The Taming of Red Butte Western

Taming of Red Butte Western, by
Francis Lynde

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.net
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 (http://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