The Taming of Red Butte Western Part 37

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 n.o.body 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 c.o.c.kroach, 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 pa.s.senger, 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 k.n.o.b 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-gla.s.s, stuck up on the packing-box which served him by turns as a desk and a dressing-case.

"How you vas, Mr. Litchervood?" was his greeting, offered while the razor was on the upward sweep. "Don'd tell me you vas come aboud some more of dose chustice businesses. Me, I make oud no more of dem warrants, _nichts_. Dot _teufel_ Rufford iss come back again, alretty, and----"

Lidgerwood broke the refusal in the midst.

"You are an officer of the law, Schleisinger--more is the pity, both for you and the law--and you must do your duty. I have come to swear out another warrant. Get your blank and fill it in."

The German shopkeeper put down his razor with only one side of his face shaven. "Oh, _mein Gott!_" was his protest; but he rummaged in the catch-all packing-box and found the pad of blank warrants. Lidgerwood dictated slowly, in charity for the trembling fingers that held the pen.

Knowing his own weakness, he could sympathize with others. When it came to the filling in of Hallock's name, Schleisinger stopped, open-mouthed.

"_Donnerwetter!_" he gasped, "you don'd mean dot, Mr. Litchervood; you don'd neffer mean dot?"

"I am sorry to say that I do; sorrier than you or any one else can possibly be."

"Bud--bud----"

"I know what you would say," interrupted Lidgerwood hastily. "You are afraid of Hallock's friends--as you were afraid of Rufford and his friends. But you must do your sworn duty."

"_Nein, nein_, dot ain'd it," was the earnest denial. "Bud--bud n.o.body vould serve a warrant on Mr. Hallock, Mr. Litchervood! I----"

"I'll find some one to serve it," said the complainant curtly, and Schleisinger made no further objections.

With the warrant in his pocket, a magistrate's order calling for the arrest and detention of Rankin Hallock on the double charge of train-wrecking and murder, Lidgerwood left Schleisinger's, meaning to go back to the Crow's Nest and have McCloskey put the warrant in Judson's hands. But there was a thing to come between; a thing not wholly unlooked for, but none the less destructive of whatever small hope of regeneration the victim of unreadiness had been cherishing.

When the superintendent recrossed to the Celestial corner, Mesa Avenue was still practically deserted, though the group on the hotel porch had increased its numbers. Three doors below, in front of Biggs's, a bunch of saddled cow-ponies gave notice of a fresh accession to the bar-room crowd which was now overflowing upon the steps and the plank sidewalk.

Lidgerwood's thoughts shuttled swiftly. He argued that a brave man would neither hurry nor loiter in pa.s.sing the danger nucleus, and he strove with what determination there was in him to keep even step with the reasoned-out resolution.

But once more his weakness tricked him. When the determined stride had brought him fairly opposite Biggs's door, a man stepped out of the sidewalk group and calmly pushed him to a stand with the flat of his hand. It was Rufford, and he was saying quite coolly: "Hold up a minute, pardner; I'm going to cut your heart out and feed it to that pup o Schleisinger's that's follerin' you. He looks mighty hungry."

With reason a.s.suring him that the gambler was merely making a grand-stand play for the benefit of the bar-room crowd wedging itself in Biggs's doorway, Lidgerwood's lips went dry, and he knew that the haunting terror was slipping its humiliating mask over his face. But before he could say or do any fear-prompted thing a diversion came. At the halting moment a small man, red-haired, and with his cap pulled down over his eyes, had separated himself from the group of loungers on the Celestial porch to make a swift detour through the hotel bar, around the rear of Biggs's, and so to the street and the sidewalk in front. As once before, and under somewhat less hazardous conditions, he came up behind Rufford, and again the gambler felt the pressure of cold metal against his spine.

"It ain't an S-wrench this time, Bart," he said gently, and the crowd on Biggs's doorstep roared its appreciation of the joke. Then: "Keep your hands right where they are, and side-step out o' Mr. Lidgerwood's way--that's business." And when the superintendent had gone on: "That's all for the present, Bart. After I get a little more time and ain't so danged busy I'll borrow another pair o' clamps from Hepburn and take you back to Copah. So long."

By all the laws of Angelic procedure, Judson should have been promptly shot in the back when he turned and walked swiftly down the avenue to overtake the superintendent. 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.