The Taming of Red Butte Western

as 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

d had transferred one of the cooks from his own private car to Lidgerwood's service, and the little man, Tadasu Matsuw

m 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 o

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

d's comment fell into speech over his c

down and squint curves with the section bosses," he mused, and from that o

ooking, 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

erhauled before you left Co

that he did not care. And for good measure he threw in an

he large impudence and h

the westbound passenger overtaken and left behind in the s

r of the cows; after which he took himself off as

wed 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 a

s when Bradford, sauntering into the telegraph office as if haste were the last thing in the wo

t. Train 201 had no dead time at Crosswater; hence, if the ten-minute interval between trains of t

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-

. 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

s one. Mile after mile was covered, and still the perilous situation remained unchanged. Down the short tangents and around the co

e 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

s explained the effect without excusing the cause. Train 201's schedule from the summit station to the dese

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 sh

ed, pointing backward to the menace. "D

wled in surl

he began, but Lidgerw

red to take chances, or to hold out regular trains. Go forwa

the conductor coolly. Then he added, with a shade less of the belligerent disinterest: "Williams can't sp

tion, and he heaped up wrath against the day of wrath in store for a despatcher who would recklessly turn

llow, with himself for the target, and was moving away. Lidgerwood pointed

responsibility. It was your duty to make sure that the despatcher fully understood the situation at Crosswater, and to refuse to pull out

g in the steady, business-like tone, or in the shrewdly appraisive eyes,

d 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 wit

d at what page in the railroad primer he would have to b

man. "You might do this thing ninety-nine times without paying for it, and the hundredt

he ex-cowboy,

re should ha

o 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 th

a hundred feet to the rear. Measuring the distance of the onrushing passenger-train against the life-saving se

st 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, sli

dent 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

ce-car over the unsafe culvert, and inched the throttle open for the speedi

ber of miles of silence had been ticked off by the space-devouring wh

o whittle a chewing cube from his

bit for takin' a clearance right under Jim Carter's nose that-a-way. Then we got down to bus

ndry part of him?"

hen I have to. If that little tailor-made man don't get his finger mashed, or something, and have to go home and get somebod

things?" dem

ell trouble for the amatoors and the trouble-makers, I reckon. I ain'

ndow to look back at the smoking hot box, and, in the comp

ind 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

for the siding at Last Chance. After the fireman had dropped off to set th

e 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

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.

against his box, his bare arms folded and

trip back home in the express-car. After which, let me tell you, Andy, that man Ford'll sift this cussed count

g passenger-train, watch in hand. Carter was ten minutes, to the exact second, behind his schedule time when the train thundered past on

himmering 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 woul

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,

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.

e 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 hil

the approach to the division head-quarters, he was thankful that the builders of Angels had

ory 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

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 a

irt-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 ra

guess without offering to shake hands, the

er antagonistic nor placato

ood. You have heard

e colorl

nd to be subserved by po

erley's chief clerk, and that since Cumberley's resignation you have been acting

d mouth under the shaggy mustache seemed to have lost the power of spe

f 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

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 cou

'll say this: I appreciate your disappointment; I know what it means to a man situated as you are. Notwith

it if I do," was the

in his evenest tone. And then, as if the matter were definitely settled: "I'd like to have

oor which Lidgerwood had been abo

r the official proprieties: "If he gives you the same chance that I did, don't take him up. He i