nd
thinking of nothing so little as the type-written words, when the roar
of the echoing canyon walls died away, and the train came to a stand at
Timanyoni, the first telegraph station in the shut-in valley between the
mountain ranges. A minute or two later the wheels began to revolve
again, and Bradford came in.

"More maverick railroading," he said disgustedly. "Timanyoni had his red
light out, and when I asked for orders he said he hadn't any--thought
maybe we'd want to ask for 'em ourselves, being as we was running wild."

"So he thoughtfully stopped us to give us the chance!" snapped
Lidgerwood in wrathful scorn. "What did you do?"

"Oh, as long as he had done it, I had him call up the Angels despatcher
to find out where we were at. We're on 204's time, you know--ought to
have met her here."

"Why didn't we?" asked the superintendent, taking the time-card from its
pigeon-hole and glancing at Train 204's schedule.

"She was late out of Red Butte; broke something and had to stop and tie
it up; lost a half-hour makin' her get-away."

"Then we reach Little Butte before 204 gets there--is that it?"

"That's about the way the night despatcher has it ciphered out. He gave
the Timanyoni plug operator hot stuff for holdin' us up."

Lidgerwood shook his head. The artless simplicity of Red-Butte-Western
methods, or unmethods, was dying hard, inexcusably hard.

"Does the night despatcher happen to know just where 204 is, at this
present moment?" he inquired with gentle irony.

Bradford laughed.

"I'd be willing to bet a piebald pinto against a no-account yaller dog
that he don't. But I reckon he won't be likely to let her get past
Little Butte, comin' this way, when he has let us get by Timanyoni
goin' t'other way."

"That's all right, Andy; that is the way you would have a right to
figure it out if you were running a special on a normally healthy
railroad--you'd be justified in running to your next telegraph station,
regardless. But the Red Butte Western is an abnormally unhealthy
railroad, and you'd better feel your way--pretty carefully, too. From
Point-of-Rocks you can see well down toward Little Butte. Tell Williams
to watch for 204's headlight, and if he sees it, to take the siding at
Silver Switch, the old Wire-Silver spur."

Bradford nodded, and when Lidgerwood reimmersed himself in the
cattleman's claim papers, went forward to share Williams's watch in the
cab of the 266.

Twenty minutes farther on,