gun" for
Rufford--an alternative quite inconceivable to Lester when it was
predicated of the superintendent.

"I don't know about that," said Judson, the discharged--and consequently
momentarily sobered--engineer of the 271. "He's fooled everybody more
than once since he lit down in the Red Desert. First crack everybody
said he didn't know his business, 'cause he wore b'iled shirts: he
_does_ know it. Next, you could put your ear to the ground and hear that
he didn't have the sand to round up the maverick R.B.W. He's doing it. I
don't know but he might even run a bluff on Bart Rufford, if he felt
like it."

"Come off, John!" growled the big foreman. "You needn't be afraid to
talk straight over here. He hit you when you was down, and we all know
you're only waitin' for a chance to hit back."

Judson was a red-headed man, effusively good-natured when he was in
liquor, and a quick-tempered fighter of battles when he was not.

"Don't you make any such mistake!" he snapped. "That's what McCloskey
said when he handed me the 'good-by.' 'You'll be one more to go round
feelin' for Mr. Lidgerwood's throat, I suppose,' says he. By cripes!
what I said to Mac I'm sayin' to you, Bob Lester. I know good and well
a-plenty when I've earned my blue envelope. If I'd been in the super's
place, the 271 would have had a new runner a long time ago!"

"Oh, hell! _I_ say he'll chase his feet," puffed Broadbent, the fat
machinist who was truing off the valve-seats of the 195. "If Rufford
doesn't make him, there's some others that will."

Judson flared up again.

"Who you quotin' now, Fatty? One o' the shop 'prentices? Or maybe it's
Rank Hallock? Say, what's he doin' monkeyin' round the back shop so much
lately? I'm goin' to stay round here till I get a chance to lick that
scrub."

Broadbent snorted his derision of all mere enginemen.

"You rail-pounders'd better get next to Rankin Hallock," he warned.
"He's the next sup'rintendent of the R.B.W. You'll see the 'pointment
circular the next day after that jim-dandy over in the Crow's Nest gets
moved off'n the map."

"Well, I'm some afeared Bart Rufford's likely to move him," drawled
Clay, the six-foot Kentuckian who was filing the 195's brasses at the
bench. "Which the same I ain't rejoicin' about, neither. That little
cuss is shore a mighty good railroad man. And when you ain't rubbin' his
fur the wrong way, he treats you white."

"For instance?" snapped Hodges, a freight engineer w