p, and when he was on his feet his big frame made him
look still more a fair match physically for the handsome
master-mechanic.

"Why?" The single word shot out of the loose-lipped mouth like an
explosive bullet.

Gridley opened the door and turned upon the threshold.

"I might borrow the word from you and say that Flemister's business and
mine are none of yours. But I won't do that. I'll merely say that
Flemister may need a little Red Butte Western nursing in the Ute Valley
irrigation scheme he is promoting, and I want you to see that he gets
it. You may take that as a word to the wise, or as a kicked-in hint to a
blind mule; whichever you please. You can't afford to fight me, Hallock,
and you know it. Sleep on it a few hours, and you'll see it in that way,
I'm sure. Good-night."

III

A LITTLE BROTHER OF THE COWS

Crosswater Gap, so named because the high pass over which the railroad
finds its way is anything but a gap, and, save when the winter snows are
melting, there is no water within a day's march, was in sight from the
loopings of the eastern approach. Lidgerwood, scanning the grades as the
service-car swung from tangent to curve and curve to tangent up the
steep inclines, was beginning to think of breakfast. The morning air was
crisp and bracing, and he had been getting the full benefit of it for an
hour or more, sitting under the umbrella roof at the observation end of
the car.

With the breakfast thought came the thing itself, or the invitation to
it. As a parting kindness the night before, Ford had transferred one of
the cooks from his own private car to Lidgerwood's service, and the
little man, Tadasu Matsuwari by name, and a subject of the Mikado by
race and birth, came to the car door to call his new employer to the
table.

It was an attractive table, well appointed and well served; but
Lidgerwood, temperamentally single-eyed in all things, was diverted from
his reorganization problem for the moment only. Since early dawn he had
been up and out on the observation platform, noting, this time with the
eye of mastership, the physical condition of the road; the bridges, the
embankments, the cross-ties, the miles of steel unreeling under the
drumming trucks, and the object-lesson was still fresh in his mind.

To a disheartening extent, the Red Butte demoralization had involved the
permanent way. Originally a good track, with heavy steel, easy grades
compensated for the curves, and a mathema