swung over the summit with the
final five hundred shares we needed."

Again Lidgerwood made the sign of assent.

"Mr. Brewster is a level-headed Westerner. He doubtless knew, to the
dotting of an 'i,' the particular brand of trouble you two expansionists
were so eager to acquire."

"He did. He has a copper property somewhere in the vicinity of Angels,
and he knows the road. He contended that we were buying two streaks of
rust and a right-of-way in the Red Desert. More than that, he asserted
that the executive officer didn't live who could bring order out of the
chaos into which bad management and a peculiarly tough environment had
plunged the Red Butte Western. That's where I had him bested, Howard.
All through the hot fight I kept saying over and over to myself that I
knew the man."

"But you don't know him, Stuart; that is the weak link in the chain."

Lidgerwood turned away to the scratched window-panes and the crude
prospect, blurred now by the gathering shadows of the early evening. In
the yards below, a long freight-train was pulling in from the west, with
a switching-engine chasing it to begin the cutting out of the Copah
locals. Over in the Red Butte yard a road-locomotive, turning on the
table, swept a wide arc with the beam of its electric headlight in the
graying dusk. Through the half-opened door in the despatcher's room came
the diminished chattering of the telegraph instruments; this, with the
outer clamor of trains and engines, made the silence in the private
office more insistent.

When Lidgerwood faced about again after the interval of abstraction
there were fine lines of harassment between his eyes, and his words came
as if speech were costing him a conscious effort.

"If it were merely a matter of technical fitness, I suppose I might go
over to Angels and do what you want done with the three hundred miles of
demoralization. But the Red Butte proposition asks for more; for
something that I can't give it. Stuart, there is a yellow streak in me
that you seem never to have discovered. I am a coward."

The ghost of an incredulous smile wrinkled about the tired eyes of the
big man in the pivot-chair.

"You put it with your usual exactitude," he assented slowly; "I hadn't
discovered it." Then: "You forget that I have known you pretty much all
your life, Howard."

"You haven't known me at all," was the sober reply.

"Oh, yes, I have! Let me recall one of the boyhood pictures that has
never faded