d a
silver mine, Flemister's, which was a moderately heavy shipper. The vein
had been followed completely through the ridge, and the spur track in
the eastern gulch, which had originally served it, had been abandoned
and a new spur built up along the western foot of the butte, with a main
line connection at Little Butte. Up here, ten miles above Little Butte,
was a bauxite mine, with a spur; and here....

McCloskey went on, industriously drawing lines in the sand, and
Lidgerwood sat on a cross-tie end and conned his lesson. Below the
siding the big crane was heaving the derailed cars into line with
methodical precision, but now it was Gridley's shop foreman who was
giving the orders. The master-mechanic had gone aside to hold converse
with a man who had driven up in a buckboard, coming from the direction
in which Little Butte lay.

"Goodloe told me the wreck-wagons were here, and I thought you would
probably be along," the buckboard driver was saying. "How are things
shaping up? I haven't cared to risk the wires since Bigsby leaked on
us."

Gridley put a foot on the hub of the buckboard wheel and began to
whittle a match with a penknife that was as keen as a razor.

"The new chum is in the saddle; look over your shoulder to the left and
you'll see him sitting on a cross-tie beside McCloskey," he said.

"I've seen him before. He was over the road last week, and I happened to
be in Goodloe's office at Little Butte when he got off to look around,"
was the curt rejoinder. "But that doesn't help any. What do you know?"

"He is a gentleman," said Gridley slowly.

"Oh, the devil! what do I care about----"

"And a scholar," the master-mechanic went on imperturbably.

The buckboard driver's black eyes snapped. "Can you add the rest of
it--'and he isn't very bright'?"

"No," was the sober reply.

"Well, what are we up against?"

Gridley snapped the penknife shut and began to chew the sharpened end of
the match.

"Your pop-valve is set too light; you blow off too easily, Flemister,"
he commented. "So far we--or rather you--are up against nothing worse
than the old proposition. Lidgerwood is going to try to make a silk
purse out of a sow's ear, beginning with the pay-roll contingent. If I
have sized him up right, he'll be kept busy; too busy to remember your
name--or mine."

"What do you mean? in just so many words."

"Nothing more than I have said. Mr. Lidgerwood is a gentleman and a
scholar."

"Ha!" said the