saw the figure of a woman swaying at the corridor door;
saw the awful horror in her eyes. In the turning of a leaf he had fought
his way to her.

"Good heavens, Eleanor!" he gasped. "What are you doing here?" and he
faced her about quickly and led her into the corridor lest she should
see the distorted features of the victim of Hallock's vengeance.

"I came--they took the car away, and I--I was left behind," she
faltered. And then: "Oh, Howard! take me away; hide me somewhere! It's
too horrible!"

There was a bull-bellow of rage from the room they had just left, and
Lidgerwood hurried his companion into the first refuge that offered,
which chanced to be the trainmaster's room. Out of the private office
and into the corridor came the taller of the two garroters, holding his
mask in place as he ran, with McCloskey, Judson, and all but one or two
of the others in hot pursuit.

Notwithstanding, the fugitive gained the stair and fell, rather than
ran, to the bottom. There was the crash of a bursting door, a soldierly
command of "Halt!" the crack of a cavalry rifle, and McCloskey came
back, wiping his homely face with a bandanna.

"They got him," he said; and then, seeing Eleanor for the first time,
his jaw dropped and he tried to apologize. "Excuse me, Miss Brewster; I
didn't have the least idea you were up here."

"Nothing matters now," said Eleanor, pale to the lips. "Come in here and
tell us about it. And--and--is mamma safe?"

"She's down-stairs in the _Nadia_, with the others--where I supposed you
were," McCloskey began; but Lidgerwood heard the feet of those who were
carrying Flemister's body from the chamber of horrors, and quickly
shutting the door on sight and sounds, started the trainmaster on the
story which must be made to last until the way was clear of things a
woman should not see.

"Who was the tall man?" he asked. "I thought he was Hallock--I called
him Hallock."

The trainmaster shook his head. "They're about the same build; but we
were all off wrong, Mr. Lidgerwood--'way off. It's been Gridley: Gridley
and his side-partner, Flemister, all along. Gridley was the man who
jumped the passenger at Crosswater Hills, and took up the rail to ditch
Clay's freight--with Hallock chasing him and trying to prevent it.
Gridley was the man who helped Flemister last night at Silver
Switch--with Hallock trying again to stop him, and Judson trying to
keep tab on Hallock, and getting him mixed up with Gridley at every
turn, even to mistaking Gridley's voice and his shadow on the
window-curtain for Hallock's. Gridley was the man who stole the
switch-engine and ran it over the old Wire-Silver spur to the mine to
sell it to Flemister for his mine power-plant--they've got it boxed up
and running there, right now. Gridley is the man who has made all this
strike trouble, bossing the job to get you out and to get himself in, so
he could cover up his thieveries. Gridley was the man who put up the job
with Bart Rufford to kill you, and Judson mistook his voice for
Hallock's that time, too. Gridley was----"

"Hold on, Mac," interrupted the superintendent; "how did you learn all
this?"

"Part of it through some of his men, who have been coming over to us in
the last half-hour and giving him away; part of it through Dick Rufford,
who was keeping tab on him for the money he could squeeze out of him
afterward."

"How did Rufford come to tell you?"

"Why, Bradford--that is--er--the two Ruffords started a little shooting
match with Andy, and--m-m--well, Bart passed out for keeps, this time,
but Dick lived long enough to tell Bradford a few things--for old
cow-boy times' sake, I suppose. I'll never put it all over any man,
again, as long as I live, Mr. Lidgerwood, after rubbing it into Hallock
the way I did, when he was doing his level best to help us out. But it's
partly his own fault. He wanted to play a lone hand, and he was scheming
to get them both into the same frying-pan--Gridley and Flemister."

Lidgerwood nodded. "He had a pretty bitter grudge against Flemister."

"The worst a man could have," said McCloskey soberly. Then he added:
"I've got a few thousand dollars saved up that says that Rankin Hallock
isn't going to hang for what he did in the other room a few minutes ago.
I knew it would come to that if the time ever ripened right suddenly,
and I tried to find Judson to choke him off. But John got in ahead of
me."

Lidgerwood switched the subject abruptly in deference to Eleanor's deep
breathing.

"I must take Miss Brewster to her friends. You say the _Nadia_ is back?
Who moved it without orders?"

"Yes, she's back, all right, and Dawson is the man who comes in for the
blessing. He wanted an engine--needed one right bad--and he couldn't
wait to uncouple the car. It was Hallock who sent that message to Mr.
Leckhard that we've been hearing so much about, and it was a beg for
the loan of a few of Uncle Sam's boys from Fort McCook. Gridley got on
to it through Dix, and he also cut us out of Mr. Leckhard's answer
telling us that the cavalry boys were on 73. By Gridley's orders, the
two Ruffords and some others turned an engine loose to run down the road
for a head-ender with the freight that was bringing the soldiers. Dawson
chased the runaway engine with the coupled-up _Nadia_ outfit, caught it
just in the nick of time to prevent a collision with 73, and brought it
back. He's down in the car now, with one of the young women crying on
his neck, and----"

Miss Brewster got up out of her chair, found she could stand without
tottering, and said: "Howard, I _must_ go back to mamma. She will be
perfectly frantic if some one hasn't told her that I am safe. We can go
now, can't we, Mr. McCloskey? The trouble is all over, isn't it?"

The trainmaster nodded gravely.

"It's over, all but the paying of the bills. That rifle-shot we heard a
little spell ago settled it. No, he isn't dead"--this in answer to
Lidgerwood's unspoken question--"but it will be a heap better for all
concerned if he don't get over it. You can go down. Lieutenant Baldwin
has posted his men around the shops and the Crow's Nest."

Together they left the shelter of the trainmaster's room, and passed
down the dark stair and out upon the platform, where the cavalrymen were
mounting guard. There was no word spoken by either until they reached
the _Nadia's_ forward vestibule, and then it was Lidgerwood who broke
the silence to say: "I have discovered something to-night, Eleanor: I'm
not quite all the different kinds of a coward I thought I was."

"Don't tell me!" she said, in keen self-reproach, and her voice thrilled
him like the subtle melody of a passion song. "Howard, dear, I--I'm
sitting in sackcloth and ashes. I saw it all--with my own eyes, and I
could neither run nor scream. Oh, it was splendid! I never dreamed that
any man could rise by the sheer power of his will to such a pinnacle of
courage. Does that make amends--just a little? And won't you come to
breakfast with us in the morning, and let me tell you afterward how
miserable I've been--how I fairly _nagged_ father into bringing this
party out here so that I might have an excuse to--to----"

He forgot the fierce strife so lately ended; forgot the double victory
he had won.

"But--but Van Lew," he stammered--"he told me that you--that he--" and
then he took her in his arms and kissed her, while a young man with a
bandaged head--a man who answered to the name of Jack Benson, and who
was hastening up to get permission to go home to Faith Dawson--turned
his back considerately and walked away.

"What were you going to say about Herbert?" she murmured, when he let
her have breath enough to speak with.

"I was merely going to remark that he can't have you now, not if he were
ten thousand times your accepted lover."

She escaped from his arms and ran lightly up the steps of the private
car. And from the safe vantage-ground of the half-opened door she turned
and mocked him.

"Silly boy," she said softly. "Can't you read print when it's large
enough to shout at all the world? Herbert and Carolyn have been
'announced' for more than three months, and they are to be married when
we get back to New York. That's all; good-night, and don't you dare to
forget your breakfast engagement!"





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