Chapter 17

"Gridley? No. Why, Dawson, he is the last man I should suspect!"

"All right; if you think so."

"Don't you think so?"

It was the draftsman's turn to hesitate.

"I'm prejudiced," he confessed at length. "I know Gridley; he is a worse man than a good many people think he is--and not so bad as some others believe him to be. If he thought you, or Benson, were getting in his way--up at the house, you know----"

Lidgerwood smiled.

"You don't want him for a brother-in-law; is that it, Fred?"

"I'd cheerfully help to put my sister in her coffin, if that were the alternative," said Dawson quite calmly.

"Well," said the superintendent, "he can easily prove an alibi, so far as this wreck is concerned. He went east on 202 yesterday. You knew that, didn't you?"

"Yes, I knew it, but----"

"But what?"

"It doesn't count," said the draftsman, briefly. Then: "Who was the other man, the man who came west on 205?"

"I hate to say it, Fred, but it was Hallock. We saw the wreck, all of us, from the back platform of my car. Williams had just pulled us out on the old spur. Just before Cranford shut off and jammed on his air-brakes, a man ran down the track, swinging his arms like a madman. Of course, there wasn't the time or any chance for me to identify him, and I saw him only for the second or two intervening, and with his back toward us. But the back looked like Hallock's; I'm afraid it was Hallock's."

"But why should he weaken at the last moment and try to stop the train?" queried Dawson.

"You forget that it was the special, and not the passenger, that was to be wrecked."

"Sure," said the draftsman.

"I've told you this, Fred, because, if the man we saw were Hallock, he'll probably turn up while you are at work; Hallock, with Judson at his heels. You'll know what to do in that event?"

"I guess so: keep a sharp eye on Hallock, and make Judson hold his tongue. I'll do both."

"That's all," said the superintendent. "Now I'll have Bradford pull us up on the spur to give you room to get your baby crane ahead; then you can pull down and let us out."

The shifting took some few minutes, and more than a little skill. While it was in progress Lidgerwood was in the service-car, trying to persuade the young women to go to his state-room for a little rest and sleep on the return run. In the midst of the argument, the door opened and Dawson came in. From the instant of his entrance it was plain that he had expected to find the superintendent alone; that he was visibly and painfully embarrassed.

Lidgerwood excused himself and went quickly to the embarrassed one, who was still anchoring himself to the door-knob. "What is it, Fred?" he asked.

"Judson: he has just turned up, walking from Little Butte, he says, with a pretty badly bruised ankle. He is loaded to the muzzle with news of some sort, and he wants to know if you'll take him with you to An--" The draftsman, facing the group under the Pintsch globe at the other end of the open compartment, stopped suddenly and his big jaw grew rigid. Then he said, in an awed whisper, "God! let me get out of here!"

"Tell Judson to come aboard," said Lidgerwood; and the draftsman was twisting at the door-knob when Miriam Holcombe came swiftly down the compartment.

"Wait, Fred," she said gently. "I have come all the way out here to ask my question, and you mustn't try to stop me: are you going to keep on letting it make us both desolate--for always?" She seemed not to see or to care that Lidgerwood made a listening third.

Dawson's face had grown suddenly haggard, and he, too, ignored the superintendent.

"How can you say that to me, Miriam?" he returned almost gruffly. "Day and night I am paying, paying, and the debt never grows less. If it wasn't for my mother and Faith ... but I must go on paying. I killed your brother----"

"No," she denied, "that was an accident for which you were no more to blame than he was: but you are killing me."

Lidgerwood stood by, man-like, because he did not know enough to vanish. But Miss Brewster suddenly swept down the compartment to drag him out of the way of those who did not need him.

"You'd spoil it all, if you could, wouldn't you?" she whispered, in a fine feminine rage; "and after I have moved heaven and earth to get Miriam to come out here for this one special blessed moment! Go and drive the others into a corner, and keep them there."

Lidgerwood obeyed, quite meekly; and when he looked again, Dawson had gone, and Miss Holcombe was sobbing comfortably in Eleanor's arms.

Judson boarded the service-car when it was pulled up to the switch; and after Lidgerwood had disposed of his passengers for the run back to Angels, he listened to the ex-engineer's report, sitting quietly while Judson told him of the plot and of the plotters. At the close he said gravely: "You are sure it was Hallock who got off of the night train at Silver Switch and went up the old spur?"

It was a test question, and the engineer did not answer it off-hand.

"I'd say yes in a holy minute if there wasn't so blamed much else tied on to it, Mr. Lidgerwood. I was sure, at the time, that it was Hallock; and besides, I heard him talking to Flemister afterward, and I saw his mug shadowed out on the window curtain, just as I've been telling you. All I can say crosswise, is that I didn't get to see him face to face anywhere; in the gulch, or in the office, or in the mine, or any place else."

"Yet you are convinced, in your own mind?"

"I am."

"You say you saw him and Flemister get on the hand-car and pump themselves down the old spur; of course, you couldn't identify either of them from the top of the ridge?"

"That's a guess," admitted the ex-engineer frankly. "All I could see was that there were two men on the car. But it fits in pretty good: I hear 'em plannin' what-all they're going to do; foller 'em a good bit more'n half-way through the mine tunnel; hike back and hump myself over the hill, and get there in time to see two men--_some_ two men--rushin' out the hand-car to go somewhere. That ain't court evidence, maybe, but I've seen more'n one jury that'd hang both of 'em on it."

"But the third man, Judson; the man you saw beating with his fists on the bulkhead air-lock: who was he?" persisted Lidgerwood.

"Now you've got me guessin' again. If I hadn't been dead certain that I saw Hallock go on ahead with Flemister--but I did see him; saw 'em both go through the little door, one after the other, and heard it slam before the other dub turned up. No," reading the question in the superintendent's eye, "not a drop, Mr. Lidgerwood; I ain't touched not, tasted not, n'r handled not--'r leastwise, not to drink any," and here he told the bottle episode which had ended in the smashing of Flemister's sideboard supply.

Lidgerwood nodded approvingly when the modest narrative reached the bottle-smashing point.

"That was fine, John," he said, using the ex-engineer's Christian name for the first time in the long interview. "If you've got it in you to do such a thing as that, at such a time, there is good hope for you. Let's settle this question once for all: all I ask is that you prove up on your good intentions. Show me that you have quit, not for a day or a week, but for all time, and I shall be only too glad to see you pulling passenger-trains again. But to get back to this crime of to-night: when you left Flemister's office, after telephoning Goodloe, you walked down to Little Butte station?"

"Yes; walked and run. There was nobody there but the bridge watchman. Goodloe had come on up the track to find out what had happened."

"And you didn't see Flemister or Hallock again?"

"No."

"Flemister told us he got the news by 'phone, and when he said it the wreck was no more than an hour old. He couldn't have walked down from the mine in that time. Where could he have got the message, and from whom?"

Judson was shaking his head.

"He didn't need any message--and he didn't get any. I'd put it up this way: after that rail-joint was sprung open, they'd go back up the old spur on the hand-car, wouldn't they? And on the way they'd be pretty sure to hear Cranford when he whistled for Little Butte. That'd let 'em know what was due to happen, right then and there. After that, it'd be easy enough. All Flemister had to do was to rout out his miners over his own telephones, jump onto the hand-car again, and come back in time to show up to you."

Lidgerwood was frowning thoughtfully.

"Then both of them must have come back; or, no--that must have been your third man who tried to flag Cranford down. Judson, I've got to know who that third man is. He has complicated things so that I don't dare move, even against Flemister, until I know more. We are not at the ultimate bottom of this thing yet."

"We're far enough to put the handcuffs onto Mr. Pennington Flemister any time you say," asserted Judson. "There was one little thing that I forgot to put in the report: when you get ready to take that missing switch-engine back, you'll find it _choo-chooin'_ away up yonder in Flemister's new power-house that he's built out of boards made from Mr. Benson's bridge-timbers."

"Is that so? Did you see the engine?" queried the superintendent quickly.

"No, but I might as well have. She's there, all right, and they didn't care enough to even muffle her exhaust."

Lidgerwood took a slender gold-banded cigar from his desk-box, and passed the box to the ex-engineer.

"We'll get Mr. Pennington Flemister--and before he is very many hours older," he said definitely. And then: "I wish we were a little more certain of the other man."

Judson bit the end from his cigar, but he forbore to light it. The Red Desert had not entirely effaced his sense of the respect due to a superintendent riding in his own private car.

"It's a queer sort of a mix-up, Mr. Lidgerwood," he said, fingering the cigar tenderly. "Knowin' what's what, as some of us do, you'd say them two'd never get together, unless it was to cut each other's throats."

Lidgerwood nodded. "I've heard there was bad blood between them: it was about that building-and-loan business, wasn't it?"

"Shucks! no; that was only a drop in the bucket," said Judson, surprised out of his attitude of rank-and-file deference. "Hallock was the original owner of the Wire-Silver. Didn't you know that?"

"No."

"He was, and Flemister beat him out of it--lock, stock, and barrel: just simply reached out an' took it. Then, when he'd done that, he reached out and took Hallock's wife--just to make it a clean sweep, was the way he bragged about it."

"Heavens and earth!" ejaculated the listener. Then some of the hidden things began to define themselves in the light of this astounding revelation: Hallock's unwillingness to go to Flemister for the proof of his innocence in the building-and-loan matter; his veiled warning that evil, and only evil, would come upon all concerned if Lidgerwood should insist; the invasion of the service-car at Copah by the poor demented creature whose cry was still for vengeance upon her betrayer. Truly, Flemister had many crimes to answer for. But the revelation made Hallock's attitude all the more mysterious. It was unaccountable save upon one hypothesis--that Flemister was able to so play upon the man's weaknesses as to make him a mere tool in his hands. But Judson was going on to elucidate.

"First off, we all thought Hallock'd kill Flemister. Rankin was never much of a bragger or much of a talker, but he let out a few hints, and, accordin' to Red Desert rulin's, Flemister wasn't much better than a dead man, right then. But it blew over, some way, and now----"

"Now he is Flemister's accomplice in a hanging matter, you would say. I'm afraid you are right, Judson," was the superintendent's comment; and with this the subject was dropped.

The early dawn of the summer morning was graying over the desert when the special drew into the Angels yard. Lidgerwood had the yard crew place the service-car on the same siding with the _Nadia_, and near enough so that his guests, upon rising, could pass across the platforms.

That done, and he saw to the doing of it himself, he climbed the stair in the Crow's Nest, meaning to snatch a little sleep before the labors and hazards of a new day should claim him. But McCloskey, the dour-faced, was waiting for him in the upper corridor--with news that would not wait.

"The trouble-makers have sent us their ultimatum at last," he said gruffly. "We cancel the new 'Book of Rules' and reinstate all the men that have been discharged, or a strike will be declared and every wheel on the line will stop at midnight to-night."

Weary to the point of mental stagnation, Lidgerwood still had resilience enough left to rise to the new grapple.

"Is the strike authorized by the labor union leaders?" he asked.

McCloskey shook his head. "I've been burning the wires to find out. It isn't; the Brotherhoods won't stand for it, and our men are pulling it off by their lonesome. But it'll materialize, just the same. The strikers are in the majority, and they'll scare the well-affected minority to a standstill. Business will stop at twelve o'clock to-night."

"Not entirely," said the superintendent, with anger rising. "The mails will be carried, and perishable freight will continue moving. Get every man you can enlist on our side, and buy up all the guns you can find and serve them out; we'll prepare to fight with whatever weapons the other side may force us to use. Does President Brewster know anything about this?"

"I guess not. They had all gone to bed in the _Nadia_ when the grievance committee came up."

"That's good; he needn't know it. He is going over to the Copperette, and we must arrange to get him and his party out of town at once. That will eliminate the women. See to engaging the buckboards for them, and call me when the president's party is ready to leave. I'm going to rest up a little before we lock horns with these pirates, and you'd better do the same after you get things shaped up for to-night's hustle."

"I'm needing it, all right," admitted the trainmaster. And then; "Was this passenger wreck another of the 'assisted' ones?"

"It was. Two men broke a rail-joint on Little Butte side-cutting for my special--and caught the delayed passenger instead. Flemister was one of the two."

"And the other?" said McCloskey.

Lidgerwood did not name the other.

"We'll get the other man in good time, and if there is any law in this God-forsaken desert we'll hang both of them. Have you unloaded it all? If you have, I'll turn in."

"All but one little item, and maybe you'll rest better if I don't tell you that right now."

"Give it a name," said Lidgerwood crisply.

"Bart Rufford has broken jail, and he is here, in Angels."

McCloskey was watching his chief's face, and he was sorry to see the sudden pallor make it colorless. But the superintendent's voice was quite steady when he said:

"Find Judson, and tell him to look out for himself. Rufford won't forgive the episode of the 'S'-wrench. That's all--I'm going to bed."

XX

STORM SIGNALS

Though Lidgerwood had been up for the better part of two nights, and the day intervening, it was apparent to at least one member of the head-quarters force that he did not go to bed immediately after the arrival of the service-car from the west; the proof being a freshly typed telegram which Operator Dix found impaled upon his sending-hook when he came on duty in the despatcher's office at seven o'clock in the morning.

The message was addressed to Leckhard, superintendent of the Pannikin Division of the Pacific Southwestern system, at Copah. It was in cipher, and it contained two uncodified words--"Fort" and "McCook," which small circumstance set Dix to thinking--Fort McCook being the army post, twelve miles as the crow flies, down the Pannikin from Copah.

Now Dix was not one of the rebels. On the contrary, he was one of the few loyal telegraphers who had promised McCloskey to stand by the Lidgerwood management in case the rebellion grew into an organized attempt to tie up the road. But the young man had, for his chief weakness, a prying curiosity which had led him, in times past, to experiment with the private office code until he had finally discovered the key to it.

Hence, a little while after the sending of the Leckhard message, Callahan, the train despatcher, hearing an emphatic "Gee whiz!" from Dix's' corner, looked up from his train-sheet to say, "What hit you, brother?"

"Nothing," said Dix shortly, but Callahan observed that he was hastily folding and pocketing the top sheet of the pad upon which he had been writing. Dix went off duty at eleven, his second trick beginning at three in the afternoon. It was between three and four when McCloskey, having strengthened his defenses in every way he could devise, rapped at the door of his chief's sleeping-room. Fifteen minutes later Lidgerwood joined the trainmaster in the private office.

"I couldn't let you sleep any longer," McCloskey began apologetically, "and I don't know but you'll give me what-for as it is. Things are thickening up pretty fast."

"Put me in touch," was the command.

"All right. I'll begin at the front end. Along about ten o'clock this morning Davidson, the manager of the Copperette, came down to see Mr. Brewster. He gave the president a long song and dance about the tough trail and the poor accommodations for a pleasure-party up at the mine, and the upshot of it was that Mr. Brewster went out to the mine with him alone, leaving the party in the _Nadia_ here."

Lidgerwood said "Damn!" and let it go at that for the moment. The thing was done, and it could not be undone. McCloskey went on with his report, his hat tilted to the bridge of his nose.

"Taking it for granted that you mean to fight this thing to a cold finish, I've done everything I could think of. Thanks to Williams and Bradford, and a few others like them, we can count on a good third of the trainmen; and I've got about the same proportion of the operators in line for us. Taking advantage of the twenty-four-hour notice the strikers gave us, I've scattered these men of ours east and west on the day trains to the points where the trouble will hit us at twelve o'clock to-night."

"Good!" said Lidgerwood briefly. "How will you handle it?"

"It will handle itself, barring too many broken heads. At midnight, in every important office where a striker throws down his pen and grounds his wire, one of our men will walk in and keep the ball rolling. And on every train in transit at that time, manned by men we're not sure of, there will be a relief crew of some sort, deadheading over the road and ready to fall in line and keep it coming when the other fellows fall out."

Again the superintendent nodded his approval. The trainmaster was showing himself at his loyal best.

"That brings us down to Angels and the present, Mac. How do we stand here?"

"That's what I'd give all my old shoes to know," said McCloskey, his homely face emphasizing his perplexity. "They say the shopmen are against us, and if that's so we're outnumbered here, six to one. I can't find out anything for certain. Gridley is still away, and Dawson hasn't got back, and nobody else knows anything about the shop force."

"You say Dawson isn't in? He didn't have more than five or six hours' work on that wreck. What is the matter?"

"He had a bit of bad luck. He got the main line cleared early this morning, but in shifting his train and the 'cripples' on the abandoned spur, a culvert broke and let the big crane off. He has been all day getting it on again, but he'll be in before dark--so Goodloe says."

"And how about Benson?" queried Lidgerwood.

"He's on 203. I caught him on the other side of Crosswater, and took the liberty of signing your name to a wire calling him in."

"That was right. With this private-car party on our hands, we may need every man we can depend upon. I wish Gridley were here. He could handle the shop outfit. I'm rather surprised that he should be away. He must have known that the volcano was about ready to spout."

"Gridley's a law to himself," said the trainmaster. "Sometimes I think he's all right, and at other times I catch myself wondering if he wouldn't tread on me like I was a cockroach, if I happened to be in his way."

Having had exactly the same feeling, and quite without reason, Lidgerwood generously defended the absent master-mechanic.

"That is prejudice, Mac, and you mustn't give it room. Gridley's all right. We mustn't forget that his department, thus far, is the only one that hasn't given us trouble and doesn't seem likely to give us trouble. I wish I could say as much for the force here in the Crows' Nest."

"With a single exception, you can--to-day," said McCloskey quickly. "I've cleaned house. There is only one man under this roof at this minute who won't fight for you at the drop of the hat."

"And that one is----?"

The trainmaster jerked his head toward the outer office. "It's the man out there--or who was out there when I came through; the one you and I haven't been agreeing on."

"Hallock? Is he here?"

"Sure; he's been here since early this morning."

"But how--" Lidgerwood's thought went swiftly backward over the events of the preceding night. Judson's story had left Hallock somewhere in the vicinity of the Wire-Silver mine and the wreck at some time about midnight, or a little past, and there had been no train in from that time on until the regular passenger, reaching Angels at noon. It was McCloskey who relieved the strain of bewilderment.

"How did he get here? you were going to say. You brought him from somewhere down the road on your special. He rode on the engine with Williams."

Lidgerwood pushed his chair back and got up. It was high time for a reckoning of some sort with the chief clerk.

"Is there anything else, Mac?" he asked, closing his desk.

"Yes; one more thing. The grievance committee is in session up at the Celestial. Tryon, who is heading it, sent word down a little while ago that the men would wreck every dollar's worth of company property in Angels if you didn't countermand your wire of this morning to Superintendent Leckhard."

"I haven't wired Leckhard."

"They say you did; and when I asked 'em what about it, they said you'd know."

The superintendent's hand was on the knob of the corridor door.

"Look it up in Callahan's office," he said. "If any message has gone to Leckhard to-day, I didn't write it."

When he closed the door of his private office behind him, Lidgerwood's purpose was to go immediately to the _Nadia_ to warn the members of the pleasure-party, and to convince them, if possible, of the advisability of a prompt retreat to Copah. But there was another matter which was even more urgent. After the events of the night, it had not been unreasonable to suppose that Hallock would scarcely be foolhardy enough to come back and take his place as if nothing had happened. Since he had come back, there was only one thing to be done, and the safety of all demanded it.

Lidgerwood left the Crow's Nest and walked quickly uptown. Contrary to his expectations, he found the avenue quiet and almost deserted, though there was a little knot of loungers on the porch of the Celestial, and Biggs's bar-room, and Red-Light Sammy's, were full to overflowing. Crossing to the corner opposite the hotel, the superintendent entered the open door of Schleisinger's "Emporium." At the moment there was a dearth of trade, and the round-faced little German who had weathered all the Angelic storms was discovered shaving himself before a triangular bit of looking-glass, stuck up on the packing-box which served him by turns as a desk and a dressing-case.