end of the
building. Later, when he was crossing the open plaza separating the
railroad yard from the town, he thought he heard the draftsman's step
behind him, and waited for Dawson to come up.

[Illustration: His hand was on the latch of the door-yard gate when a
man rose out of the gloom.]

The rearward darkness, made blacker by contrast with the white beam of
the 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 the
false-fronted shops, past the "Arcade" with its crimson sidewalk eye
setting 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 of
the gloom--out of the ground at his feet, as it appeared to
Lidgerwood--and in the twinkling of an eye the night and the starry dome
of it were effaced for the superintendent in a flash of red lightning
and a thunder-clap louder than the crash of worlds.

When he began to realize again, Dawson was helping him to his feet, and
the 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 quick
drop, 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 supremest
effort of will. "Thanks to you, I guess--I'm--not hurt. Who w-was the
man?"

"It was Rufford. He followed you from the Crow's Nest. Williams saw him
and put me on, so I followed him."

"Williams? Then he isn't----"

"No," said Dawson, anticipating the query. "He is with us, and he is
swinging the best of the engineers into line. But come into the house
and let me give you a drop of whiskey. This thing has got on your nerves
a bit--and no wonder."

But Lidgerwood clung to the gate-palings for yet another steadying
moment.

"Rufford, you said: you mean the discharged telegraph operator?"

"Worse luck," said Dawson. "It was his brother Bart, the 'lookout' at
Red-Light Sammy's; the fellow they call 'The Killer'."

VIII

BENSON'S BRIDGE-TIMBERS

It was on the morning following the startling episode