nderstood that the man who isn't
with us is against us, and the man who is against us is going to get a
chance to hunt for a new job every time."

Whereupon the trainmaster's homely face would take on added furrowings
of distress.

"That's all right, Mr. Lidgerwood; that is stout, two-fisted talk all
right; and I'm not doubting that you mean every word of it. But, they'll
murder you."

"That is neither here nor there, what they will do to me. I handled them
with 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 to
a 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 who
gets 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, that
conductor who turned in three dollars as the total cash collections for
a hundred-and-fifty-mile run?"

"I've had him up. He grinned and said that that was all the money there
was, everybody had tickets."

"You don't believe it?"

"No; Grantby, the superintendent of the Ruby Mine, came in on Johnston's
train that morning and he registered a kick because the Ruby Gulch
station agent wasn't out of bed in time to sell him a ticket. He paid
Johnston on the train, and that one fare alone was five dollars and
sixty cents."

Lidgerwood was adding another minute square to the pencilled
checker-board on his desk blotter.

"Discharge Johnston and hold back his time-check. Then have him
arrested for stealing, and wire the legal department at Denver that I
want him prosecuted."

Again McCloskey's rough-cast face became the outward presentment of a
soul in anxious trouble.

"Call it done--and another stick of dynamite turned loose," he
acquiesced. "Is there anything else?"

"Yes. What have you found out about that missing switch-engine?" This
had come to be the stereotyped query, vocalizing itself every time the
trainmaster 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 with
the engine?"

McCloskey became dumb.

"I don't dare to say par