endent. But for once the onlookers were
disappointed. Rufford was calmly relighting his cigar, and when he had
sufficiently cursed the bar-room audience for not being game enough to
stop the interference, he kicked Schleisinger's dog, and turned his back
upon Biggs's and its company.

It was a bit of common human perverseness that kept Lidgerwood from
thanking Judson when the engineer overtook him at the corner of the
plaza. Uppermost in his thoughts at the moment was the keen sense of
humiliation arising upon the conviction that the plucky little man had
surprised his secret and would despise him accordingly. Hence his first
word to Judson was the word of authority.

"Go back to Schleisinger and have him swear you in as a deputy
constable," he directed tersely. "When you are sworn in, come down here
and serve this," and he gave Judson the warrant for Hallock's arrest.

The engineer glanced at the name in the body of the warrant and nodded.

"So you've made up your mind?" he said.

Lidgerwood was frowning abstractedly up at the windows of Hallock's
office in the head-quarters building.

"I don't know," he said, half hesitantly. "But he is implicated in that
murderous business of last night--that we both know--and now he is back
here. McCloskey told you that, didn't he?"

Judson nodded again, and Lidgerwood went on, irresistibly impelled to
justify his own action.

"It would be something worse than folly to leave him at liberty when we
are on the ragged edge of a fight. Arrest him wherever you can find him,
and take him over to Copah on the first train that serves. He'll have to
clear himself, if he can; that's all."

When Judson, with his huge cow-boy pistol sagging at his hip, had turned
back to do the first part of his errand, Lidgerwood went on around the
Crow's Nest and presented himself at the door of the _Nadia_. Happily,
for his purpose, he found only Mrs. Brewster and Judge Holcombe in
possession, the young people having gone to climb one of the bare mesa
hills behind the town for an unobstructed view of the Timanyonis.

The superintendent left Judge Holcombe out of the proposal which he
urged earnestly upon Mrs. Brewster. Telling her briefly of the
threatened strike and its promise of violence and rioting, he tried to
show her that the presence of the private-car party was a menace, alike
to its own members and to him. The run to Copah could be made on a
special schedule and the party might be well o