characterization. The trainmaster was undeniably homely--and more; his
hard-featured face was a study in grotesques. There was fearless honesty
in the shrewd gray eyes, and a good promise of capability in the strong
Scotch jaw and long upper lip, but the grotesque note was the one which
persisted, and the trainmaster seemed wilfully to accentuate it. His
coat, in a region where shirt-sleeves predominated, was a
close-buttoned gambler's frock, and his hat, in the country of the
sombrero and the soft Stetson, was a derby.

Lidgerwood was striving to estimate the man beneath these outward
eccentricities when McCloskey rose and thrust out a hand, great-jointed
and knobbed like a laborer's.

"You're Mr. Lidgerwood, I take it?" said he, tilting the derby to the
back of his head. "Come to tell me to pack my kit and get out?"

"Not yet, Mr. McCloskey," laughed Lidgerwood, getting his first real
measure of the man in the hearty hand-grip. "On the contrary, I've come
to thank you for not dropping things and running away before the new
management could get on the ground."

The trainmaster's rejoinder was outspokenly blunt. "I've nowhere to run
to, Mr. Lidgerwood, and that's no joke. Some of the backcappers will be
telling you presently that I was a train despatcher over in God's
country, and that I put two trains together. It's your right to know
that it's true."

"Thank you, Mr. McCloskey," said Lidgerwood simply; "that sounds good to
me. And take this for yourself: the man who has done that once won't do
it again. That is one thing, and another is this: we start with a clean
slate on the Red Butte Western. No man in the service who will turn in
and help us make a real railroad out of the R.B.W. need worry about his
past record: it won't be dug up against him."

"That's fair--more than fair," said the trainmaster, mouthing the words
as if the mere effort of speech were painful, "and I wish I could
promise you that the rank and file will meet you half-way. But I can't.
You'll find a plucked pigeon, Mr. Lidgerwood--with plenty of hawks left
to pick the bones. The road has been running itself for the past two
years and more."

"I understand," said Lidgerwood; and then he spoke of the careless
despatching.

"That will be Callahan, the day man," McCloskey broke in wrathfully.
"But that's the way of it. When we get through the twenty-four hours
without killing somebody or smashing something, I thank God, and put a
red mark