VII
THE KILLER
Lidgerwood had found little difficulty in getting on the companionableside of Dawson, so far as the heavy-muscled, silent young draftsman hada companionable side; and an invitation to the family dinner-table atthe Dawson cottage on the low mesa above the town had followed, as amatter of course.
Once within the home circle, with Benson to plead his cause with themeek little woman whose brown eyes held the shadow of a deep trouble,Lidgerwood had still less difficulty in arranging to share Benson'spermanent table welcome. Though Martha Dawson never admitted it, even toher daughter, she stood in constant terror of the Red Desert and itsrepresentative town of Angels, and the presence of the superintendent asthe member of the household promised to be an added guaranty ofprotection.
Lidgerwood's acceptance as a table boarder in the cottage on the mesabeing hospitably prompt, he was coming and going as regularly as hisoversight of the three hundred miles of demoralization permitted beforethe buffoonery of the Red Butte Western suddenly laughed itself out, andwar was declared. In the interval he had come to concur very heartily inBenson'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'sopposition to Gridley as Miss Faith's possible choice.
There was little to be done in this field, however. Gridley came andwent, not too often, figuring always as a friend of the family, andusurping no more of Miss Dawson's time and attention than she seemedwilling to bestow upon him. Lidgerwood saw no chance to obstruct and nogood reason for obstructing. At all events, Gridley did not furnish thereason. And the first time Lidgerwood found himself sitting out thesunset hour after dinner on the tiny porch of the mesa cottage, withFaith Dawson as his companion--this while the joke was still running itscourse--his talk was not of Gridley, nor yet of Benson; it was ofhimself.
"How long is it going to be before you are able to forget that I amconstructively your brother's boss, Miss Faith?" he asked, when she hadbrought him a cushion for the back of the hard veranda chair in whichhe was trying to be luxuriously lazy.
"Oh, do I remember it?--disagreeably?" she laughed. And then, withcharming 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 ispretty lonesome sometimes, up here on the top round of theRed-Butte-Western ladder of authority."
"You mean that you would like to leave your official dignity behind youwhen 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 andbells."
She smiled. Frederic Dawson, the reticent, had never spoken of theattitude of the Red Butte Western toward its new boss, but Gridley hadreferred to it quite frequently and had made a joke of it. Withoutknowing just why, she had resented Gridley's attitude; thisnotwithstanding the master-mechanic's genial affability wheneverLidgerwood and his difficulties were the object of discussion.
"They are still refusing to take you seriously?" she said. "I hope youdon't mind it too much."
"Personally, I don't mind it at all," he assured her--which wassufficiently true at the moment. "The men are acting like a lot offoolish schoolboys bent on discouraging the new teacher. I am hopingthey will settle down to a sensible basis after a bit, and take me andthe new order of things for granted."
Miss Dawson had something on her mind; a thing not gathered from Gridleyor from any one else in particular, but which seemed to take shape ofitself. The effect of setting it in speech asked for a completeeffacement of Lidgerwood the superintendent, and that was ratherdifficult. But she compassed it.
"I don't think you ought to take them so much for granted--the men, Imean," she cautioned. "I can't help feeling afraid that some of thejoking is not quite good-natured."
"I fancy very little of it is what you would call good-natured," herejoined 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'mexpecting Yes."
"And you are not afraid?"
It would have been worth a great deal to him if he could have lookedfearlessly into the clear gray eyes of questioning, giving her a braveman's denial. But instead, his gaze went beyond her and he said: "Yousurely 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 thewestern sky suffused her face, illuminating it with rare radiance. Itwas not, in the last analysis, a beautiful face, he told himself,comparing it with another whose outlines were bitten deeply and beyondall hope of erasure into the memory page. Yet the face warming softly inthe sunset glow was sweet and winsome, attractive in the best sense ofthe overworked word. At the moment Lidgerwood rather envied Benson--orGridley, whichever one of the two it was for whom Miss Dawson cared themost.
"There are so many different kinds of cowards," she said, after thereflective interval.
"But they are all equally despicable?" he suggested.
"The real ones are, perhaps. But our definitions are often careless. Mygrandfather, who was a captain of volunteers in the Civil War, used tosay that real cowardice is either a psychological condition or a souldisease, and that what we call the physical symptoms of it are oftenmisleading."
"For example?" said Lidgerwood.
"Grandfather used to be fond of contrasting the camp-fire bully andbraggart, as one extreme, with the soldier who was frankly afraid ofgetting killed, as the other. It was his theory that the man who dodgedthe first few bullets in a battle was quite likely to turn out to be thereal hero."
Lidgerwood could not resist the temptation to probe the old wound.
"Suppose, under some sudden stress, some totally unexpected trial, a manwho was very much afraid of being afraid found himself morally andphysically unable to do the courageous thing. Wouldn't he be, to allintents and purposes, a real coward?"
She took time to think.
"No," she said finally, "I wouldn't say that. I should wait until I hadseen the same man tried under conditions that would give him time, tothink 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. Acutepresence of mind in an emergency is not a supreme test of anythingexcept of itself; least of all, perhaps, is it a test of courage--I meancourage of that quality which endures to-day and faces without flinchingthe threatening to-morrow."
"And you think the man who might be surprised into doing something verydisgraceful on the spur of the moment might still have that other kindof courage, Miss Faith?"
"Certainly." She was far enough from making any personal application ofthe test case suggested by the superintendent. But in a world which tookits keynote from the harsh discords of the Red Desert, these littlethoughtful talks with a man who was most emphatically not of the RedDesert were refreshing. And she could scarcely have been Martha Dawson'sdaughter or Frederic Dawson's sister without having a thoughtful cast ofmind.
Lidgerwood rose and felt in his pockets for his after-dinner cigar.
"You are much more charitable than most women, Miss Dawson," he saidgravely; after which he left abruptly, and went back to his desk in theCrow's Nest.
As we have seen, this bit of confidential talk between thesuperintendent and Faith Dawson fell in the period of the jestinghorse-laugh; fell, as it chanced, on a day when the horse-laugh was atits height. Later, after the storm broke, there were no more quietevenings on the cottage porch for a harassed superintendent. Lidgerwoodcame and went as before, when the rapidly recurring wrecks did not keephim out on the line, but he scrupulou
sly left his troubles behind himwhen he climbed to the cottage on the mesa.
Quite naturally, his silence on the one topic which was stirring the RedDesert from the Crosswater Hills to Timanyoni Canyon was a poor mask.The increasing gravity of the situation wrote itself plainly enough inhis face, and Faith Dawson was sorry for him, giving him silentsympathy, unasked, if not wholly unexpected. The town talk of Angels,what little of it reached the cottage, was harshly condemnatory of thenew superintendent; and public opinion, standing for what it was worth,feared no denial when it asserted that Lidgerwood was doing what hecould to earn his newer reputation.
After the mysterious disappearance of the switching-engine, mysterystill 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 additionto the evil of short-handing the road, he was filling Angels with agrowing army of ex-employees, desperate and ripe for anything.
"I can't help it, Mac," was his invariable reply. "Unless they put meout of the fight I shall go on as I have begun, staying with it until wehave 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'twith us is against us, and the man who is against us is going to get achance to hunt for a new job every time."
Whereupon the trainmaster's homely face would take on added furrowingsof distress.
"That's all right, Mr. Lidgerwood; that is stout, two-fisted talk allright; and I'm not doubting that you mean every word of it. But, they'llmurder you."
"That is neither here nor there, what they will do to me. I handled themwith 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 toa 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 whogets 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, thatconductor who turned in three dollars as the total cash collections fora hundred-and-fifty-mile run?"
"I've had him up. He grinned and said that that was all the money therewas, everybody had tickets."
"You don't believe it?"
"No; Grantby, the superintendent of the Ruby Mine, came in on Johnston'strain that morning and he registered a kick because the Ruby Gulchstation agent wasn't out of bed in time to sell him a ticket. He paidJohnston on the train, and that one fare alone was five dollars andsixty cents."
Lidgerwood was adding another minute square to the pencilledchecker-board on his desk blotter.
"Discharge Johnston and hold back his time-check. Then have himarrested for stealing, and wire the legal department at Denver that Iwant him prosecuted."
Again McCloskey's rough-cast face became the outward presentment of asoul in anxious trouble.
"Call it done--and another stick of dynamite turned loose," heacquiesced. "Is there anything else?"
"Yes. What have you found out about that missing switch-engine?" Thishad come to be the stereotyped query, vocalizing itself every time thetrainmaster 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 withthe 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 toreport the loss of that engine to anybody higher up?"
"I shall have to report it to General Manager Frisbie, of course, if wedon'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 inneroffice. The green shade was pulled low over his eyes, and he held thepen he had been using as if it were a dagger.
"Hallock, have you reported the disappearance of that switching-engineto Mr. Frisbie?" asked the superintendent.
The answer seemed reluctant, and it was given in the single word ofassent.
"When?" asked Lidgerwood.
"In the weekly summary for last week; you signed it," said the chiefclerk.
"Did I tell you to include that particular item in the report?"Lidgerwood did not mean to give the inquiry the tang of an impliedreproof, but the fight with the outlaws was beginning to make his mannerincisive.
"You didn't need to tell me; I know my business," said Hallock, and histone matched his superior's.
Lidgerwood looked at McCloskey, and, at the trainmaster's almostimperceptible nod, said, "That's all," and Hallock disappeared andclosed 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," hebegan. "I don't like to shoot my mouth off till I know what I'm doing. Isuppose I quarrelled with Hallock once a day, regular, before you cameon the job, Mr. Lidgerwood, and I'll say again that I don't likehim--never did. That's what makes me careful about throwing it into himnow."
"Go on," said Lidgerwood.
"Well, you know he wanted to be superintendent of this road. He kept thewires to New York hot for a week after he found out that the P. S-W. wasin control. He missed it, and you naturally took it over his head--atleast, maybe that's the way he looks at it."
"Take it for granted and get to the point," urged Lidgerwood, alwaysimpatient of preliminary bush-beating.
"There isn't any point, if you don't see any," said McCloskeystubbornly. "But I can tell you how it would strike me, if I had to bewearing your shoes just now. You've got a man for your chief clerk whohas kept this whole town guessing for two years. Some say he isn't allto the bad; some say he is a woman-killer; but they all agree that he'sas spiteful as an Indian. He wanted your job: supposing he still wantsit."
"Stick to the facts, Mac," said the superintendent. "You're theorizingnow, you know."
"Well, by gravels, I will!" rasped McCloskey, pushed over the cautionaryedge by Lidgerwood's indifference to the main question at issue. "What Iknow don't amount to much yet, but it all leans one way. Hallock puts inhis daytime scratching away at his desk out there, and you'd think hedidn't know it was this year. But when that desk is shut up, you'll findhim at the roundhouse, over in the freight yard, round the switchshanties, or up at Biggs's--anywhere he can get half a dozen of the mentogether. I haven't found a man yet that I could trust to keep tab onhim, 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 Tuesdaynight. I've been prying into this locked-up puzzle-box every way I couldthink 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 lateleaving her that night. His fireman had gone home, and so had theyardmen. After he had crossed the yard coming out, he saw a man sneakingtoward the shifter, keeping in the shadow of the coal-chutes. He wasjust curious enough to want to know who it was, and he made a littlesneak of his own. When he found it was Hallock, he went home and thoughtno more about it till I got him to talk."
Lidgerwood had gone back to the pencil and the blotting-pad and themaking of squares.
"But the motive, Mac?" he questioned, without looking up. "How could thetheft or the destruction of a locomotive serve any purpose that Hallockmight have in view?"
McCloskey did not mean any disrespect to his superior officer when heretorted: "I'm no 'cyclop
aedia. 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 beforeI quit."
"I don't call it off, Mac; find out what you can. But I can't believethat Hallock is heading this organized robbery and rebellion."
"Somebody is heading it, to a dead moral certainty, Mr. Lidgerwood; thelicks are coming too straight and too well-timed."
"Find the man if you can, and we'll eliminate him. And, by the way, ifit 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 theshops, and by the railroad vote. If it comes to a show-down against themen who elected him----"
"That is what I mean," nodded Lidgerwood. "It will come to a show-downsooner or later, if we can't nip the ringleaders. Young Rufford and adozen more of the dropped employees are threatening to get even. Thatmeans train-wrecking, misplaced switches, arson--anything you like. Atthe first break there are going to be some very striking examples made ofall the wreckers and looters we can land on."
McCloskey's chair faced the window, and he was scowling and mouthing atthe tall chimney of the shop power-plant across the tracks. Where had hefallen upon the idea that this carefully laundered gentleman, who nevermissed his daily plunge and scrub, and still wore immaculate linen,lacked the confidence of his opinions and convictions? The trainmasterknew, and he thought Lidgerwood must also know, that the first blow ofthe vengeful ones would be directed at the man rather than at thecompany's property.
"I guess maybe Hepburn will do his duty when it comes to the pinch," hesaid finally. And the subject having apparently exhausted itself, hewent about his business, which was to call up the telegraph operator atTimanyoni to ask why he had broken the rule requiring the conductor andengineer, both of them, to sign train orders in his presence.
Thereupon, quite in keeping with the militant state of affairs on aharassed Red Butte Western, ensued a sharp and abusive wire quarrel atlong range; and when it was over, Timanyoni was temporarily strickenfrom the list of night telegraph stations pending the hastening forwardof a relief operator, to take the place of the one who, with manyprofane objurgations curiously clipped in rattling Morse, had wired hisopinion of McCloskey and the new superintendent, closely interwoven withhis resignation.
It was after dark that evening when Lidgerwood closed his desk on thepencilled blotting-pad and groped his way down the unlighted stair tothe Crow's Nest platform.
The day passenger from the east was in, and the hostler had just coupledEngine 266 to the train for the night run to Red Butte. Lidgerwoodmarked the engine's number, and saw Dawson talking to Williams, theengineer, as he turned the corner at the passenger-station end of thebuilding. Later, when he was crossing the open plaza separating therailroad yard from the town, he thought he heard the draftsman's stepbehind him, and waited for Dawson to come up.
His hand was on the latch of the door-yard gate when aman rose out of the gloom.]
The rearward darkness, made blacker by contrast with the white beam ofthe 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 thefalse-fronted shops, past the "Arcade" with its crimson sidewalk eyesetting 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 ofthe gloom--out of the ground at his feet, as it appeared toLidgerwood--and in the twinkling of an eye the night and the starry domeof it were effaced for the superintendent in a flash of red lightningand a thunder-clap louder than the crash of worlds.
When he began to realize again, Dawson was helping him to his feet, andthe 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 quickdrop, 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 supremesteffort of will. "Thanks to you, I guess--I'm--not hurt. Who w-was theman?"
"It was Rufford. He followed you from the Crow's Nest. Williams saw himand put me on, so I followed him."
"Williams? Then he isn't----"
"No," said Dawson, anticipating the query. "He is with us, and he isswinging the best of the engineers into line. But come into the houseand let me give you a drop of whiskey. This thing has got on your nervesa bit--and no wonder."
But Lidgerwood clung to the gate-palings for yet another steadyingmoment.
"Rufford, you said: you mean the discharged telegraph operator?"
"Worse luck," said Dawson. "It was his brother Bart, the 'lookout' atRed-Light Sammy's; the fellow they call 'The Killer'."
The Taming of Red Butte Western Page 7