oat, with twinkling little
eyes and a curling brown beard that covered fully three-fourths of his
face, stood at the hand-rail.

"Hello, Howard!" he called down to Lidgerwood. "By George! I'd totally
forgotten that you were out here. What are you trying to do? Got so many
cars and engines that you have to throw some of them away?"

Lidgerwood climbed up the embankment to the track, and McCloskey
carefully let him do it alone. The "Hello, Howard!" had not been thrown
away upon the trainmaster.

"It looks a little that way, I must admit, Cousin Ned," said the culprit
who had answered so readily to his Christian name. "We tried pretty hard
to get it cleaned up before you came along, but we couldn't quite make
it."

"Oho! tried to cover it up, did you? Afraid I'd fire you? You needn't
be. My job as president merely gets me passes over the road. Ford's your
man; he's the fellow you want to be scared of."

"I am," laughed Lidgerwood. The big man's heartiness was always
infectious. Then: "Coming over to camp with us awhile? If you are, I
hope you carry your commissary along. Angels will starve you,
otherwise."

"Don't tell me about that tin-canned tepee village, Howard--I _know_.
I've been there before. How are we doing over in the Timanyoni
foot-hills? Getting much ore down from the Copperette? Climb up here and
tell me all about it. Or, better still, come on across the desert with
us. They don't need you here."

The assertion was quite true. With Dawson, the trainmaster, and an
understudy Judson for bosses, there was no need of a fourth. Yet
intuition, or whatever masculine thing it is that stands for intuition,
prompted Lidgerwood to say:

"I don't know as I ought to leave. I've just come out from Angels, you
know."

But the president was not to be denied.

"Climb up here and quit trying to find excuses. We'll give you a better
luncheon than you'll get out of the dinner-pails; and if you carry
yourself handsomely, you may get a dinner invitation after we get in.
That ought to tempt any man who has to live in Angels the year round."

Lidgerwood marked the persistent plural of the personal pronoun, and a
great fear laid hold upon him. None the less, the president's invitation
was a little like the king's--it was, in some sense, a command.
Lidgerwood merely asked for a moment's respite, and went down to
announce his intention to McCloskey and Dawson. Curiously enough, the
draftsman seemed to be trying to ignore