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Updated: May 21, 2025
Thirty-two boxes, gondolas, and flats, racing down the Crosswater grades in the heart of a flawless, crystalline summer afternoon at the heels of Clay's big ten-wheeler, suddenly left the steel as a unit to heap themselves in chaotic confusion upon the right-of-way, and to round out the disaster at the moment of impact by exploding a shipment of giant powder somewhere in the midst of the debris.
"You remember what I told you about that loosened rail that caused the wreck in the Crosswater Hills? You said Hallock had gone to Navajo to see Cruikshanks; he did go to Navajo, but he got there just exactly four hours after 202 had gone on past Navajo, and he came on foot, walking down the track from the Hills!" "Where did you get that?" asked Lidgerwood quickly. "From the agent at Navajo.
"Haven't you heard his story?" asked Benson; "but of course you haven't. He is a lame duck, you know like every other man this side of Crosswater Summit, present company excepted." "A lame duck?" repeated Lidgerwood. "Yes, a man with a past. Don't tell me you haven't caught onto the hall-mark of the Red Desert. It's notorious.
Mac couldn't get a job east of the Crosswater Hills, I'm afraid." Lidgerwood had not inquired the reason for the eastern disability. He had lived in the West long enough to know that it is an ill thing to pry too curiously into any man's past.
"Benson, we sha'n't hesitate a single moment to quarrel with the biggest mine-owner or freight-shipper this side of the Crosswater Hills if we have the right on our side. Spread it out. What did you find?" Benson sank a little lower in his chair.
In the rush that followed, a few prudent ones chose the longer détour; others, hardier and more temerarious, outfitted at Copah, and assaulting the hill barrier of the Little Piñons at Crosswater Gap, faced the jornada through the Land of Thirst.
You haven't a dozen operators, all told, who haven't been discharged for incompetence, or worse, somewhere else; or a dozen conductors or engineers who weren't good and comfortably blacklisted before they climbed Crosswater. Take McCloskey: you swear by him, don't you?
Gridley was the man who jumped the passenger at Crosswater Hills, and took up the rail to ditch Clay's freight with Hallock chasing him and trying to prevent it.
Train 201 had no dead time at Crosswater; hence, if the ten-minute interval between trains of the same class moving in the same direction was to be preserved, the passenger would have to be held. The assumption that the passenger-train would be held aroused all the railroad martinet's fury in the new superintendent.
The trainmaster shook his head. "I've stewed over that till I'm threatened with softening of the brain," he confessed. "Never mind, you have a comparatively easy job," Lidgerwood went on. "That engine is somewhere this side of the Crosswater Hills. It is too big to be hidden under a bushel basket. Find it, and you'll be hot on the trail of the car-load robbers."
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