-grade for 202--she passes here at two-fifty--just about
an hour before Clay found that loosened rail--and it wouldn't be
impossible for a man to drop off as she was climbing this curve."

But now the superintendent was shaking his head.

"It doesn't hold together, Mac; there are too many parts missing. Your
hypothesis presupposes that Hallock took a day train out of Angels, rode
twelve miles past his destination, jumped off here while the train was
in motion, pulled the spikes on this loosened rail, and walked back to
Navajo in time to see the cattleman and get in to Angels on the delayed
Number 75 this morning. Could he have done all these things without
advertising them to everybody?"

"I know," confessed the trainmaster. "It doesn't look reasonable."

"It isn't reasonable," Lidgerwood went on, arguing Hallock's case as if
it were his own. "Bradford was 202's conductor; he'd know if Hallock
failed to get off at Navajo. Gridley was a passenger on the same train,
and he would have known. The agent at Navajo would be a third witness.
He was expecting Hallock on that train, and was no doubt holding
Cruikshanks. Your guesses prefigure Hallock failing to show up when the
train stopped at Navajo, and make it necessary for him to explain to the
two men who were waiting for him why he let Bradford carry him by so far
that it took him several hours to walk back. You see how incredible it
all is?"

"Yes, I see," said McCloskey, and when he spoke again they were several
rail-lengths nearer the up-track end of the wreck, and his question went
back to Lidgerwood's mention of the expected special.

"You were saying something to Dawson about Williams and a special train;
is that Mr. Brewster coming in?"

"Yes. He wired from Copah last night. He has Mr. Ford's car--the
_Nadia_."

The trainmaster's face-contortion was expressive of the deepest chagrin.

"Suffering Moses! but this is a nice thing for the president of the
road to see as he comes along! Wouldn't the luck we're having make a dog
sick?"

Lidgerwood shook his head. "That isn't the worst of it, Mac. Mr.
Brewster isn't a railroad man, and he will probably think this is all in
the day's work. But he is going to stop at Angels and go over to his
copper mine, which means that he will camp right down in the midst of
the mix-up. I'd cheerfully give a year's salary to have him stay away a
few weeks longer."

McCloskey was not a swearing man in the Red Desert sense of t