at the Dawsons'
gate that Benson, lately arrived from the west on train 204, came into
the superintendent's office with the light of discovery in his eye. But
the discovery, if any there were, was made to wait upon a word of
friendly solicitude.

"What's this they were telling me down at the lunch-counter just
now--about somebody taking a pot-shot at you last night?" he asked.
"Dougherty said it was Bart Rufford; was it?"

Lidgerwood confirmed the gossip with a nod. "Yes, it was Rufford, so
Dawson says. I didn't recognize him, though; it was too dark."

"Well, I'm mighty glad to see that he didn't get you. What was the row?"

"I don't know, definitely; I suppose it was because I told McCloskey to
discharge his brother a while back. The brother has been hanging about
town and making threats ever since he was dropped from the pay-rolls,
but no one has paid any attention to him."

"A pretty close call, wasn't it?--or was Dougherty only putting on a few
frills to go with my cup of coffee?"

"It was close enough," admitted Lidgerwood half absently. He was
thinking not so much of the narrow escape as of the fresh and
humiliating evidence it had afforded of his own wretched unreadiness.

"All right; you'll come around to my way of thinking after a while. I
tell you, Lidgerwood, you've got to heel yourself when you live in a gun
country. I said I wouldn't do it, but I have done it, and I'll tell you
right now, when anybody in this blasted desert makes monkey-motions at
me, I'm going to blow the top of his head off, quick."

Lidgerwood's gaze was resting on the little drawer in his desk which now
contained nothing but a handful of loose cartridges.

"Hasn't it ever occurred to you, Jack, that I am the one man in the
desert who cannot afford to go armed? I am supposed to stand for law and
order. What would my example be worth if it should be noised around that
I, too, had become a 'gun-toter'?"

"Oh, I'm not going to argue with you," laughed Benson. "You'll go your
own way and do as you please, and probably get yourself comfortably shot
up before you get through. But I didn't come up here to wrangle with you
about your theoretical notions of law and order. I came to tell you that
I have been hunting for those bridge-timbers of mine."

"Well?" queried Lidgerwood; "have you found them?"

"No, and I don't believe anybody will ever find them. It's going to be
another case of Rachel weeping for her children and refusing t