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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/14844-8.txt b/14844-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..af515d8 --- /dev/null +++ b/14844-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,10228 @@ +Project Gutenberg's The Taming of Red Butte Western, by Francis Lynde + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Taming of Red Butte Western + +Author: Francis Lynde + +Release Date: January 31, 2005 [EBook #14844] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TAMING OF RED BUTTE WESTERN *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Jason Isbell and the PG Online Distributed +Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net). + + + + + + +[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!" + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Taming of Red Butte Western, by Francis Lynde + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TAMING OF RED BUTTE WESTERN *** + +***** This file should be named 14844-8.txt or 14844-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/4/8/4/14844/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Jason Isbell and the PG Online Distributed +Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net). + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Taming of Red Butte Western + +Author: Francis Lynde + +Release Date: January 31, 2005 [EBook #14844] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TAMING OF RED BUTTE WESTERN *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Jason Isbell and the PG Online Distributed +Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net). + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<div class="figcenter"> +<a name="i001" id="i001" /> +<a href="images/gs001.jpg"><img src="images/gs001t.jpg" width="50%" +alt="I'll spend the last dollar of the fortune my father left me..." +title="I'll spend the last dollar of the fortune my father left me..." /></a><br /> +<p class="center"><b>"I'll spend the last dollar of the fortune my father +left me, if needful, in finding that man and hanging him!"</b></p> +</div> + +<div> +<br /> +<hr /> +<br /> +</div> + +<h1>The Taming of Red Butte Western</h1> + +<h2>by Francis Lynde</h2> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<h4 class="smcap"><i>Illustrated</i></h4> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<h6>Charles Scribner's Sons<br /> +New York, 1916</h6> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<h6>1910, BY<br/> +Charles Scribner's Sons<br /> +Published April, 1910</h6> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + + +<h3><i>To</i></h3> +<h3 class="smcap">Mr. Charles Augustine Stickle</h3> +<h4>My brother—in deed, though not by blood—this <br /> tale of his birthland is +affectionately inscribed.</h4> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS" />CONTENTS</h2> + +<div style="margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 10%;"> +<table summary="Table of Contents" width="60%" border="0"> +<tr> + <td style="width: 65%;"><a href="#I"><b>I. Collars-and-Cuffs</b></a></td> + <td class="right" style="width: 35%"><a href="#I">3</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td><a href="#II"><b>II. The Red Desert</b></a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#II">24</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td><a href="#III"><b>III. A Little Brother of the Cows</b></a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#III">38</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td><a href="#IV"><b>IV. At the Rio Gloria</b></a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#IV">59</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td><a href="#V"><b>V. The Outlaws</b></a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#V">80</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td><a href="#VI"><b>VI. Everyman's Share</b></a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#VI">102</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td><a href="#VII"><b>VII. The Killer</b></a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#VII">122</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td><a href="#VIII"><b>VIII. Benson's Bridge-Timbers</b></a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#VIII">141</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td><a href="#IX"><b>IX. Judson's Joke</b></a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#IX">157</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td><a href="#X"><b>X. Flemister and Others</b></a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#X">177</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td><a href="#XI"><b>XI. Nemesis</b></a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#XI">187</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td><a href="#XII"><b>XII. The Pleasurers </b></a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#XII">202</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td><a href="#XIII"><b>XIII. Bitter-Sweet</b></a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#XIII">224</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td><a href="#XIV"><b>XIV. Blind Signals</b></a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#XIV">248</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td><a href="#XV"><b>XV. Eleanor Intervenes</b></a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#XV">260</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td><a href="#XVI"><b>XVI. The Shadowgraph</b></a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#XVI">270</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td><a href="#XVII"><b>XVII. The Dipsomaniac </b></a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#XVII">289</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td><a href="#XVIII"><b>XVIII. At Silver Switch</b></a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#XVIII">305</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td><a href="#XIX"><b>XIX. The Challenge</b></a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#XIX">324</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td><a href="#XX"><b>XX. Storm Signals </b></a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#XX">346</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td><a href="#XXI"><b>XXI. The Boss Machinist</b></a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#XXI">369</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td><a href="#XXII"><b>XXII. The Terror</b></a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#XXII">380</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td><a href="#XXIII"><b>XXIII. The Crucible</b></a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#XXIII">398</a></td> +</tr> +</table> +</div> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<h2><a name="ILLUSTRATIONS" id="ILLUSTRATIONS" />ILLUSTRATIONS</h2> + +<div style="margin-left: 5%;"> +<table summary="List of Illustrations" border="0" width="85%"> + <tr> + <td style="width: 90%;"><a href="#i001"> + "I'll spend the last dollar of the fortune my father left me, + if needful, in finding that man and hanging him!"</a></td> + <td class="right" style="width: 10%;" valign="top"> + <i><a href="#i001">Frontispiece</a></i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td colspan="2" class="right"><span class="smcap" style="font-size: 90%;">Facing Page</span></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><a href="#i426">His hand was on the latch of the door-yard gate when a man rose out of the gloom.</a> + </td> + <td class="right"><a href="#i426">138</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><a href="#i427">"Bart's afraid he can't duck without dying."</a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#i427">176</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td><a href="#i428">"Well, gentlemen, I'm waiting. Why don't you shoot?"</a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#i428">400</a></td> + </tr> +</table> +</div> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<h2><a name="I" id="I" />I</h2> + +<h2>COLLARS-AND-CUFFS</h2> + +<div><br /></div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>The grave-eyed man who had borrowed Superintendent Leckhard's +pivot-chair nodded intelligence.</p> + +<p>"That is what you have been saying, with variations, for the last +half-hour. Why?"</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Not on the kind which has to be inculcated by main strength and a +cheerful disregard for consequences. I'm no scrapper."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I understand," said Lidgerwood; and the vice-president went on.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood nodded. "I kept up with it in the newspapers," he cut in.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Again Lidgerwood made the sign of assent.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"But you don't know him, Stuart; that is the weak link in the chain."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>The ghost of an incredulous smile wrinkled about the tired eyes of the +big man in the pivot-chair.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"You haven't known me at all," was the sober reply.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood shook his head.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no, you're not: you only think you are," protested the one who +thought he knew. But Lidgerwood would not let that stand.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>"No, I don't know what it means," said the other man, moved more than he +cared to admit by the abject confession.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>The vice-president's heavy eyebrows slanted in questioning surprise.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood's smile was mirthless.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"You say you have been dodging the collisions. How do you know you +wouldn't buck up when the real pinch comes?" he demanded.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>There was something approaching the abandonment of the shameless in +Lidgerwood's manner when he went on.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"I'd rather hear you tell it," said the listener at Superintendent +Leckhard's desk. "Go on."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood waited until the switching-engine, with its pop-valve open +and screaming like a liberated devil of the noise pit, had passed.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; I've seen the original."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, hold on; there's another side to all that, and you know it," the +vice-president began; but Lidgerwood would not listen.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"But the fact remained," said Lidgerwood, sparing himself not at all. "I +was weighed and found wanting; that is the only point worth +considering."</p> + +<p>"Well?" queried Ford, when the self-condemned culprit turned again to +the dusk-darkened window, "what came of it?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"It was left in the air a year ago last spring. I can't pull it down +now."</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>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?"</p> + +<p>"I do; only I'll make it more binding. It was optional with you before; +it's a sheer necessity now. You've <i>got</i> to go."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Well," said the man in the swing-chair, calmly, "maybe you need a +little killing, Howard. Had you ever thought of that?"</p> + +<p>A gray look came into Lidgerwood's face.</p> + +<p>"Maybe I do."</p> + +<p>A little silence supervened. Then Ford plunged into detail.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"That applies to my own departments—the operating, telegraph, +train-service, and engineering; but how about the motive power?" asked +the new incumbent.</p> + +<p>Ford threw down the desk-knife, with which he had been sharpening a +pencil, with a little gesture indicative of displeasure.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"How is that?" inquired Lidgerwood.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"That is all I shall ask of him," said the new superintendent. "Anything +else?" looking at his watch.</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Ve bane got dem new boss, Ay vant to tal you fallers," he drawled.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"<i>Collars-and-Cuffs, by God!</i>" he said.</p> + + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<h2><a name="II" id="II" />II</h2> + +<h2>THE RED DESERT</h2> + +<div><br /></div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>But now only the railroad plant was electric-lighted; the single +ramshackle street-car had been turned into a <i>chile-con-carne</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Hallock leaned forward in his chair.</p> + +<p>"Who is the new man?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Nobody seems to know him by name. But he is a friend of Ford's all +right. That is how he gets the job."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"A college man, I suppose," he commented. "Otherwise Ford wouldn't be +backing him."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, I guess it's safe to count on that."</p> + +<p>"And a man who will carry out the Ford policy?"</p> + +<p>Gridley's eyes smiled, but lower down on his face the smile became a +cynical baring of the strong teeth.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>This time Gridley's smile was a thinly veiled sneer.</p> + +<p>"What makes you so keen for it, Hallock?" he asked. "You have no use for +the money, and still less for the title."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Would it? Not before I had squared off a few old debts, Gridley; don't +you forget that."</p> + +<p>There was a menace in the harsh retort, and the chief clerk made no +attempt to conceal it.</p> + +<p>"Threatening, are you?" jeered the full-fed one, still good-naturedly +sarcastic. "What would you do, if you had the chance, Rankin?"</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>It was a mere routine notification from the line-end operator at Copah, +and the chief clerk read it sullenly to the master-mechanic.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>"Why, do you know him?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Why should he refuse?" demanded Hallock.</p> + +<p>"That is where my wire-tapper fell down; he couldn't tell."</p> + +<p>"Then why do you say there is still a chance for me?"</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>Hallock did not say what he thought. He rarely did.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. That is my business, and none of yours."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Let it go at that," he said placably. "But if you should decide to +stay, I want you to let up on Flemister."</p> + +<p>The morose antagonism died out of Hallock's eyes, and in its place came +craft.</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Not for any orders that you can give," retorted the chief clerk, once +more opening the door for the quarrel.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Why?" The single word shot out of the loose-lipped mouth like an +explosive bullet.</p> + +<p>Gridley opened the door and turned upon the threshold.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<h2><a name="III" id="III" />III</h2> + +<h2>A LITTLE BROTHER OF THE COWS</h2> + +<div><br /></div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Reflecting upon these things, Lidgerwood's comment fell into speech over +his cup of coffee and crisp breakfast bacon.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Were the boxes properly overhauled before you left Copah?" demanded the +new boss.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood passed over the large impudence and held to the matter in +hand.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"Thirty minutes, here," growled the little brother of the cows; after +which he took himself off as if he considered the incident sufficiently +closed.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Do you call this railroading?" he rasped, pointing backward to the +menace. "Don't you know that we are on 201's time?"</p> + +<p>Bradford scowled in surly antagonism.</p> + +<p>"That blamed hot box—" he began, but Lidgerwood cut him off short.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I reckon we are needing a <i>rodeo</i> 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 <i>pasear</i> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Sure!" said the ex-cowboy, quite heartily.</p> + +<p>"Now, if there should happen to be——"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>Bradford took a leisurely minute to whittle a chewing cube from his +pocket plug of hard-times tobacco.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Gait fits the laundry part of him?" suggested Williams.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"What sort of things?" demanded Williams.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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.'"</p> + +<p>Williams, brawny and broad-chested, leaned against his box, his bare +arms folded and his short pipe at the disputatious angle.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"You are Mr. Hallock?" Lidgerwood made the guess without offering to +shake hands, the high, box-like desk forbidding the attempt.</p> + +<p>"Yes." The answer was neither antagonistic nor placatory; it was merely +colorless.</p> + +<p>"My name is Lidgerwood. You have heard of my appointment?"</p> + +<p>Again the colorless "Yes."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood saw no good end to be subserved by postponing the inevitable.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"You'll be sorry for it if I do," was the ungracious rejoinder.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>Hallock waved a hand toward the door which Lidgerwood had been about to +open a few minutes earlier.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<h2><a name="IV" id="IV" />IV</h2> + +<h2>AT THE RIO GLORIA</h2> + +<div><br /></div> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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 halfway. 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."</p> + +<p>"I understand," said Lidgerwood; and then he spoke of the careless +despatching.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"There you are!" snarled McCloskey, wheeling upon Lidgerwood. "They +couldn't let you get your chair warmed the first day!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"That's Gloria," he said, "and here's Little Butte, twelve miles +beyond."</p> + +<p>"Good ground?" queried Lidgerwood.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"We'll hear the excuse later," said Lidgerwood. "Now, tell me what sort +of a wrecking-plant we have?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Who is your wrecking-boss?"</p> + +<p>"Gridley—when he feels like going out. He can clear a main line quicker +than any man we've ever had."</p> + +<p>"He will go with us to-day?"</p> + +<p>"I suppose so. He is in town and he's—sober."</p> + +<p>The new superintendent caught at the hesitant word.</p> + +<p>"Drinks, does he?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>The talk was back again in the personal channel, and this time +Lidgerwood met the issue fairly.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>The master-mechanic laughed easily.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Technically, you mean?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I'm listening," said Lidgerwood.</p> + +<p>Gridley laughed again.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"I shall fire him," was the prompt rejoinder.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>The master-mechanic's smile was tolerant.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>The good-natured irony in Gridley's reply was not thrown away upon his +listener, but Lidgerwood held tenaciously to his own contention.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Gridley's strong teeth came together with a little snap.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"He can do the job, when he feels like it," admitted the trainmaster +sourly.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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....</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"He is a gentleman," said Gridley slowly.</p> + +<p>"Oh, the devil! what do I care about——"</p> + +<p>"And a scholar," the master-mechanic went on imperturbably.</p> + +<p>The buckboard driver's black eyes snapped. "Can you add the rest of +it—'and he isn't very bright'?"</p> + +<p>"No," was the sober reply.</p> + +<p>"Well, what are we up against?"</p> + +<p>Gridley snapped the penknife shut and began to chew the sharpened end of +the match.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"What do you mean? in just so many words."</p> + +<p>"Nothing more than I have said. Mr. Lidgerwood is a gentleman and a +scholar."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Gridley neither denied nor affirmed. He had taken out his penknife again +and was resharpening the match.</p> + +<p>"Hallock is the man to look to," he said. "If we could get him +interested ..."</p> + +<p>"That's up to you, damn it; I've told you a hundred times that I can't +touch him!"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps you can tell me how," was the sarcastic retort.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"I remember it," said Flemister.</p> + +<p>"Hallock was the treasurer," put in Gridley smoothly.</p> + +<p>"Yes, but——"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Yah! that's an old sore."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"How do you know?"</p> + +<p>The genial smile was wrinkling at the corners of Gridley's eyes.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Not yet."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Still, I don't see," persisted Flemister.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"And that man is——"</p> + +<p>"—Pennington Flemister, ex-president of the defunct Building and Loan. +You know where the money went, Flemister."</p> + +<p>"Maybe I do. What of that?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Well?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>The master-mechanic threw the whittled match away, as if the argument +were closed.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<h2><a name="V" id="V" />V</h2> + +<h2>THE OUTLAWS</h2> + +<div><br /></div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood was frowning at his blotting-pad and pencilling idle little +squares on it—a habit which was insensibly growing upon him.</p> + +<p>"Where would I get the two extra train-crews to fill in the thirty-day +lay-off, Jack? Had you thought of that?"</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I just wanted to know. Ever met his mother and sister?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood's brows lifted, though his query was unspoken.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"A lame duck?" repeated Lidgerwood.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Not without reason," said Lidgerwood.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Heavens and earth!" exclaimed Lidgerwood. "Is he <i>that</i> Dawson?"</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, go on," said the superintendent.</p> + +<p>"<i>I</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."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>"But he doesn't begin to be good enough for Faith Dawson," countered the +young engineer, stubbornly.</p> + +<p>"Isn't he? or is that another bit of your personal grudge? What do you +know against him?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Sorry I can't give you an office job," said the superintendent in mock +sympathy.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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 <i>had</i> better."</p> + +<p>This time Lidgerwood's laugh was mirthless.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>McCloskey tilted his hat to the bridge of his nose, his characteristic +gesture of displeasure.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>As in other moments of stress and perplexity, Lidgerwood was absently +marking little pencil squares on his desk blotter.</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't get down to the desert level, if I were you, Mac," he said +thoughtfully.</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>"I know," said Lidgerwood patiently, and the trainmaster gave it up.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Couldn't find it?" echoed Lidgerwood.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Where was it, at last accounts?"</p> + +<p>"Standing on the coal track under chute number three, where the night +crew left it at midnight, or thereabouts."</p> + +<p>"But certainly somebody must know where it has gone," said Lidgerwood.</p> + +<p>"Yes; and by grapples! I think I know who the somebody is."</p> + +<p>"Who is it?"</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>The trainmaster nodded and went out, muttering curses to the tilted hat +brim.</p> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<h2><a name="VI" id="VI" />VI</h2> + +<h2>EVERYMAN'S SHARE</h2> + +<div><br /></div> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Wastage, you mean?" queried the trainmaster, glancing at the totals in +the auditor's statement.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>The trainmaster was nursing a knee and screwing his face into the +reflective scheme of distortion.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"By littles, yes, but not in quantity," pursued Lidgerwood.</p> + +<p>"'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——"</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood swung his chair to face McCloskey.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Which means?" queried the superintendent.</p> + +<p>"That the numbers, or the initials, or both, were wrongly reported. It +means that it was a put-up job to steal the lumber."</p> + +<p>"Exactly. And there was a mixed car-load of lime and cement lost at +about the same time, wasn't there?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood's swing-chair "righted itself to the perpendicular with a +snap."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood dismissed Sullivan abruptly.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Hardly."</p> + +<p>"It was this gang we are presupposing—the gang that has been stealing +lumber and lime and other material by the car-load."</p> + +<p>"Well?"</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Who was at the Copah key—Mr. Leckhard?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Good. And what did Crandall say?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood's abstracted gaze out of the office window became a frown of +concentration.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>The trainmaster shook his head. "I've stewed over that till I'm +threatened with softening of the brain," he confessed.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>McCloskey got upon his feet as if he were going at once to begin the +search, but Lidgerwood detained him.</p> + +<p>"Hold on; I'm not quite through yet. Sit down again and have a smoke."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, but it was dead and buried before my time."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I've heard that much," said the trainmaster.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Well?" said the trainmaster.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>McCloskey sat up and tilted the derby to the back of his head. +"Gridley?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I thought I heard something," he said. "Didn't you think you did?"</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood shook his head.</p> + +<p>"Hallock has gone over to the storekeeper's office to check up the +time-rolls. He won't be back to-day."</p> + +<p>McCloskey closed the door and returned to his chair.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>By this time McCloskey had his hat tilted to the belligerent angle.</p> + +<p>"I'm not a fair witness," he reiterated. "There's been gossip, and I've +listened to it."</p> + +<p>"About this building and loan mess?"</p> + +<p>"No; about the wife."</p> + +<p>"To Hallock's discredit, you mean?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Heavens!" exclaimed Lidgerwood, under his breath. "I can't believe +that, Mac."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"How so?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I know it."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>At this the trainmaster changed front so suddenly that Lidgerwood began +to wonder if his estimate of the man's courage was at fault.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood looked up quickly. "That's odd," he said. "No longer ago than +yesterday, Gridley suggested precisely the same thing."</p> + +<p>McCloskey was on his feet again and fumbling behind him for the +door-knob.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood flung the paper-knife aside and whirled his chair to face the +new complaint.</p> + +<p>"What is the matter now, Jack?" he snapped.</p> + +<p>"Oh, nothing much—when you're used to it; only about a thousand +dollars' worth of dimension timber gone glimmering. That's all."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Sit down," he rapped out. "That isn't 'bill of lading'; it's 'building +and loan.'"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>The cool retort, as from an equal in rank, added fresh fuel to the fire.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"It is none of your business, Mr. Lidgerwood," said the carved figure +with the gloomy eyes that never blinked.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Hallock stood up and leaned over the desk end. His saturnine face was a +mask of cold rage, but his eyes were burning.</p> + +<p>"If I thought you knew what you're saying," he began in the grating +voice, "but you don't—you <i>can't</i> 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——"</p> + +<p>"Go on," said Lidgerwood, frowning, "if you do, what then?"</p> + +<p>Hallock leaned still farther over the desk end.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood was still angry enough to resent this advance into the field +of the personalities.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Hallock straightened up and buttoned his coat.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"Well?" said the superintendent.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<h2><a name="VII" id="VII" />VII</h2> + +<h2>THE KILLER</h2> + +<div><br /></div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"Oh, do I remember it?—disagreeably?" she laughed. And then, with +charming naïveté: "I am sure I try not to."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"You mean that you would like to leave your official dignity behind you +when you come to us here on the mesa?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"They are still refusing to take you seriously?" she said. "I hope you +don't mind it too much."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I fancy very little of it is what you would call good-natured," he +rejoined evenly. "Very much of it is thinly disguised contempt."</p> + +<p>"For your authority?"</p> + +<p>"For me, personally, first; and for my authority as a close second."</p> + +<p>"Then you are anticipating trouble when the laugh is over?"</p> + +<p>He shook his head. "I'm hoping No, as I said a moment ago, but I'm +expecting Yes."</p> + +<p>"And you are not afraid?"</p> + +<p>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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"There are so many different kinds of cowards," she said, after the +reflective interval.</p> + +<p>"But they are all equally despicable?" he suggested.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"For example?" said Lidgerwood.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood could not resist the temptation to probe the old wound.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>She took time to think.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Would you really do that?" he asked doubtfully.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood rose and felt in his pockets for his after-dinner cigar.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Whereupon the trainmaster's homely face would take on added furrowings +of distress.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"It is Judson's run, but he is laying off."</p> + +<p>"What is the matter with him, sick?"</p> + +<p>"No; just plain drunk."</p> + +<p>"Fire him. I won't have a single solitary man in the train service who +gets drunk. Tell him so."</p> + +<p>"All right; one more stick of dynamite, with a cap and fuse in it, +turned loose under foot," prophesied McCloskey gloomily. "Judson goes."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"I've had him up. He grinned and said that that was all the money there +was, everybody had tickets."</p> + +<p>"You don't believe it?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood was adding another minute square to the pencilled +checker-board on his desk blotter.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Again McCloskey's rough-cast face became the outward presentment of a +soul in anxious trouble.</p> + +<p>"Call it done—and another stick of dynamite turned loose," he +acquiesced. "Is there anything else?"</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"Nothing, yet. I'm hunting for proof."</p> + +<p>"Against the men you suspect? Who are they, and what did they do with +the engine?"</p> + +<p>McCloskey became dumb.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"I shall have to report it to General Manager Frisbie, of course, if we +don't find it."</p> + +<p>"But haven't you already reported it?"</p> + +<p>"No; that is, I guess not. Wait a minute."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Hallock, have you reported the disappearance of that switching-engine +to Mr. Frisbie?" asked the superintendent.</p> + +<p>The answer seemed reluctant, and it was given in the single word of +assent.</p> + +<p>"When?" asked Lidgerwood.</p> + +<p>"In the weekly summary for last week; you signed it," said the chief +clerk.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"You didn't need to tell me; I know my business," said Hallock, and his +tone matched his superior's.</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood looked at McCloskey, and, at the trainmaster's almost +imperceptible nod, said, "That's all," and Hallock disappeared and +closed the door.</p> + +<p>"Well?" queried Lidgerwood sharply, when they had privacy again.</p> + +<p>McCloskey was shifting uneasily from one foot to the other.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Go on," said Lidgerwood.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Take it for granted and get to the point," urged Lidgerwood, always +impatient of preliminary bush-beating.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Stick to the facts, Mac," said the superintendent. "You're theorizing +now, you know."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Is that all?" said Lidgerwood quietly.</p> + +<p>"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. <i>Hallock knows where that engine went!</i>"</p> + +<p>"What makes you think so?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood had gone back to the pencil and the blotting-pad and the +making of squares.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Somebody is heading it, to a dead moral certainty, Mr. Lidgerwood; the +licks are coming too straight and too well-timed."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>The trainmaster shook his head.</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<a name="i426" id="i426" /> +<br /> +<a href="images/gs426.jpg"> +<img src="images/gs426t.jpg" width="45%" +alt="His hand was on the latch of the door-yard gate when a man rose out of the gloom." +title="His hand was on the latch of the door-yard gate when a man rose out of the gloom." /></a><br /> +<p class="center"><b>His hand was on the latch of the door-yard gate when a +man rose out of the gloom.</b></p> +<br /> +</div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>When he began to realize again, Dawson was helping him to his feet, and +the draftsman's mother was calling anxiously from the door.</p> + +<p>"What was it?" Lidgerwood asked, still dazed and half blinded.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood was gripping the gate and trying to steady himself. A chill, +like a violent attack of ague, was shaking him to the bone.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"It was Rufford. He followed you from the Crow's Nest. Williams saw him +and put me on, so I followed him."</p> + +<p>"Williams? Then he isn't——"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>But Lidgerwood clung to the gate-palings for yet another steadying +moment.</p> + +<p>"Rufford, you said: you mean the discharged telegraph operator?"</p> + +<p>"Worse luck," said Dawson. "It was his brother Bart, the 'lookout' at +Red-Light Sammy's; the fellow they call 'The Killer'."</p> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII" />VIII</h2> + +<h2>BENSON'S BRIDGE-TIMBERS</h2> + +<div><br /></div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood confirmed the gossip with a nod. "Yes, it was Rufford, so +Dawson says. I didn't recognize him, though; it was too dark."</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm mighty glad to see that he didn't get you. What was the row?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"A pretty close call, wasn't it?—or was Dougherty only putting on a few +frills to go with my cup of coffee?"</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood's gaze was resting on the little drawer in his desk which now +contained nothing but a handful of loose cartridges.</p> + +<p>"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'?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Well?" queried Lidgerwood; "have you found them?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"But you have discovered something?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"How were they taken, then? They couldn't have been floated off down the +river, could they?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Still, you are looking a good bit more cheerful than you were last +week," was Lidgerwood's suggestion.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Go on," said Lidgerwood, when the engineer stopped to light his pipe.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Where was he when he saw all this?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"You didn't let it rest at that?" said the superintendent.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Whereupon you went hunting for saw-mills?" asked Lidgerwood.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Benson, are you sure you went over all the line lying west of the +Gloria bridge?" he asked pointedly.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Benson had been tilting comfortably in his chair, smoking his pipe, but +at this he got up quickly and looked at his watch.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"Have you ever suspected him of being mixed up in the looting?"</p> + +<p>"I haven't known enough about him to form an opinion."</p> + +<p>Benson stepped to the door communicating with the outer office, and +closed it quietly.</p> + +<p>"Your man Hallock out there; how is he mixed up with Flemister?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. Why?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"Do you happen to know what the business was?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I do. He went at my request."</p> + +<p>"H'm," said Benson, "another string broken. Never mind; I've got to +catch that train."</p> + +<p>"Still after those bridge-timbers?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Who has the keys?"</p> + +<p>"I have one, and Spurlock, the line-chief, has one. Hallock has the +third."</p> + +<p>"Always Hallock!" was the half-impatient comment. "I hope you don't +suspect him of stealing your wire."</p> + +<p>McCloskey tilted his hat over his eyes, and looked truculent enough to +fight an entire cavalry troop.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood was smiling again.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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!"</p> + +<p>But even this was unconvincing to the superintendent.</p> + +<p>"That proves nothing against Hallock, Mac, as you will see when you cool +down a little," he said.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Did you go up over the spur?"</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>"Well, what did you see?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"You say two of the buildings are new; did you make any inquiries about +recent lumber shipments to the Wire-Silver?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Then you believe that he took your bridge-timbers and sawed them up +into lumber?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood was nodding slowly. "Yes, on Flemister and some others. Who +are the others, Benson?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<h2><a name="IX" id="IX" />IX</h2> + +<h2>JUDSON'S JOKE</h2> + +<div><br /></div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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 +<i>does</i> 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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, hell! <i>I</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."</p> + +<p>Judson flared up again.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Broadbent snorted his derision of all mere enginemen.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"For instance?" snapped Hodges, a freight engineer who had been thrice +"on the carpet" in Lidgerwood's office for over-running his orders.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>It was Williams's innings, and what he said was cautionary.</p> + +<p>"Dry up, you fellows; here comes Gridley."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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?"</p> + +<p>Judson nodded.</p> + +<p>"What is it this time, thirty days?"</p> + +<p>Judson shook his head gloomily. "No, I'm down and out."</p> + +<p>"Lidgerwood made it final, did he? Well, you can't blame him."</p> + +<p>"You hain't heard me sayin' anything, have you?" was the surly +rejoinder.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>Judson had a needle-like mind when the alcohol was out of it, and the +sudden query made him dissemble.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>Judson could not have told, under the thumbscrews, why he was prompted +to tell Gridley a plain lie. But he did it.</p> + +<p>"I can't remember," he denied. Then then needle-pointed brain got in its +word, and he added, "Why?"</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>Judson was looking the master-mechanic fairly in the eyes when he said, +"No, I don't remember a thing about that."</p> + +<p>"Try again," said Gridley, and now the shrewd gray eyes under the brim +of the soft-rolled felt hat held the engineer helpless.</p> + +<p>"I guess—I do—remember it—now," said Judson, slowly, trying, still +ineffectually, to break Gridley's masterful eyehold upon him.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Judson, this time without hesitation.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Judson had broken the curious eye-grip at last, and again he said, +"Why?"</p> + +<p>Gridley hooked his finger absently in the engineer's buttonhole.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>He found McCloskey in his office above stairs, mouthing and grimacing +over the string-board of the new time-table.</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<a name="i427" id="i427" /> +<br /> +<a href="images/gs427.jpg"> +<img src="images/gs427t.jpg" width="50%" +alt=""Bart's afraid he can't duck without dying."" +title=""Bart's afraid he can't duck without dying."" /></a><br /> +<p class="center"><b>"Bart's afraid he can't duck without dying."</b></p> +<br /> +</div> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Sure you are," muttered McCloskey. "You'd be better-natured with a +drink or two in you. What's doing?"</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>The trainmaster shrugged.</p> + +<p>"You've got just as many guesses as anybody, John. What you can bet on +is that he will do something different."</p> + +<p>Judson had slouched to the window. When he spoke, it was without turning +his head.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"How does it strike you?"</p> + +<p>Judson turned slowly, crossed the room, and sat down in the only vacant +chair.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Not knowing Mr. Lidgerwood much better than you do, John, I'm not sure +that I can."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Say the rest of it," commanded McCloskey.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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!"</p> + +<p>"Jack is? How do you know that?"</p> + +<p>McCloskey shrugged again.</p> + +<p>"Are you with us, John?" he asked cautiously.</p> + +<p>"I ain't with Bart Rufford and the tin-horns," said Judson negatively.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Sure," said Judson, "that's what any man would do in a civilized +country, ain't it?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, but not here, John—not in the red-colored desert, with Bart +Rufford's name in the body of the warrant."</p> + +<p>"I don't know why not," insisted the engineer stubbornly. "But go on +with the story; it ain't any fairy tale, so far."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>McCloskey wagged his shaggy head.</p> + +<p>"So you've said before, John, and not once or twice either."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>The trainmaster nodded. He was human.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>McCloskey did not resent the familiarity of the Christian name, neither +did he hold out any hope of reinstatement.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Let me go in and see him. He ain't half as hard-hearted as you are, +Jim."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"What other side?" demanded McCloskey.</p> + +<p>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?"</p> + +<p>"There didn't need to be anybody behind it. Bart thinks he has a kick +coming because his brother was discharged."</p> + +<p>"But there was somebody behind it. Tell me, Mac, did you ever see me too +drunk to read my orders and take my signals?"</p> + +<p>"No, don't know as I have."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Go on!" snapped McCloskey, almost viciously.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>McCloskey sprang from his chair and towered over the smaller man.</p> + +<p>"One of those men was Bart Rufford: who was the other one, Judson?"</p> + +<p>Judson was apparently unmoved. "You're forgettin' that I was plum' fool +drunk, Jim. I didn't see either one of 'em."</p> + +<p>"But you heard?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Why can't you do it now?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>McCloskey relapsed into his swing-chair.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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!"</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>What more McCloskey said was said to an otherwise empty room. Judson had +opened the door and closed it, and was gone.</p> + +<p>Summing up the astounding thing afterward, those who could recall the +details and piece them together traced Judson thus:</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The man in the sombrero and shirt-sleeves was first to come alive.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<h2><a name="X" id="X" />X</h2> + +<h2>FLEMISTER AND OTHERS</h2> + +<div><br /></div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>Mephistopheles</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood's smile was meant to be no more than decently hospitable.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Lidgerwood, studying his man shrewdly by the road of the +eye, and without prejudice to the listening ear.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"In other words, you looted the treasury among you," said Lidgerwood +coldly. "Is that it, Mr. Flemister?"</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"He was not implicated at all, save in a clerical way."</p> + +<p>"You mean that he did not share in the distribution of the money?"</p> + +<p>"He did not."</p> + +<p>"Then it is only fair that you should set him straight with the others, +Mr. Flemister."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"I'll think about it," returned the mine-owner shortly; but Lidgerwood +was not to be put off so easily.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Flemister's smile showed his teeth.</p> + +<p>"You're not threatening me, are you, Mr. Lidgerwood?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>This time the visitor's smile was a mere baring of the teeth.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>Judson's report, made to the trainmaster that evening after the +westbound train had left, was short and concise.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"You are sure of that, are you, John?" questioned McCloskey.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<h2><a name="XI" id="XI" />XI</h2> + +<h2>NEMESIS</h2> + +<div><br /></div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood was gazing absently out over the low hills intervening +between his point of view and the wooded summit of Little Butte.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I'll admit it if you say so, but I didn't know it before. How do you +know it?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood shook his head slowly. "That looks pretty bad. Why should he +want to silence the old man?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Well?" said Lidgerwood.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Nothing new, Mac?" he asked, when the trainmaster came aboard.</p> + +<p>"Nothing much, only the operators have notified me that there'll be +trouble, <i>pronto</i>, 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."</p> + +<p>"We put no man back who has been discharged for cause," said the +superintendent firmly. "Did you tell them that?"</p> + +<p>"I did. I have been saying that so often that it mighty nearly says +itself now, when I hear my office door open."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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. <i>What have you +done to that man?</i> You said you would kill him; you promised me that, +Rankin: have you done it?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Did she give you a turn?" he asked, when Lidgerwood reached up and +turned the desk-lamp on full again.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I know," said Leckhard; "she has done it before."</p> + +<p>"Whom is she trying to find?" asked Lidgerwood, wishing to have his +suspicion either denied or confirmed.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"No; and, Leckhard, I don't know that I care to hear it. It can't +possibly concern me."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Nobody was hurt, and Rufford is in jail," said Lidgerwood, hoping to +kill the friendly inquiry before it should run into details.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<h2><a name="XII" id="XII" />XII</h2> + +<h2>THE PLEASURERS</h2> + +<div><br /></div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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, <i>wig</i> it!"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>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?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Hello!" he exclaimed. "Got a new wrecking-boss?"</p> + +<p>The superintendent nodded. "I have one in the making. Dawson wanted to +come along and try his hand."</p> + +<p>"Did Gridley send him?"</p> + +<p>"No; Gridley is away somewhere."</p> + +<p>"So Fred's your understudy, is he? Well, I've got one, too. I'll show +him to you after a while."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"It's a pretty long reach, Fred," said the superintendent. "Going to try +it from here?"</p> + +<p>"Best place," said the reticent one shortly.</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood was looking at his watch.</p> + +<p>"Williams will be due here before long with a special from Copah. I +don't want to hold him up," he remarked.</p> + +<p>"Thirty minutes?" inquired the draftsman, without taking mind or eye off +his problem.</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes; forty or fifty, maybe."</p> + +<p>"All right, I'll be out of the way," was the quiet rejoinder.</p> + +<p>"Yes, you will!" was McCloskey's ironical comment, when the draftsman +had gone around to the other side of the great crane.</p> + +<p>"Let him alone," said Lidgerwood. "It lies in my mind that we are +developing a genius, Mac."</p> + +<p>"He'll fall down," grumbled the trainmaster. "That crane won't pick up +the '95 clear the way she's lying."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>McCloskey grinned.</p> + +<p>"You don't know Gridley yet. He's a crank on good machinery. That crane +was a clean steal."</p> + +<p>"What?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"What rank piracy!" Lidgerwood exclaimed. "I don't wonder they call us +buccaneers over here. How could he do it without being found out?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Man that hand-fall and take slack! Pay off, Darby," to the hoister +engineer. "That's right; more slack!"</p> + +<p>The great tackling-hook, as big around as a man's thigh, settled +accurately over the 195.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>"Heavens to Betsey!" said McCloskey. "He's going to pick it up at one +hitch—and without blocking!"</p> + +<p>"Hands off, Mac," said Lidgerwood good-naturedly. "If Fred didn't know +this trade before, he's learning it pretty rapidly now."</p> + +<p>"That's all right, but if he doesn't break something before he gets +through——"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>On the way up the track he asked about Clay and Green, the engineer and +fireman who were in the wreck.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood was examining the cross-ties, which were cut and scarred by +the flanges of many derailed wheels.</p> + +<p>"You have no notion of what did it?" he queried, turning abruptly upon +McCloskey.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"What did you find when you got here?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Of course, you couldn't tell anything about the cause, under such +conditions."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"That proves nothing more than poor spike-holds in a few dry-rotted +cross-ties," Lidgerwood objected.</p> + +<p>"No; there were a number of others farther along also turned over and +broken and bent. But the first one was the only freak."</p> + +<p>"How was that?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>"That's about all."</p> + +<p>The superintendent's eyes narrowed.</p> + +<p>"Who was missing out of the Angels crowd of trouble-makers yesterday, +Mac?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Go on," said Lidgerwood sharply.</p> + +<p>"Hallock came somewhere up this way on 202 yesterday."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Did he stop at Navajo?" queried the trainmaster.</p> + +<p>"I suppose so; at any rate, he saw Cruikshanks."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>But now the superintendent was shaking his head.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"I know," confessed the trainmaster. "It doesn't look reasonable."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"You were saying something to Dawson about Williams and a special train; +is that Mr. Brewster coming in?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. He wired from Copah last night. He has Mr. Ford's car—the +<i>Nadia</i>."</p> + +<p>The trainmaster's face-contortion was expressive of the deepest chagrin.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The superintendent changed the subject.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"From the way in which you say it, I infer that you don't expect me to +approve," said Lidgerwood judicially.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"You think I should break my word and take Judson back?"</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>McCloskey was mollified a little.</p> + +<p>"He says he has quit drinking, and I believe him this time. But this job +I've given him isn't pulling trains."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>But now Lidgerwood was frowning again.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>"I know; I can't argue the case with you, Mac, But I can't do it."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"It is such a despicable thing," he protested, as one who yields +reluctantly. "And if, after all, Hallock is innocent——"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Sure. It's up around the hill, with a safe man to waggle it."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Nadia</i> +came to a full stop, with its observation platform opposite the end of +the wrecking-track.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Don't tell me about that tin-canned tepee village, Howard—I <i>know</i>. +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."</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"I don't know as I ought to leave. I've just come out from Angels, you +know."</p> + +<p>But the president was not to be denied.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I'm going back to Angels with the president," said the superintendent, +speaking to both of them. "You can clean up here without me."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Nadia</i> 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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The comfortable lounging-room of the <i>Nadia</i> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>tête-à-tête</i> chair was that one person +whom Lidgerwood would have circled the globe to avoid meeting.</p> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<h2><a name="XIII" id="XIII" />XIII</h2> + +<h2>BITTER-SWEET</h2> + +<div><br /></div> + +<p>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 <i>tête-à-tête</i> 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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood laughed, recognizing Miss Brewster's romancing gift, or the +results of it.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Miss Brewster laughed derisively.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Your father commands me, and he says I am to stay. And now, if you will +excuse me——"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Flemister," said the president reflectively. "He's a character. Know +him personally, Howard?"</p> + +<p>"A little," the superintendent admitted. </p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"He is in his proper longitude out here, then," said Lidgerwood rather +grimly. "This is the 'hold-up's heaven.'"</p> + +<p>"I'll bet Flemister is doing his share of the looting," laughed the +president. "Is he alone in the mine?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Very well indeed, I believe. Flemister seems to have money to burn."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood shook his head.</p> + +<p>"Well, I do; just happen to. You know how it lies—on the western slope +of Little Butte ridge?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Fairly well," said Lidgerwood. "Flemister lawed the other man out."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Yet you say Flemister is a born gentleman, as well as a born +buccaneer?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Tell me about the wrecked train we passed a little while ago, Mr. +Lidgerwood," she began, almost abruptly. "Was any one killed?"</p> + +<p>"No; it was a freight, and the crew escaped. It was a rather narrow +escape, though, for the engineer, and fireman."</p> + +<p>"You were putting it back on the track?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>She was silent for a few moments, but afterward she went on, +half-gropingly he thought.</p> + +<p>"Is that part of your work—to get the trains on the track when they run +off?"</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>"That was McCloskey, our trainmaster," he cut in.</p> + +<p>"And the other——?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"What did he do?" she asked, and again he saw the groping wistfulness in +her eyes, and wondered at it.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"You are generous, Mr. Lidgerwood, to—to a subordinate. He ought to be +very loyal to you."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"His college, Mr. Lidgerwood; do you chance to know where he was +graduated?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"He took his engineering course in Carnegie, but I believe he did not +stay through the four years," he said gravely.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>When it was quite too late to retreat, he found the deep-recessed +observation platform of the <i>Nadia</i> 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.</p> + +<p>"I thought you would come, if I only gave you time enough," she said, +quite coolly. "Did you find Carolyn very persuasive?"</p> + +<p>He ignored the query about Miss Doty, replying only to the first part of +her speech.</p> + +<p>"I thought you had gone to your state-room. I hadn't the slightest idea +that you were out here."</p> + +<p>"Otherwise you would not have come? How magnificently churlish you can +be, upon occasion, Howard!"</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>—"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!"</p> + +<p>"No," he denied.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. A year, three months, and eleven days." He had taken the chair +beside her because there seemed to be nothing else to do.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>He spread his hands. "Existing, one way and another. There has always +been my work."</p> + +<p>"'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?"</p> + +<p>"Thank you for expressing it so delicately. It seems to be my +misfortune to disappoint you, always."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>His frown was almost a scowl. "Is it worth while to make an unending +jest of it, Eleanor?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"Twice, then? Think hard; there must have been at least two little +quickenings of the heartbeats in all that time."</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"Still no? That reduces it to one—the charming Miss Dawson——"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"What a pity!" she said in mock sympathy.</p> + +<p>"That I can't measure up to your requirements of the perfect man? Yes, +it is a thousand pities," he agreed.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Not from any line you have ever written," she retorted. "Alicia Ford +told me, otherwise I shouldn't have known."</p> + +<p>"Still, you came. Why? Were you curious?"</p> + +<p>"Why should I be curious, and what about?—the Red Desert? I've seen +deserts before."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"You like him?" he queried.</p> + +<p>"How can you ask—when you have just called him 'the other man'?"</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood turned in his chair and faced her squarely.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>She did not answer him. Instead, she whipped aside from that phase of +the subject to ask a question of her own.</p> + +<p>"What ever made you come out here, Howard?"</p> + +<p>"To the superintendency of the Red Butte Western? You did."</p> + +<p>"I?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, you."</p> + +<p>"It is ridiculous!"</p> + +<p>"It is true."</p> + +<p>"Prove it—if you can; but you can't."</p> + +<p>"I am proving it day by day, or trying to. I didn't want to come, but +you drove me to it."</p> + +<p>"I decline to take any such hideous responsibility," she laughed +lightly. "There must have been some better reason; Miss Dawson, +perhaps."</p> + +<p>"Quite likely, barring the small fact that I didn't know there was a +Miss Dawson until I had been a month in Angels."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Always <i>that!</i> Why won't you let me forget?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>His answer seemed to be indirection itself.</p> + +<p>"How long do you expect to stay in Angels and its vicinity?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"You are most provoking!" she declared. "Did you make the arrest?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Miss Brewster, being Colorado-born, was deeply interested.</p> + +<p>"Now you are no longer dull, Howard!" she exclaimed. "Tell me in words +just how Mr. Judson did it."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Miss Eleanor did not need to vocalize her approval of Judson; the dark +eyes were alight with excitement.</p> + +<p>"How fine!" she applauded. "Of course, after that, you took Mr. Judson +back into the railway service?"</p> + +<p>"Indeed, I did nothing of the sort; nor shall I, until he demonstrates +that he means what he says about letting the whiskey alone."</p> + +<p>"'Until he demonstrates'—don't be so cold-blooded, Howard! Possibly he +saved your life."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"And yet, a few moments ago, you called yourself a coward, cousin mine. +Could you really face such an alternative without flinching?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"It doesn't appeal to you?—dear God!" she said. "And I have been +calling you ... but would you do it, Howard?"</p> + +<p>He smiled at her sudden earnestness.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>He had risen and was helping his companion to her feet when Mrs. +Brewster came to the car door to say:</p> + +<p>"Oh, you are out here, are you, Howard? I was looking for you to let you +know that we dine in the <i>Nadia</i> at seven. If your duties will +permit——"</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood's refusal was apologetic but firm.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>Miss Eleanor's interruption was calculated to temper the passed-on +praise.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Brewster, being well used to Eleanor's flippancies, paid no +attention to her daughter.</p> + +<p>"You will come to us whenever you can, Howard; that is understood," she +said. And so the social matter rested.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>It was Judson; and having seen him last toiling away man-fashion at the +wreck in the Crosswater Hills, Lidgerwood hailed him.</p> + +<p>"Hello, Judson! How did you get here? I thought you were doing a turn +with McCloskey."</p> + +<p>The small man's grin was ferocious.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<h2><a name="XIV" id="XIV" />XIV</h2> + +<h2>BLIND SIGNALS</h2> + +<div><br /></div> + +<p>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 <i>Nadia</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Only this," turning up a letter marked "Immediate" and bearing the +cancellation stamp of the postal car which had passed eastward on Train +202.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>His foot was on the threshold of the stairway door when Judson overtook +him.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood's decision was taken on the instant.</p> + +<p>"Yes; I think I shall go west in my car in an hour or so. Why?"</p> + +<p>"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 <i>are</i> goin'."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"By cripes!—look at that, will you?" he exclaimed, pointing to the +retreating figure. "That's Hallock, and he was listening!"</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood shook his head.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"But that <i>was</i> Hallock," insisted Judson, "or else it was his livin' +double."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Seeing the cheerful lights in the side-tracked <i>Nadia</i>, 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 <i>Nadia</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The train conductor's "All aboard!" shouted on the platform just below +his window, drew his attention from the <i>Nadia</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>At the outer door he turned up the long platform, instead of down, and +walked quickly to the <i>Nadia</i>, 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.</p> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<h2><a name="XV" id="XV" />XV</h2> + +<h2>ELEANOR INTERVENES</h2> + +<div><br /></div> + +<p>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 <i>Nadia's</i> party to the out-door +trysting-place.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Will there be any one to ask when you are gone?" she inquired, neither +sorrowing nor rejoicing, so far as he could determine.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"No; but probably not more than the night. I was only providing for the +unexpected, which some people say is what always happens."</p> + +<p>"Will your run take you as far as the Timanyoni Canyon?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; through it, and some little distance beyond."</p> + +<p>"You have just said that we are to ask for what we want. Did you mean +it?"</p> + +<p>"Surely," he replied unguardedly.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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!"</p> + +<p>"Mr. Lidgerwood will never consent, you mean," put in Miriam Holcombe +quietly.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Nadia</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"It was the maddest notion!" he protested. "Whatever made you suggest +it?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"To be with you; yes, that is true. But——"</p> + +<p>Her rippling laugh was too sweet to be shrill; none the less it held in +it a little flick of the whip of malice.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Quickly he stopped and faced her. The others were a few steps in +advance; were already boarding the service-car.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Well?" she said, and there was nothing in her tone to indicate that she +felt more than a passing interest in his declaration.</p> + +<p>"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—"</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Williams."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"So have I, for that matter," said Bradford calmly; "but we both got a +hurry call about fifteen minutes ago."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood was impatient of mysteries.</p> + +<p>"What do you mean, Andy?" he broke in. "Anything new?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"That isn't new," objected Lidgerwood irritably.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"What's that?" was the sharp query.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood asked a single question.</p> + +<p>"Did Williams find that anything had been tampered with?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"H'm," said Bradford; "reckon it was meant to do that?"</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>Eleanor came at the summons, and Jefferis gave the superintendent a +clear field by dropping off to ask Bradford for a match.</p> + +<p>"You sent for me, Howard?" said the president's daughter, and honey +could not have matched her tone for sweetness.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Why not?" she inquired.</p> + +<p>"Because it may not be entirely safe."</p> + +<p>"Nonsense!" she flashed back. "What could happen to us on a little +excursion like this?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know, but I wish you would reconsider and go back to the +<i>Nadia</i>."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>The taunt was too much. Wheeling suddenly, Lidgerwood snapped out a +summons to Jefferis: "Get aboard, Mr. Jefferis; we are going."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<h2><a name="XVI" id="XVI" />XVI</h2> + +<h2>THE SHADOWGRAPH</h2> + +<div><br /></div> + +<p>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 <i>cul-de-sac</i> among the foot-hills and hogbacks, plunges +abruptly into the echoing canyon of the Eastern Timanyoni.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>choo-chooin</i>' 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!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Hello! Yes; this is Flemister.... Yes, I say; <i>this</i> is Flemister; +you're talking to him.... What's that?—a message about Mr. +Lidgerwood?... All right; fire away."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>The listener heard the click of the telephone ear-piece replacement.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Who is running it?" inquired the other man rather anxiously, Judson +decided.</p> + +<p>"Williams and Bradford. A fool for luck, every time. We might have had +to <i>écraser</i> a couple of our friends."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Good!" said Flemister. "Then you had some such alternative in mind as +that I have just been proposing?"</p> + +<p>"No," was the crusty rejoinder. "I was merely providing for the +hundredth chance. I don't like your alternative."</p> + +<p>"Why don't you?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>"Well?" said the mine-owner.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Well?" said Flemister again, this time more impatiently, Judson +thought.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Again the mine-owner said "Why don't you?" and the other voice took up +the question argumentatively.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"And secondly?" suggested Flemister, still with the nagging sneer in his +tone.</p> + +<p>There was a little pause, and Judson listened until the effort grew +positively painful.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>At this the other voice took its turn at the savage sneering.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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, <i>but I know you</i>! 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——"</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div><br /><br /></div> +<h2><a name="XVII" id="XVII" />XVII</h2> + +<h2>THE DIPSOMANIAC</h2> + +<div><br /></div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>ting</i> 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 <i>click-click</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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?"</p> + +<p>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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>phut</i> 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.</p> + +<p>Goodloe came back to the telephone when the train clatter had died away, +and took up the broken conversation.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>Judson did not swear; the seconds were too vitally precious. He merely +repeated his warning, with a hoarse prayer for haste.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>Judson's heart was in his mouth, and he had to swallow twice before he +could go on.</p> + +<p>"Where does it meet the passenger?" he demanded.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div><br /><br /></div> +<h2><a name="XVIII" id="XVIII" />XVIII</h2> + +<h2>AT SILVER SWITCH</h2> + +<div><br /></div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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. <i>Savez vous?</i>"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood's laugh was as hearty as Van Lew's or the collegian's.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Mr. Lidgerwood! don't spoil the perfect moonlight that way!" cried +Miss Doty, and the others echoed the beseeching.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood looked to Eleanor for his cue, or at least for a whiff of +moral support. But she turned traitor.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"<i>I'm</i> 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."</p> + +<p>"Not while I am here to prevent you."</p> + +<p>"But you couldn't prevent me, you know."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I could."</p> + +<p>"How?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>She freed herself quickly, breathless and indignantly reproachful.</p> + +<p>"I am ashamed for you!" she panted. And then, with carefully calculated +malice: "What if Herbert had been looking?"</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"How can you doubt it?" she said; but now she was laughing at him again.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"So he thoughtfully stopped us to give us the chance!" snapped +Lidgerwood in wrathful scorn. "What did you do?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Why didn't we?" asked the superintendent, taking the time-card from its +pigeon-hole and glancing at Train 204's schedule.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Then we reach Little Butte before 204 gets there—is that it?"</p> + +<p>"That's about the way the night despatcher has it ciphered out. He gave +the Timanyoni plug operator hot stuff for holdin' us up."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood shook his head. The artless simplicity of Red-Butte-Western +methods, or unmethods, was dying hard, inexcusably hard.</p> + +<p>"Does the night despatcher happen to know just where 204 is, at this +present moment?" he inquired with gentle irony.</p> + +<p>Bradford laughed.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"At Silver Switch," replied Lidgerwood; and when the bobbing lantern +came nearer he called to the bearer of it. "What is it, Bradford?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>His answer was entirely sympathetic and grateful.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Broken flange under the 215, I'll bet," said Groner, holding his +lantern down to the gashed ties. But Bradford denied it.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"What man was that?" asked Groner, whose point of view had not been that +of an onlooker.</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood answered for himself and Bradford.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"This ain't no happen-so, Mr. Lidgerwood," he said, when he got up. "The +spikes are pulled!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood's eyes were bloodshot when he rose and said:</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>Bradford's slow drawl dispelled a little of the mystery.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>"Yes, certainly; Goodloe should have 'phoned me, if he knew," cut in the +mine-owner. "Anybody hurt?"</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<h2><a name="XIX" id="XIX" />XIX</h2> + +<h2>THE CHALLENGE</h2> + +<div><br /></div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>This left Flemister unaccounted for, but with a very palpable effort he +shook himself free from the spell of whatever had been shackling him.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood interrupted sharply: "What possible difference would that +have made, Mr. Flemister?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>It was the needed flick of the whip for the shaken nerve of the +mine-owner.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Lidgerwood absently, "I am going back from here."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"They are all up at the bonfire. I'm having the Jap launder the car a +little before they move in."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The draftsman was on the engine of the wrecking-train, and he dropped +off to join the superintendent.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"How do you know?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>The superintendent nodded. "What is your inference?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Only what I say; that the man knew his business. He is no ordinary +hobo; he is more likely in your class, or mine."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Fred, tell me; you've known John Judson longer than I have: do you +trust him—when he's sober?"</p> + +<p>"Yes." The answer was unqualified.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Dawson looked up quickly, and for once the reticence which was his +customary shield was dropped.</p> + +<p>"You're trusting me, now, Mr. Lidgerwood: who was the man? Gridley?"</p> + +<p>"Gridley? No. Why, Dawson, he is the last man I should suspect!"</p> + +<p>"All right; if you think so."</p> + +<p>"Don't you think so?"</p> + +<p>It was the draftsman's turn to hesitate.</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood smiled.</p> + +<p>"You don't want him for a brother-in-law; is that it, Fred?"</p> + +<p>"I'd cheerfully help to put my sister in her coffin, if that were the +alternative," said Dawson quite calmly.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I knew it, but——"</p> + +<p>"But what?"</p> + +<p>"It doesn't count," said the draftsman, briefly. Then: "Who was the +other man, the man who came west on 205?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"But why should he weaken at the last moment and try to stop the train?" +queried Dawson.</p> + +<p>"You forget that it was the special, and not the passenger, that was to +be wrecked."</p> + +<p>"Sure," said the draftsman.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"I guess so: keep a sharp eye on Hallock, and make Judson hold his +tongue. I'll do both."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>"Tell Judson to come aboard," said Lidgerwood; and the draftsman was +twisting at the door-knob when Miriam Holcombe came swiftly down the +compartment.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>Dawson's face had grown suddenly haggard, and he, too, ignored the +superintendent.</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>"No," she denied, "that was an accident for which you were no more to +blame than he was: but you are killing me."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood obeyed, quite meekly; and when he looked again, Dawson had +gone, and Miss Holcombe was sobbing comfortably in Eleanor's arms.</p> + +<p>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?"</p> + +<p>It was a test question, and the engineer did not answer it off-hand.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Yet you are convinced, in your own mind?"</p> + +<p>"I am."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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—<i>some</i> 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."</p> + +<p>"But the third man, Judson; the man you saw beating with his fists on +the bulkhead air-lock: who was he?" persisted Lidgerwood.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood nodded approvingly when the modest narrative reached the +bottle-smashing point.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"And you didn't see Flemister or Hallock again?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>Judson was shaking his head.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood was frowning thoughtfully.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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 <i>choo-chooin'</i> away up yonder in +Flemister's new power-house that he's built out of boards made from Mr. +Benson's bridge-timbers."</p> + +<p>"Is that so? Did you see the engine?" queried the superintendent +quickly.</p> + +<p>"No, but I might as well have. She's there, all right, and they didn't +care enough to even muffle her exhaust."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood took a slender gold-banded cigar from his desk-box, and +passed the box to the ex-engineer.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood nodded. "I've heard there was bad blood between them: it was +about that building-and-loan business, wasn't it?"</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Nadia</i>, and near +enough so that his guests, upon rising, could pass across the platforms.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Weary to the point of mental stagnation, Lidgerwood still had resilience +enough left to rise to the new grapple.</p> + +<p>"Is the strike authorized by the labor union leaders?" he asked.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"I guess not. They had all gone to bed in the <i>Nadia</i> when the grievance +committee came up."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I'm needing it, all right," admitted the trainmaster. And then; "Was +this passenger wreck another of the 'assisted' ones?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"And the other?" said McCloskey.</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood did not name the other.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"All but one little item, and maybe you'll rest better if I don't tell +you that right now."</p> + +<p>"Give it a name," said Lidgerwood crisply.</p> + +<p>"Bart Rufford has broken jail, and he is here, in Angels."</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<h2><a name="XX" id="XX" />XX</h2> + +<h2>STORM SIGNALS</h2> + +<div><br /></div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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?"</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Put me in touch," was the command.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>Nadia</i> here."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Good!" said Lidgerwood briefly. "How will you handle it?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Again the superintendent nodded his approval. The trainmaster was +showing himself at his loyal best.</p> + +<p>"That brings us down to Angels and the present, Mac. How do we stand +here?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"You say Dawson isn't in? He didn't have more than five or six hours' +work on that wreck. What is the matter?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"And how about Benson?" queried Lidgerwood.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Having had exactly the same feeling, and quite without reason, +Lidgerwood generously defended the absent master-mechanic.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"And that one is——?"</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>"Hallock? Is he here?"</p> + +<p>"Sure; he's been here since early this morning."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood pushed his chair back and got up. It was high time for a +reckoning of some sort with the chief clerk.</p> + +<p>"Is there anything else, Mac?" he asked, closing his desk.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I haven't wired Leckhard."</p> + +<p>"They say you did; and when I asked 'em what about it, they said you'd +know."</p> + +<p>The superintendent's hand was on the knob of the corridor door.</p> + +<p>"Look it up in Callahan's office," he said. "If any message has gone to +Leckhard to-day, I didn't write it."</p> + +<p>When he closed the door of his private office behind him, Lidgerwood's +purpose was to go immediately to the <i>Nadia</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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, <i>nichts</i>. Dot <i>teufel</i> Rufford iss come back again, alretty, +and——"</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood broke the refusal in the midst.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>The German shopkeeper put down his razor with only one side of his face +shaven. "Oh, <i>mein Gott!</i>" 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.</p> + +<p>"<i>Donnerwetter!</i>" he gasped, "you don'd mean dot, Mr. Litchervood; you +don'd neffer mean dot?"</p> + +<p>"I am sorry to say that I do; sorrier than you or any one else can +possibly be."</p> + +<p>"Bud—bud——"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"<i>Nein, nein</i>, dot ain'd it," was the earnest denial. "Bud—bud nobody +vould serve a warrant on Mr. Hallock, Mr. Litchervood! I——"</p> + +<p>"I'll find some one to serve it," said the complainant curtly, and +Schleisinger made no further objections.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>The engineer glanced at the name in the body of the warrant and nodded.</p> + +<p>"So you've made up your mind?" he said.</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood was frowning abstractedly up at the windows of Hallock's +office in the head-quarters building.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>Judson nodded again, and Lidgerwood went on, irresistibly impelled to +justify his own action.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Nadia</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Nadia</i> back to safety while there was yet time?</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Being hurt again in his tenderest part by the quite unconscious gibe, +Lidgerwood did not press his proposal further.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>Nadia</i> over +the Desert Division."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"What do you make out of that?" queried Lidgerwood.</p> + +<p>McCloskey's scowl was grotesquely horrible.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood's exclamation was profane. The perversity of things, animate +and inanimate, was beginning to wear upon him.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>McCloskey nodded. "You mean Hallock?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>"No, I am not."</p> + +<p>"By gravies! I'd have him safe under lock and key before the shindy +begins to-night, if it was my job."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood had turned to his desk and was opening it.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"'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!"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Indeed I haven't! What do you take us for, Howard?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>He let the taunt go unanswered.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>She rose and stood before him, putting a comradely hand on his shoulder, +and looking him fairly in the eyes.</p> + +<p>"There was a ring of sincerity in that, Howard. Do you really mean that +there is likely to be violence?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"'We,' you say; who else besides yourself, Howard?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"A little handful of loyal ones."</p> + +<p>"Then you will be outnumbered?"</p> + +<p>"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 <i>Nadia</i> 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."</p> + +<p>She nodded.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps he would; quite likely he would—and he would stay here +himself." Then, suddenly: "You may send the <i>Nadia</i> back to Copah on one +condition—that you go with it."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"If I thought you could say that, realizing what it means—" he began, +and then he looked away.</p> + +<p>"Well?" she prompted, and the hand slipped from his shoulder.</p> + +<p>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——"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I know," he said.</p> + +<p>"They will kill you, if you stay here and let them do it."</p> + +<p>"Quite possibly."</p> + +<p>"Howard! Do you tell me you can stay here and face all this without +flinching?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, no; I didn't say that."</p> + +<p>"But you are facing it!"</p> + +<p>He smiled.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>She turned away.</p> + +<p>"Tell me, in so many words, what you think will be done to-night—what +are you expecting?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>She had come close to him again.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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 <i>Nadia</i> set out on the Copperette switch, which is a +good half-mile below the town, with Van Lew and Jefferis to stand +guard——"</p> + +<p>"They will both be here, with you," she interrupted.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Ugh!" she shivered. "Is this really civilized America?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<h2><a name="XXI" id="XXI" />XXI</h2> + +<h2>THE BOSS MACHINIST</h2> + +<div><br /></div> + +<p>Miss Brewster evidently obeyed her instructions precisely, since Van Lew +came almost immediately to tap on the door of the superintendent's +private room.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I asked her to send you up," he replied. Then: "I suppose you know +what we are confronting, Mr. Van Lew?"</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Brewster told us as soon as we came back from the hills. Is it +likely to be serious?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. I wish I could have persuaded Mrs. Brewster to order the <i>Nadia</i> +out of it. But she has refused to go and leave Mr. Brewster behind."</p> + +<p>"I know," said Van Lew; "we have all refused."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"I have a hunting rifle—a forty-four magazine; and Jefferis has a small +armory of revolvers—boy-like."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>Van Lew shook his head and smiled.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>Nadia</i> 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 <i>Nadia</i> would offer no protection +against that."</p> + +<p>Van Lew nodded understandingly.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"You can trust me for that," laughed the athlete, and he went his way +to begin the keeping up of appearances.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"No word from Judson yet?" he asked, when McCloskey's homely face +appeared in the doorway.</p> + +<p>"No, not yet," was the reply.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Lidgerwood.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Very bad; six killed outright, and as many more to bury later on, I am +told by the Red Butte doctors."</p> + +<p>"Heavens and earth! The men are calling it a broken rail; was it?"</p> + +<p>"A loosened rail," corrected Lidgerwood.</p> + +<p>The master-mechanic's eyes narrowed.</p> + +<p>"Natural?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"No, artificial."</p> + +<p>Gridley swore savagely.</p> + +<p>"This thing's got to stop, Lidgerwood! Sift it, sift it to the bottom! +Whom do you suspect?"</p> + +<p>It was a plain truth, though an unintentionally misleading one, that the +superintendent put into his reply.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. Why?"</p> + +<p>Benson looked at McCloskey.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Nadia</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Not since the middle of the afternoon," was the prompt reply.</p> + +<p>"And Judson has not yet reported?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"Well—this is for you, Benson—Mac already knows it: Judson is out +looking for Hallock. He has a warrant for Hallock's arrest."</p> + +<p>Benson's eyes narrowed.</p> + +<p>"Then you have found the ringleader at last, have you?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Who is the other man?" asked Benson.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>"I have promised to hang him," said the superintendent soberly—"him and +the man who has been working with him."</p> + +<p>"And that's Rankin Hallock!" cut in the trainmaster vindictively, and +his scowl was grotesquely hideous. "Can you hang them, Mr. Lidgerwood?"</p> + +<p>"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.'"</p> + +<p>The trainmaster smote the desk with his fist.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>"Where did you get that?" asked Lidgerwood quickly.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood went carefully over the details again, and again cautioned +Benson about the <i>Nadia</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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 midnight 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."</p> + +<p>Once again Lidgerwood was making tiny squares on his desk blotter.</p> + +<p>"I'm thankful that the news of the strike got to Copah in time to bring +Gridley over on 203," he said.</p> + +<p>Benson's boyish eyes opened to their widest angle.</p> + +<p>"Did he say he came in on Two-three?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"He did."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div><br /><br /></div> +<h2><a name="XXII" id="XXII" />XXII</h2> + +<h2>THE TERROR</h2> + +<div><br /></div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>When McCloskey had come at a push of the call-button, Lidgerwood snapped +the night-latch on the corridor door.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"I suppose you didn't see anything of Grady, my stenographer?" inquired +Lidgerwood, when Judson had made an end.</p> + +<p>The engineer shook his head. "Reckon they've got him cooped up along +with Dix?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Of course, they've got him," said McCloskey, sourly. "Does he know +anything that he can tell?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing that can make any difference now. They are probably holding him +to hamper me. The boy's loyal."</p> + +<p>"Yes," growled McCloskey, "and he's Irish."</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <span style="white-space: nowrap;">come—"</span> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Nothing stirring, Fred?" inquired the superintendent.</p> + +<p>"Less than nothing; it's almost too quiet," was the sober reply. And +then: "I see you haven't sent the <i>Nadia</i> 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."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood shook his head.</p> + +<p>"My stake in the <i>Nadia</i> 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 <i>Nadia</i>—with +Williams for engineer. Has Benson had any trouble in the yard?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Under the "umbrella roof" of the <i>Nadia's</i> 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.</p> + +<p>"Climb over and sit with us, Howard," she said, hospitably. "You know +you haven't a thing in the world to do."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood swung himself over the railing, and took the proffered chair.</p> + +<p>"You are right; I haven't very much to do just now," he admitted.</p> + +<p>"Has your strike materialized yet?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"No; it isn't due until midnight."</p> + +<p>"I don't believe there is going to be any."</p> + +<p>"Don't you? I wish I might share your incredulity—with reason."</p> + +<p>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?"</p> + +<p>"I only hope that the outcome will prove that I was," he rejoined +patiently.</p> + +<p>"You still believe there will be trouble?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Then I'm afraid you are still overwrought," she countered lightly. +"Why, the very atmosphere of this beautiful night breathes peace."</p> + +<p>Before he could reply, a man came up to the platform railing, touched +his cap, and said, "Is Mr. Lidgerwood here?"</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>When Lidgerwood had resumed his chair he was promptly put upon the +question rack of Miss Eleanor's curiosity.</p> + +<p>"Was that one of your scouts?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Did he come to tell you that there wasn't going to be any strike?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"How lucidly communicative you are! Can't you see that I am fairly +stifling with curiosity?"</p> + +<p>"I'm sorry, but you shall not have the chance to say that I was +overwrought twice in the same half-day."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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 <i>Nadia</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>Eleanor's hand was on her cousin's arm. "Howard, what does this mean?" +she demanded.</p> + +<p>"Nothing, just at present; it is merely a precaution."</p> + +<p>"You are not going to take us away from Angels?"</p> + +<p>"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 <i>Nadia</i>, any of you, please."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"One moment," she pleaded. "I'll be good, Howard; and I know that there +<i>is</i> danger. Be very careful of yourself, won't you, for my sake."</p> + +<p>He stopped short, and his arms went out to her. Then his self-control +returned and his rejoinder was almost bitter.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I'll do anything you say, only you <i>must</i> tell me where you are going," +she insisted.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Judson has told you what's due to happen?" queried the trainmaster.</p> + +<p>"He told me to look for swift trouble; that somebody had betrayed your +strike-breaking scheme."</p> + +<p>"He says they'll try to keep the east-bound freights from going out."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Benson was swept aside and overpowered before he could strike a blow. +Bogard, speeding across to take his post beside the <i>Nadia</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Only McCloskey's protest and his own anxiety for the safety of the +<i>Nadia's</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Nadia</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>So there was no more than a gasped-out word to Williams as he climbed to +the cab before the eight-wheeler, with the <i>Nadia</i> 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:</p> + +<p>"Who has seen Miss Eleanor? Where is Miss Eleanor?"</p> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div><br /><br /></div> + +<h2><a name="XXIII" id="XXIII" />XXIII</h2> + +<h2>THE CRUCIBLE</h2> + +<div><br /></div> + +<p>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 <i>Nadia</i> had +been whisked away.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>The twitching lips were controlled with what appeared to be an almost +superhuman effort, but the words came jerkily.</p> + +<p>"What would my word, extorted—under such conditions—be worth to you?"</p> + +<p>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!</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"And if I refuse?" Eleanor made sure that the voice was steadier now.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>The captive straightened himself as well as his bonds would let him.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<a name="i428" id="i428" /> +<br /> +<a href="images/gs428.jpg"> +<img src="images/gs428t.jpg" width="45%" +alt=""Well, gentlemen, I'm waiting. Why don't you shoot?"" +title=""Well, gentlemen, I'm waiting. Why don't you shoot?"" /></a><br /> +<p class="center"><b>"Well, gentlemen, I'm waiting. Why don't you shoot?"</b></p> +<br /> +</div> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Shut up!" growled the tall man, with a frightful imprecation. But the +smaller of the two was silent.</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood's grin was ghastly, but it was nevertheless a teeth-baring of +defiance.</p> + +<p>"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>I can call you both by name</i>!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>"Hallock!" exclaimed the superintendent, starting as if he had seen a +ghost. "How is this? Are there two of you?"</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood turned quickly. "Unmask those men, McCloskey."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Nothing matters now," said Eleanor, pale to the lips. "Come in here and +tell us about it. And—and—is mamma safe?"</p> + +<p>"She's down-stairs in the <i>Nadia</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>"Who was the tall man?" he asked. "I thought he was Hallock—I called +him Hallock."</p> + +<p>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——"</p> + +<p>"Hold on, Mac," interrupted the superintendent; "how did you learn all +this?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"How did Rufford come to tell you?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood nodded. "He had a pretty bitter grudge against Flemister."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Lidgerwood switched the subject abruptly in deference to Eleanor's deep +breathing.</p> + +<p>"I must take Miss Brewster to her friends. You say the <i>Nadia</i> is back? +Who moved it without orders?"</p> + +<p>"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 <i>Nadia</i> 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——"</p> + +<p>Miss Brewster got up out of her chair, found she could stand without +tottering, and said: "Howard, I <i>must</i> 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?"</p> + +<p>The trainmaster nodded gravely.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Nadia's</i> 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."</p> + +<p>"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 <i>nagged</i> father into bringing this +party out here so that I might have an excuse to—to——"</p> + +<p>He forgot the fierce strife so lately ended; forgot the double victory +he had won.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"What were you going to say about Herbert?" she murmured, when he let +her have breath enough to speak with.</p> + +<p>"I was merely going to remark that he can't have you now, not if he were +ten thousand times your accepted lover."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Taming of Red Butte Western, by Francis Lynde + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TAMING OF RED BUTTE WESTERN *** + +***** This file should be named 14844-h.htm or 14844-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/4/8/4/14844/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Jason Isbell and the PG Online Distributed +Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net). + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Taming of Red Butte Western + +Author: Francis Lynde + +Release Date: January 31, 2005 [EBook #14844] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TAMING OF RED BUTTE WESTERN *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Jason Isbell and the PG Online Distributed +Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net). + + + + + + +[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 detour 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 detour; others, hardier and more temerarious, outfitted +at Copah, and assaulting the hill barrier of the Little Pinons 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 Pinon 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 Pinons--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 naivete: "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 'cyclopaedia. 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 _tete-a-tete_ 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 _tete-a-tete_ 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 detour 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 _ecraser_ 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 detour 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!" + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Taming of Red Butte Western, by Francis Lynde + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TAMING OF RED BUTTE WESTERN *** + +***** This file should be named 14844.txt or 14844.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/4/8/4/14844/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Jason Isbell and the PG Online Distributed +Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net). + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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