XIV
BLIND SIGNALS
Lidgerwood was not making the conventional excuse when he gave thedeskful of work as a reason for not accepting the invitation to dinewith the president's party in the _Nadia_. Being the practical as wellas the nominal head of the Red Butte line, and the only official withcomplete authority west of Copah, his daily mail was always heavy, andduring his frequent absences the accumulations stored up work for everyspare hour he could devote to it.
It was this increasing clerical burden which had led him to ask thegeneral manager for a stenographer, and during one of the later absencesthe young man had come--a rapid, capable young fellow with the gift ofknowing how to make himself indispensable to a superior, coupled withthe ability to take care of much of the routine correspondence withoutspecific instructions, and with a disposition to be loyal to his salt.
Climbing the stair to his office on the second floor of the Crow's Nestafter the brief exchange of question and answer with Judson, Lidgerwoodfound his new helper hard at work grinding through the day's train mail.
"Don't scamp your meals, Grady," was his greeting to the stenographer,as he opened his own desk. "This is a pretty busy shop, but it is wellto remember that there is always another day coming, and if there isn't,it won't make any difference how much or how little is left undone."
"Colgan wired that you were on Mr. Brewster's special, and I was waitingon the chance that you might want to rush something through when you gotin," returned the young Irishman, reaching mechanically for hisnote-book.
"I shall want to rush a lot of it through after a while, but you'dbetter go and get your supper now and come back fresh for it," said thesuperintendent, who was always humane to every one but himself. "Wasthere anything special in to-day's mail?"
"Only this," turning up a letter marked "Immediate" and bearing thecancellation stamp of the postal car which had passed eastward on Train202.
Lidgerwood read the marked letter twice before he placed it face downin the "unanswered" basket. It was from Flemister, and it called for adecision which the superintendent was willing to postpone for themoment. After he had read thoughtfully through everything else on thewaiting list, he took up the mine-owner's letter again. All thingsconsidered, it was a little puzzling. He had not seen Flemister sincethe day of the rather spiteful conversation, with the building-and-loantheft for a topic, and on that occasion the mine-owner had gone awaywith threats in his mouth. Yet his letter was distinctly friendly,conveying an offer of neighborly help.
The occasion for the neighborliness arose upon a right-of-wayinvolvement. Acting under instructions from Vice-President Ford,Lidgerwood had already begun to move in the matter of extending the RedButte Western toward the Nevada gold-fields, and Benson had been runningpreliminary surveys and making estimates of cost. Of the two morefeasible routes, that which left the main line at Little Butte, turningsouthward up the Wire-Silver gulch, had been favorably reported on bythe engineer. The right of way over this route, save for a few milesthrough an upland valley of cattle ranches, could be acquired from thegovernment, and among the ranch owners only one was disposed to fightthe coming of the railroad--for a purely mercenary purpose, Bensondeclared.
It was about this man, James Grofield, that Flemister wrote. Theranchman, so the letter stated, had passed through Little Butte early inthe day, on his way to Red Butte. He would be returning by theaccommodation late in the afternoon, and would stop at the Wire-Silvermine, where he had stabled his horses. For some reason he had taken adislike to Benson, but if Lidgerwood could make it convenient to comeover to Little Butte on the evening passenger-train from Angels, thewriter of the letter would arrange to keep Grofield over-night, and theright-of-way matter could doubtless be settled satisfactorily.
This was the substance of the mine-owner's letter, and if Lidgerwoodhesitated it was partly because he was suspicious of Flemister's suddenfriendliness. Then the motive--Flemister's motive--suggested itself, andthe suspicion was put to sleep. The Wire-Silver mine was five milesdistant from the main line at Little Butte, at the end of a spur; if theextension should be built, it would be a main-line station, with all theadvantages accruing therefrom. Flemister was merely putting thepersonal animosities aside for a good and sufficient business reason.
Lidgerwood looked at his watch. If Grady should not be gone too long, hemight be able to work through the pile of correspondence and get away onthe evening passenger; and when the stenographer came back the work wasattacked with that end in view. But after an hour's rapid dictating, along-drawn whistle signal announced the incoming of the train he wastrying to make and warned him that the race against time had failed.
"It's no use; we'll have to make two bites of it," he said to Grady, andthen he left his desk to go downstairs for a breathing moment and thecup of coffee which he meant to substitute for the dinner which the lackof time had made him forego.
Train 205, the train Flemister had suggested that he might take, wasjust pulling in from the long run across the desert when he reached thefoot of the stairs. That it was too late to take this means of reachingLittle Butte and the Wire-Silver mine was a small matter; it merelymeant that he would be obliged to order out the service-car and gospecial, if he should finally decide to act upon Flemister's suggestion.
Angels being a meal station, there was a twenty-minute stop for alltrains, and the passengers from 205 were crowding the platform andhurrying to the dining-room and lunch-counter when Lidgerwood made hisway to the station end of the building. In the men's room, whither hewent to order his cup of coffee, there was a mixed throng of travellers,with a sprinkling of trainmen and town idlers, among the latter a numberof the lately discharged railroad employees. Lidgerwood marked a groupof the trouble-makers withdrawing to a corner of the room as he entered,and while the waiter was serving his coffee, he saw Hallock join thegroup. It was only a straw, but straws are significant when the wind isblowing from a threatening quarter. Once again Lidgerwood rememberedMcCloskey's proposal, and his own reluctant assent to it, and now he wasnot too greatly conscience-stricken when he saw Judson quietly workinghis way through the crowded room to a point of espial upon the group inthe corner.
"Your coffee's getting cold, Mr. Lidgerwood," the man behind the counterwarned him, and Lidgerwood whirled around on the pivot stool and turnedhis back upon the malcontents and their watcher. The keen inner sense,which neither the physiologists nor the psychologists have yet beenable to define or to name, apprised him of a threat developing in thedistant corner, but he resolutely ignored it, drank his coffee, andpresently went his way around the peopled end of the building and backto the office entrance, meaning to go above stairs and put in anotherhour with Grady before he should decide definitely about making thenight run to Little Butte.
His foot was on the threshold of the stairway door when Judson overtookhim.
"Mac told me to report to you when I couldn't get at him," theex-engineman began abruptly. "There's something hatching, but I can'tfind out what it is. Are you thinking about goin' out on the roadanywhere to-night, Mr. Lidgerwood?"
Lidgerwood's decision was taken on the instant.
"Yes; I think I shall go west in my car in an hour or so. Why?"
"There ain't any 'why,' I guess, if you feel like goin'. But what Idon't savvy is why them fellows back yonder in the waitin'-room are sodead anxious to find out if you _are_ goin'."
As he spoke, a man who had been skulking behind a truck-load of expressfreight, so near that he could have touched either of them with anout-stretched arm, withdrew silently in the direction of the lunch-room.He was a tall man with stooping shoulders, and his noiseless retreatwas cautiously made, yet not quite cautiously enough, since Judson'ssharp eyes marked the shuffling figure vanishing in the shadow cast bythe over-hanging shelter roof of the station.
"By cripes!--look at that, will you?" he exclaimed, pointing to theretreating figure. "That's Hallock, and he was listening!"
Lidgerwood shook his head.
/> "No, that isn't Hallock," he denied. And then, with a bit of theman-driving rasp in his voice: "See here, Judson, don't you letMcCloskey's prejudices run away with you; make a memorandum of that andpaste it in your hat. I know what you have been instructed to do, and Ihave given my consent, but it is with the understanding that you will beat least as fair as you would be if McCloskey's bias happened to run theother way. I don't want you to make a case against Hallock unless youcan get proof positive that he is disloyal to the company and to me; andI'll tell you here and now that I shall be much better pleased if youcan bring me the assurance that he is a true man."
"But that _was_ Hallock," insisted Judson, "or else it was his livin'double."
"No; follow him and you'll see for yourself. It was more like that RubyGulch operator who quit in a quarrel with McCloskey a week or two ago.What is his name?--Sheffield."
Judson hastened down the platform to satisfy himself, and Lidgerwoodmounted the stair to his office. Grady was still pounding the keys ofthe type-writer on the batch of letters given him in the busy hourfollowing his return from supper, and the superintendent turned his backupon the clicking activities and went to stand at the window, from whichhe could look down upon the platform with the waiting passenger-traindrawn up beside it.
Seeing the cheerful lights in the side-tracked _Nadia_, he fell tothinking of Eleanor, opening the door of conscious thought to her andsaying to himself that she was never more than a single step beyond thethreshold of that door. Looking across to the _Nadia_, he knew now whyhe had hesitated so long before deciding to go on the night trip toTimanyoni Park. Chilled hearts follow the analogy of cold hands. Whenthe fire is near, a man will go and spread his fingers to the blaze,though he may be never so well assured that they will ache for itafterward.
But with this thought came another and a more manly one--the woman heloved was in Angels, and she would doubtless remain in Angels or itsimmediate vicinity for some time; that was unpreventable; but he couldstill resolve that there should not be a repetition of the old tragedyof the moth and the candle. It was well that at the very outset a dutycall had come to enable him to break the spell of her nearness, and itwas also well that he had decided not to disregard it.
The train conductor's "All aboard!" shouted on the platform just belowhis window, drew his attention from the _Nadia_ and the distractingthought of Eleanor's nearness. Train 205 was ready to resume itswestward flight, and the locomotive bell was clanging musically. Ahalf-grown moon, hanging low in the black dome of the night, yellowedthe glow of the platform incandescents. The last few passengers werehurrying up the steps of the cars, and the conductor was swinging hislantern in the starting signal for the engineer.
At the critical moment, when the train was fairly in motion, Lidgerwoodsaw Hallock--it was unmistakably Hallock this time--spring from theshadow of a baggage-truck and whip up to the step of the smoker, and ascant half-second later he saw Judson race across the wide platform andthrow himself like a self-propelled projectile against and through theclosing doors of the vestibule at the forward end of the sleeper.
Judson's dash and his capture of the out-going train were easilyaccounted for: he had seen Hallock. But where was Hallock going?Lidgerwood was still asking himself the question half-abstractedly whenhe crossed to his desk and touched the buzzer-push which summoned anoperator from the despatcher's room.
"Wire Mr. Pennington Flemister, care of Goodloe, at Little Butte, that Iam coming out with my car, and should be with him by eleven o'clock.Then call up the yard office and tell Matthews to let me have the carand engine by eight-thirty, sharp," he directed.
The operator made a note of the order and went out, and thesuperintendent settled himself in his desk-chair for another hour's hardwork with the stenographer. At twenty-five minutes past eight he heardthe wheel-grindings of the up-coming service-car, and the wearyshort-hand man snapped a rubber band upon the notes of the final letter.
"That's all for to-night, Grady, and it's quite enough," was thesuperintendent's word of release. "I'm sorry to have to work you solate, but I'd like to have those letters written out and mailed beforeyou lock up. Are you good for it?"
"I'm good for anything you say, Mr. Lidgerwood," was the response of theone who was loyal to his salt, and the superintendent put on his lightcoat and went out and down the stair.
At the outer door he turned up the long platform, instead of down, andwalked quickly to the _Nadia_, persuading himself that he must, incommon decency, tell the president that he was going away; persuadinghimself that it was this, and not at all the desire to warm his hands atthe ungrateful fire of Eleanor's mockery, that was making him turn hisback for the moment upon the waiting special train.
The Taming of Red Butte Western Page 14
