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Updated: June 28, 2025
"Let us have it, Judson," he said, when the trainmaster had dragged his chair into the circle of light described by the green cone shade of the desk lamp. "We have been wondering what had become of you." Summarized, Judson's story was the report of an intelligent scout. Since he was classed with the discharged men, he had been able to find out some of the enemy's moves in the game of coercion.
Then quite as hastily he sat down, crossed his knees violently, stared at the giant lineman, and exclaimed, "Let's have it!" Dancing looked at him in silence and with some contempt. The trainmaster had broken in on the superintendent for a moment and the two were conferring in an undertone.
"That's fair more than fair," said the trainmaster, mouthing the words as if the mere effort of speech were painful, "and I wish I could promise you that the rank and file will meet you half-way. But I can't. You'll find a plucked pigeon, Mr. Lidgerwood with plenty of hawks left to pick the bones. The road has been running itself for the past two years and more."
"Oh, yes; McCloskey, my trainmaster, will be in from the wreck before morning, and he will turn flip-flaps trying to make things pleasant for you, if you will give him the chance."
"That was McCloskey, our trainmaster," he cut in. "And the other ?" "Was wrecking-boss Number Two," he told her, "my latest apprentice, and a very promising young subject. This was his first time out under my administration, and he put McCloskey and me out of the running at once." "What did he do?" she asked, and again he saw the groping wistfulness in her eyes, and wondered at it.
There is another matter that I want to take up with you, and to-day is as good a time as any." The trainmaster nodded and went out, muttering curses to the tilted hat brim. "This switching-engine mystery opens up a field that I've been trying to get into for some little time, Mac," the superintendent began, after the half-hour had elapsed and the trainmaster had returned to the private office.
When they have cleared the danger limit, they can split up and take the proper time intervals ten minutes apart." "Call it done," said the trainmaster, and he went to carry out the order. Two minutes later Bogard, the night-relief operator off duty, darted out of the despatcher's room with the clearance-cards for the three sections. Lidgerwood stopped him in mid-flight.
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."
"Somebody is heading it, to a dead moral certainty, Mr. Lidgerwood; the licks are coming too straight and too well-timed." "Find the man if you can, and we'll eliminate him. And, by the way, if it comes to the worst, how will Hepburn, the town marshal, stand?" The trainmaster shook his head. "I don't know. Jack's got plenty of sand, but he was elected out of the shops, and by the railroad vote.
At this the trainmaster changed front so suddenly that Lidgerwood began to wonder if his estimate of the man's courage was at fault. "Don't do that, Mr. Lidgerwood, for God's sake don't stir up the devil in that long-haired knife-fighter at such a time as this!" he begged. "The Lord knows you've got trouble enough on hand as it is, without digging up something that belongs to the has-beens."
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