The Taming of Red Butte Western | Page 9

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