there's another side to all that, and you know it," the
vice-president began; but Lidgerwood would not listen.

"No," he protested; "don't try to find excuses for me; there were none.
The fellow gave me every chance; turned his back on me as an absolutely
negligible factor while he was going through the others. I'm quick
enough when the crisis doesn't involve a fighting man's chance; and I
can handle a gun, too, when the thing to be shot at isn't a human being.
But to save my soul from everlasting torments I couldn't go through the
simple motions of pulling the pistol from my pocket and dropping that
fellow in his tracks; couldn't and didn't."

"Why, of course you couldn't, after it had got that far along," asserted
Ford. "I doubt if any one could. That little remark about the gun in
your pocket did you up. When a man gets you pacified to the condition
in which he can safely josh you, he has got you going and he knows
it--and knows you know it. You may be twice as hot and bloodthirsty as
you were before, but you are just that much less able to strike back.
It's not a theory; it is a psychological demonstration."

"But the fact remained," said Lidgerwood, sparing himself not at all. "I
was weighed and found wanting; that is the only point worth
considering."

"Well?" queried Ford, when the self-condemned culprit turned again to
the dusk-darkened window, "what came of it?"

"That which was due to come. I was told many times and in many different
ways what the one woman thought of me. For the few days during which she
and her mother waited at her father's mine for the coming of the
Yellowstone party, she used me for a door-mat, as I deserved. That was a
year ago last spring. I haven't seen her since; haven't tried to."

The vice-president reached up and snapped the key of the electric bulb
over the desk, and the lurking shadows in the corners of the room fled
away.

"Sit down," he said shortly; and when Lidgerwood had found a chair:
"You treat it as an incident closed, Howard. Do you mean to go on
leaving it up in the air like that?"

"It was left in the air a year ago last spring. I can't pull it down
now."

"Yes, you can. You haven't exaggerated the conditions on the Red Butte
line an atom. As you say, the operating force is as godless a lot of
outlaws as ever ran trains or ditched them. They all know that the road
has been bought and sold, and that pretty sweeping changes are
impending. They are looking for