from the civil
authorities was a most high-handed interference with State
rights; that he received his reward from a grateful railroad by
being promoted; that a lovely woman as recompense for his
villany--but bother! it's my business to tell what really
occurred, and not what the world chooses to invent. And if any
man thinks he would have done otherwise in my position, I can
only say that he is a better or a worse man than Dick Gordon.

Primarily, it was football which shaped my end. Owing to my skill
in the game, I took a post-graduate at the Sheffield Scientific
School, that the team might have my services for an extra two
years. That led to my knowing a little about mechanical
engineering, and when I left the "quad" for good I went into the
Alton Railroad shops. It wasn't long before I was foreman of a
section; next I became a division superintendent, and after I had
stuck to that for a time I was appointed superintendent of the
Kansas & Arizona Railroad, a line extending from Trinidad in
Kansas to The Needles in Arizona, tapping the Missouri Western
System at the first place, and the Great Southern at the other.
With both lines we had important traffic agreements, as well as
the closest relations, which sometimes were a little difficult,
as the two roads were anything but friendly, and we had directors
of each on the K. & A. board, in which they fought like cats.
Indeed, it could only be a question of time when one would oust
the other and then absorb my road. My head-quarters were at
Albuquerque, in New Mexico, and it was there, in October, 1890,
that I received the communication which was the beginning of all
that followed.

This initial factor was a letter from the president of the
Missouri Western, telling me that their first vice-president, Mr.
Cullen (who was also a director of my road), was coming out to
attend the annual election of the K. & A., which under our
charter had to be held in Ash Forks, Arizona. A second paragraph
told me that Mr. Cullen's family accompanied him, and that they
all wished to visit the Grand Canyon of the Colorado on their way.
Finally the president wrote that the party travelled in his own
private car, and asked me to make myself generally useful to
them. Having become quite hardened to just such demands, at the
proper date I ordered my superintendent's car on to No. 2, and
the next morning it was dropped off at Trinidad.

The moment No. 3 arrived, I climbed into the preside