notified me that there'll be
trouble, _pronto_, if we don't put Hannegan and Dickson back on the
wires. The grievance committee intimated pretty broadly that they could
swing the trainmen into line if they had to make a fight."

"We put no man back who has been discharged for cause," said the
superintendent firmly. "Did you tell them that?"

"I did. I have been saying that so often that it mighty nearly says
itself now, when I hear my office door open."

"Well, there is nothing to do but to go on saying it. We shall either
make a spoon or spoil a horn. How would you be fixed in the event of a
telegraphers' strike?"

"I've been figuring on that. It may seem like tempting the good Lord to
say it, but I believe we could hold about half of the men."

"That is decidedly encouraging," said the man who needed to find
encouragement where he could. "Two weeks ago, if you had said one in
ten, I should have thought you were overestimating. We shall win out
yet."

But now McCloskey was shaking his head dubiously. "I don't know. Andy
Bradford has been giving me an idea of how the trainmen stand, and he
says there is a good deal of strike talk. Williams adds a word about the
shop force: he says that Gridley's men are not saying anything, but
they'll be likely to go out in a body unless Gridley wakes up at the
last minute and takes a club to them."

Lidgerwood's conductor was coming down the platform of the Crow's Nest
with his orders in his hand, and McCloskey made ready to swing off. "I
can reach you care of Mr. Leckhard, at Copah, I suppose?" he asked.

"Yes. I shall be back some time to-morrow; in the meantime there is
nothing to do but to sit tight in the boat. Use my private code if you
want to wire me. I don't more than half trust that young fellow, Dix,
Callahan's day operator. And, by the way, Mr. Frisbie is sending me a
stenographer from Denver. If the young man turns up while I am away, see
if you can't get Mrs. Williams to board him."

McCloskey promised and dropped off, and the one-car special presently
clanked out over the eastern switches. Lidgerwood went at once to his
desk and promptly became deaf and blind to everything but his work. The
long desert run had been accomplished, and the service-car train was
climbing the Crosswater grades, when Tadasu Matsuwari began to lay the
table for dinner. Lidgerwood glanced at his watch, and ran his finger
down the line of figures on the framed time-table hanging over h