ile I'm laying round with nothing much to do, I
believe I'll keep tab on Bart for a little spell. I don't love him much,
nohow."

McCloskey's face contortion was intended to figure as a derisive smile.
"Pshaw, John!" he commented, "he'd skin you alive. Why, even Jack
Hepburn is afraid of him!"

"Jack is? How do you know that?"

McCloskey shrugged again.

"Are you with us, John?" he asked cautiously.

"I ain't with Bart Rufford and the tin-horns," said Judson negatively.

"Then I'll tell you a fairy tale," said the trainmaster, lowering his
voice. "I gave you notice that Mr. Lidgerwood would do something
different: he did it, bright and early this morning; went to Jake
Schleisinger, who had to try twice before he could remember that he was
a justice of the peace, and swore out a warrant for Rufford's arrest, on
a charge of assault with intent to kill."

"Sure," said Judson, "that's what any man would do in a civilized
country, ain't it?"

"Yes, but not here, John--not in the red-colored desert, with Bart
Rufford's name in the body of the warrant."

"I don't know why not," insisted the engineer stubbornly. "But go on
with the story; it ain't any fairy tale, so far."

"When he'd got the warrant, Schleisinger protesting all the while that
Bart'd kill him for issuing it, Mr. Lidgerwood took it to Hepburn and
told him to serve it. Jack backed down so fast that he fell over his
feet. Said to ask him anything else under God's heavens and he'd do
it--anything but that."

"Huh!" said Judson. "If I'd took an oath to serve warrants I'd serve
'em, if it did make me sick at my stomach." Then he got up and shuffled
away to the window again, and when next he spoke his voice was the voice
of a broken man.

"I lied to you a minute ago, Mac. I did want my job back. I came over
here hopin' that you and Mr. Lidgerwood might be seein' things a little
different by this time. I've quit the whiskey."

McCloskey wagged his shaggy head.

"So you've said before, John, and not once or twice either."

"I know, but every man gets to the bottom, some time. I've hit bed-rock,
and I've just barely got sense enough to know it. Let me tell you, Mac,
I've pulled trains on mighty near every railroad in this country--and
then some. The Red Butte is my last ditch. With my record I couldn't get
an engine anywhere else in the United States. Can't you see what I'm up
against?"

The trainmaster nodded. He was human.

"Well, it's Maggie and