you are out here, are you, Howard? I was looking for you to let you
know that we dine in the _Nadia_ at seven. If your duties will
permit----"

Lidgerwood's refusal was apologetic but firm.

"I am very sorry, Cousin Jessica," he protested. "But I left a deskful
of stuff when I ran away to the wreck this morning, and really I'm
afraid I shall have to beg off."

"Oh, don't be so dreadfully formal!" said the president's wife
impatiently. "You are a member of the family, and all you have to do is
to say bluntly that you can't come, and then come whenever you can while
we are here. Carolyn Doty is dying to ask you a lot more questions about
the Red Desert. She confided to me that you were the most interesting
talker----"

Miss Eleanor's interruption was calculated to temper the passed-on
praise.

"He has been simply boring me to death, mamma, until just a few minutes
ago. I shall tell Carolyn that she is too easily pleased."

Mrs. Brewster, being well used to Eleanor's flippancies, paid no
attention to her daughter.

"You will come to us whenever you can, Howard; that is understood," she
said. And so the social matter rested.

Lidgerwood was half-way down the platform of the Crow's Nest, heading
for his office and the neglected desk, when Williams's engine came
backing through one of the yard tracks on its way to the roundhouse. At
the moment of its passing, a little man with his cap pulled over his
eyes dropped from the gangway step and lounged across to the
head-quarters building.

It was Judson; and having seen him last toiling away man-fashion at the
wreck in the Crosswater Hills, Lidgerwood hailed him.

"Hello, Judson! How did you get here? I thought you were doing a turn
with McCloskey."

The small man's grin was ferocious.

"I was, but Mac said he didn't have any further use for me--said I was
too much of a runt to be liftin' and pullin' along with growed-up men. I
came down with Williams on the '66."

Lidgerwood turned away. He remembered his reluctant consent to
McCloskey's proposal touching the espial upon Hallock, and was sorry he
had given it. It was too late to recall it now; but neither by word nor
look did the superintendent intimate to the discharged engineer that he
knew why McCloskey had sent him back to Angels on the engine of the
president's special.

XIV

BLIND SIGNALS

Lidgerwood was not making the conventional excuse when he gave the
deskful of work as a reason for not ac