IV
AT THE RIO GLORIA
The matter to be taken up with McCloskey, master of trains and chief ofthe telegraph department, was not altogether disciplinary. In thesummarizing conference at Copah, Vice-President Ford had spokenfavorably of the trainmaster, recommending him to mercy in the event ofa general beheading in the Angels head-quarters. "A lame duck, like mostof 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 ishonest and outspoken. If you can win him over to your side, you willhave 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 theCrosswater Hills, I'm afraid."
Lidgerwood had not inquired the reason for the eastern disability. Hehad lived in the West long enough to know that it is an ill thing to prytoo curiously into any man's past. So there should be presentefficiency, no man in the service should be called upon to recite inancient 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 trainmasterwas bare and uninviting. Lidgerwood, passing beyond the door ofcommunication, found himself in a dingy room, with cobwebs festooningthe ceiling and a pair of unwashed windows looking out upon the opensquare called, in the past and gone day of the Angelic promoters, the"railroad plaza." Two chairs, a cheap desk, and a pine table backed bythe "string-board" working model of the current time-table, did duty asthe furnishings, serving rather to emphasize than to relieve thedreariness of the place.
McCloskey was at his desk at the moment of door-opening, and Lidgerwoodinstantly paid tribute to Vice-President Ford's powers ofcharacterization. The trainmaster was undeniably homely--and more; hishard-featured face was a study in grotesques. There was fearless honestyin the shrewd gray eyes, and a good promise of capability in the strongScotch jaw and long upper lip, but the grotesque note was the one whichpersisted, and the trainmaster seemed wilfully to accentuate it. Hiscoat, in a region where shirt-sleeves predominated, was aclose-buttoned gambler's frock, and his hat, in the country of thesombrero and the soft Stetson, was a derby.
Lidgerwood was striving to estimate the man beneath these outwardeccentricities when McCloskey rose and thrust out a hand, great-jointedand knobbed like a laborer's.
"You're Mr. Lidgerwood, I take it?" said he, tilting the derby to theback of his head. "Come to tell me to pack my kit and get out?"
"Not yet, Mr. McCloskey," laughed Lidgerwood, getting his first realmeasure of the man in the hearty hand-grip. "On the contrary, I've cometo thank you for not dropping things and running away before the newmanagement could get on the ground."
The trainmaster's rejoinder was outspokenly blunt. "I've nowhere to runto, Mr. Lidgerwood, and that's no joke. Some of the backcappers will betelling you presently that I was a train despatcher over in God'scountry, and that I put two trains together. It's your right to knowthat it's true."
"Thank you, Mr. McCloskey," said Lidgerwood simply; "that sounds good tome. And take this for yourself: the man who has done that once won't doit again. That is one thing, and another is this: we start with a cleanslate on the Red Butte Western. No man in the service who will turn inand help us make a real railroad out of the R.B.W. need worry about hispast record: it won't be dug up against him."
"That's fair--more than fair," said the trainmaster, mouthing the wordsas if the mere effort of speech were painful, "and I wish I couldpromise 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 leftto pick the bones. The road has been running itself for the past twoyears and more."
"I understand," said Lidgerwood; and then he spoke of the carelessdespatching.
"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 hourswithout killing somebody or smashing something, I thank God, and put ared mark on that calendar over my desk."
"Well, we won't go back of the returns," declared Lidgerwood, meaning tobe as just as he could to his predecessors in office. "But from nowon----"
The door leading into the room beyond the trainmaster's office openedsqueakily on dry hinges, and a chattering of telegraph instrumentsheralded the incoming of a disreputable-looking office-man, with a greenpatch over one eye and a blackened cob-pipe between his teeth. SeeingLidgerwood, he ducked and turned to McCloskey. Bradley, reporting in,had given his own paraphrase of the new superintendent's strictures onRed Butte Western despatching and the criticism had lost nothing in therecasting.
"Seventy-one's in the ditch at Gloria Siding," he said, speakingpointedly to the trainmaster. "Goodloe reports it from Little Butte;says both enginemen are in the mix-up, but he doesn't know whether theyare killed or not."
"There you are!" snarled McCloskey, wheeling upon Lidgerwood. "Theycouldn't let you get your chair warmed the first day!"
With the long run from Copah to Angels to his credit, and with all thehead-quarters loose ends still to be gathered up, Lidgerwood mightblamelessly have turned over the trouble call to his trainmaster. But awreck 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 officenotify the shops and the yard," he said briskly, compelling theattention 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 ofthe western division among the foot-hills to the base of the GreatTimanyonis, and through the Timanyoni Canyon to a park-like valley, shutin by the great range on the east and north, and by the LittleTimanyonis and the Hophras on the west and south. At a point midway ofthe valley his stubby forefinger rested.
"That's Gloria," he said, "and here's Little Butte, twelve milesbeyond."
"Good ground?" queried Lidgerwood.
"As pretty a stretch as there is anywhere west of the desert; remindsyou of a Missouri bottom, with the river on one side and the hills amile away on the other. I don't know what excuse those hoboes could findfor piling a train in the ditch there."
"We'll hear the excuse later," said Lidgerwood. "Now, tell me what sortof a wrecking-plant we have?"
"The best in the bunch," asserted the trainmaster. "Gridley's is the onedepartment that has been kept up to date and in good fighting trim. Wehave one wrecking-crane that will pick up any of the bigfreight-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 quickerthan 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 andcomes back looking something the worse for wear. They tell tough storiesabout him over in Copah."
Lidgerwood dropped the master-mechanic as he had dropped the offendingtrainmen who had put Train 71 in the ditch at Gloria where, according toMcCloskey, there should be no ditch.
"I'll go and run through my desk mail and fill Hallock up while you aremaking ready," he said. "Call me when the train is made up."
Passing through the corridor on the way to his private office back ofHallock's room, Lidgerwood saw that the wreck call had already reachedthe shops. A big, bearded man with a soft hat pulled over his eyes wasdirecting the make-up of a train on the repair track, and the yardengine was pulling an enormous crane down from its spur beyond thecoal-chutes. Around the man in the soft hat the wrecking-crew wasgathering: shopmen for the greater part, as a crew of a mastermechanic's choosing would be.
As the event proved, there was little time for the doing of thepreliminary work which Lidgerwood had meant to do. In the midst of theletter-sorting, McCloskey pu
t his head in at the door of the privateoffice.
"We're ready when you are, Mr. Lidgerwood," he interrupted; and with afew hurried directions to Hallock, Lidgerwood joined the trainmaster onthe Crow's Nest platform. The train was backing up to get itsclear-track orders, and on the tool-car platform stood the big man whomLidgerwood had already identified presumptively as Gridley.
McCloskey would have introduced the new superintendent when the trainpaused for the signal from the despatcher's window, but Gridley did notwait for the formalities.
"Come aboard, Mr. Lidgerwood," he called, genially. "It's too bad wehave to give you a sweat-box welcome. If there are any of Seventy-one'screw left alive, you ought to give them thirty days for calling you outbefore you could shake hands with yourself."
Being by nature deliberate in forming friendships, and proportionallytenacious of them when they were formed, Lidgerwood's impulse was tohold all men at arm's length until he was reasonably assured ofsincerity and a common ground. But the genial master-mechanic refused tobe put on probation. Lidgerwood made the effort while the rescue trainwas whipping around the hill shoulders and plunging deeper into theafternoon shadows of the great mountain range. The tool-car wascomfortably filled with men and working tackle, and for seats there wereonly the blocking timbers, the tool-boxes, and the coils of rope andchain cables. Sharing a tool-box with Gridley and smoking a cigar out ofGridley's pocket-case, Lidgerwood found it difficult to be less thanfriendly.
It was to little purpose that he recalled Ford's qualifiedrecommendation of the man who had New York backing and who, in Ford'sphrase, was a "brute after his own peculiar fashion." Brute or human,the big master-mechanic had the manners of a gentleman, and his easygood-nature broke down all the barriers of reserve that his somewhatreticent companion could interpose.
"You smoke good cigars, Mr. Gridley," said Lidgerwood, trying, as hehad tried before, to wrench the talk aside from the personal channelinto which it seemed naturally to drift.
"Good tobacco is one of the few luxuries the desert leaves a man capableof enjoying. You haven't come to that yet, but you will. It is a savagelife, Mr. Lidgerwood, and if a man hasn't a good bit of the blood of hisstone-age ancestors in him, the desert will either kill him or make abeast of him. There doesn't seem to be any medium."
The talk was back again in the personal channel, and this timeLidgerwood met the issue fairly.
"You have been saying that, in one form or another, ever since we leftAngels: are you trying to scare me off, Mr. Gridley, or are you onlygiving me a friendly warning?" he asked.
The master-mechanic laughed easily.
"I hope I wouldn't be impudent enough to do either, on such shortacquaintance," he protested. "But now that you have opened the door,perhaps a little man-to-man frankness won't be amiss. You have tackled apretty hard proposition, Mr. Lidgerwood."
"Technically, you mean?"
"No, I didn't mean that, because, if your friends tell the truth aboutyou, you can come as near to making bricks without straw as the nextman. But the Red Butte Western reorganization asks for something morethan 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 calledon 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 thishuman scrap-heap you've inherited will lay for you with a gun to playeven for the discharge. What then?"
It was just here that Lidgerwood, staring absently at the passingpanorama of shifting hill shoulders framing itself in the open side-doorof the tool-car, missed a point. If he had been less absorbed in thepersonal problem he could scarcely have failed to mark the searchingscrutiny in the shrewd eyes shaded by Gridley's soft hat.
"I don't know," he said, half hesitantly. "Civilization meanssomething--or it should mean something--even in the Red Desert, Mr.Gridley. I suppose there is some semblance of legal protection inAngels, 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 ablacksmith and the other the keeper of the general store."
The good-natured irony in Gridley's reply was not thrown away upon hislistener, but Lidgerwood held tenaciously to his own contention.
"The inadequacy of the law, or of its machinery, hardly excuses a lapseinto barbarism," he protested. "The discharged employee, in the case youare supposing, might hold himself justified in shooting at me; but if Ishould shoot back and happen to kill him, it would be murder. We've gotto stand for something, Mr. Gridley, you and I who know the differencebetween civilization and savagery."
Gridley's strong teeth came together with a little snap.
"Certainly," he agreed, without a shade of hesitation; adding, "I'venever carried a gun and have never had to." Then he changed the subjectabruptly, and when the train had swung around the last of the hills andwas threading its tortuous way through the great canyon, he proposed achange of base to the rear platform from which Chandler's marvel ofengineering skill could be better seen and appreciated.
The wreck at Gloria Siding proved to be a very mild one, as railwaywrecks go. A broken flange under a box-car had derailed the engine and adozen cars, and there were no casualties--the report about theinvolvement of the two enginemen being due to the imagination of theexcited flagman who had propelled himself on a hand-car back to LittleButte to send in the call for help.
Since Gridley was on the ground, Lidgerwood and McCloskey stood asideand let the master-mechanic organize the attack. Though the problem oftrack-clearing, on level ground and with a convenient siding at hand forthe sorting and shifting, was a simple one, there was still a chance foran exhibition of time-saving and speed, and Gridley gave it. There wasnever a false move made or a tentative one, and when the hugelifting-crane went into action, Lidgerwood grew warmly enthusiastic.
"Gridley certainly knows his business," he said to McCloskey. "The RedButte Western doesn't need any better wrecking-boss than it has rightnow."
"He can do the job, when he feels like it," admitted the trainmastersourly.
"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 itisn't convenient. I have a notion he wouldn't be here to-day if youweren't."
It was plainly evident that McCloskey meant more than he said, but onceagain Lidgerwood refused to go behind the returns. He felt that he hadbeen prejudiced against Gridley at the outset, unduly so, he wasbeginning to think, and even-handed fairness to all must be thewatchword in the campaign of reorganization.
"Since we seem to be more ornamental than useful on this job, you mightgive me another lesson in Red Butte geography, Mac," he said, purposelychanging the subject. "Where are the gulch mines?"
The trainmaster explained painstakingly, squatting to trace a rude mapin 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 socontinued on to Red Butte. Along the northward stretch, and in thefoot-hills of the Little Timanyonis, were the placers, most of themproductive, but none of them rich enough to stimulate a rush.
Here, where the river made a quick turn, was the butte from which thestation of Little Butte took its name--the superintendent might see itswooded summit rising above the lower hills intervening. It was a long,narrow ridge, more like a hogback than a true mountain, and it held asilver mine, Flemister's, which was a moderately heavy shipper. The veinhad been followed completely through the ridge, and the spur track inthe eastern gulch, which had originally served it, had been abandonedand a new spur built up along the western foot of the butte, with a mainline 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, andLidgerwood sat on a cross-tie end and conned his lesson. Below thesiding the big crane was heaving the derailed cars into line withmethodical precision, but now it was Gridley's shop foreman who wasgiving the orders. The master-mechanic had gone aside to hold conversewith a man who had driven up in a buckboard, coming from the directionin which Little Butte lay.
"Goodloe told me the wreck-wagons were here, and I thought you wouldprobably be along," the buckboard driver was saying. "How are thingsshaping up? I haven't cared to risk the wires since Bigsby leaked onus."
Gridley put a foot on the hub of the buckboard wheel and began towhittle 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 andyou'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 tobe 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 ofit--'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 ofthe 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 worsethan the old proposition. Lidgerwood is going to try to make a silkpurse out of a sow's ear, beginning with the pay-roll contingent. If Ihave sized him up right, he'll be kept busy; too busy to remember yourname--or mine."
"What do you mean? in just so many words."
"Nothing more than I have said. Mr. Lidgerwood is a gentleman and ascholar."
"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 againand was resharpening the match.
"Hallock is the man to look to," he said. "If we could get himinterested ..."
"That's up to you, damn it; I've told you a hundred times that I can'ttouch him!"
"I know; he doesn't seem to love you very much. The last time I talkedto him he mentioned something about shooting you off-hand, but I guesshe 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 thesky-rocketing finish of the Mesa Building and Loan Association, or isthat 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 ButteWestern service who have never wholly quit trying to find out whyHallock, 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--asthe case may be. For some reason best known to himself, Hallock hasdecided 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'sNest that I don't know, Flemister, and usually pretty soon after ithappens. Hallock will stay on as chief clerk, and, naturally, he isanxious to stand well with his new boss. Are you beginning to seedaylight?"
"Not yet."
"Well, we'll open the shutters a little wider. One of the first thingsLidgerwood will have to wrestle with will be this Loan Associationbusiness. The kickers will put it up to him, as they have put it up toevery new man who has come out here. Ferguson refused to dig intoanybody's old graveyard, and so did Cumberley. But Lidgerwood won'trefuse. 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 couldfully 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 thatwould satisfy Lidgerwood. You might even show up a few documents, if itcame to the worst."
"Well?"
"That's all. If you get a good, firm grip on that club, you'll haveHallock, coming and going. It's a dead open and shut. If he falls inline, you'll agree to pacify Lidgerwood; otherwise the law will have totake 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. Youknow part of it, and part of it you don't know. He'd hang himself in aminute if he could get my neck in the same noose."
The master-mechanic threw the whittled match away, as if the argumentwere closed.
"That is where you are lame, Flemister: you don't know your man. Put itup to Hallock barehanded: if he comes in, all right; if not, you'll puthim where he'll wear stripes. That will fetch him."
The men of the derrick gang were righting the last of the derailedbox-cars, and the crew of the wrecking-train was shifting the cripplesinto line for the return run to Angels.
"We'll be going in a few minutes," said the master-mechanic, taking hisfoot from the wheel-hub. "Do you want to meet Lidgerwood?"
"Not here--or with you," said the owner of the Wire-Silver; and he hadturned his team and was driving away when Gridley's shop foreman came upto say that the wrecking-train was ready to leave.
Lidgerwood found a seat for himself in the tool-car on the way back toAngels, and put in the time smoking a short pipe and reviewing theevents of his first day in the new field.
The outlook was not wholly discouraging, and but for the talk withGridley he might have smoked and dozed quite peacefully on his coiledhawser, in the corner of the car. But, try as he would, the importunatedemon of distrust, distrust of himself, awakened by themaster-mechanic's warning, refused to be quieted; and when, after thethree hours of the slow return journey were out-worn, McCloskey came totell him that the train was pulling into the Angels yard, the explosionof a track torpedo under the wheels made him start like a nervous woman.
The Taming of Red Butte Western Page 4