of almost daily occurrence, and the shop track
was speedily filled to the switches with crippled engines and cars.

In such a storm of disaster and disorder the captain in command soon
finds and learns to distinguish his loyal supporters, if any such there
be. In the pandemonium of untoward events, McCloskey was Lidgerwood's
right hand, toiling, smiting, striving, and otherwise approving himself
a good soldier. But close behind him came Gridley; always suave and
good-natured, making no complaints, not even when the repair work made
necessary by the innumerable wrecks grew mountain-high, and always
counselling firmness and more discipline.

"This is just what we have been needing for years, Mr. Lidgerwood," he
took frequent occasion to say. "Of course, we have now to pay the
penalty for the sins of our predecessors; but if you will persevere,
we'll pull through and be a railroad in fact when the clouds roll by.
Don't give in an inch. Show these muckers that you mean business, and
mean it all the time, and you'll win out all right."

Thus the master-mechanic; and McCloskey, with more at stake and a less
insulated point of view, took it out in good, hard blows, backing his
superior like a man. Indeed, in the small head-quarters staff, Hallock
was the only non-combatant. From the beginning of hostilities he seemed
to have made a pact with himself not to let it be known by any act or
word of his that he was aware of the suddenly precipitated conflict. The
routine duties of a chief clerk's desk are never light; Hallock's became
so exacting that he rarely left his office, or the pen-like contrivance
in which he entrenched himself and did his work.

When the fight began, Lidgerwood observed Hallock closely, trying to
discover if there were any secret signs of the satisfaction which the
revolt of the rank and file might be supposed to awaken in an
unsuccessful candidate for the official headship of the Red Butte
Western. There were none. Hallock's gaunt face, with the loose lips and
the straggling, unkempt beard, was a blank; and the worst wreck of the
three which promptly followed the introduction of the new rules, was
noted in his reports with the calm indifference with which he might have
jotted down the breakage of a section foreman's spike-maul.

McCloskey, being of Scottish blood and desert-seasoned, was a cool
in-fighter who could take punishment without wincing overmuch. But at
the end of the first fortnight of the