command, but he turned the placing of the string-timbers over to his

foreman and climbed to the platform of the superintendent's service-car.



"I won't hold you more than a few minutes," he began, but the

superintendent pointed to one of the camp-chairs and sat down, saying:

"There's no hurry. We have time orders against 73 at Timanyoni, and we

would have to wait there, anyhow. What do you know now?--more than you

knew the last time we talked?"



Benson shook his head. "Nothing that would do us any good in a jury

trial," he admitted reluctantly. "We are not going to find out anything

more until you send somebody up to Flemister's mine with a

search-warrant."



Lidgerwood was gazing absently out over the low hills intervening

between his point of view and the wooded summit of Little Butte.



"Whom am I to send, Jack?" he asked. "I have just come from Red Butte,

and I took occasion to make a few inquiries. Flemister is evidently

prepared at all points. From what I learned to-day, I am inclined to

believe that the sheriff of Timanyoni County would probably refuse to

serve a warrant against him, if we could find a magistrate who would

issue one. Nice state of affairs, isn't it?"



"Beautiful," Benson agreed, adding: "But you don't want Flemister half

as bad as you want the man who is working with him. Are you still trying

to believe that it isn't Hallock?"



"I am still trying to be fair and just. McCloskey says that the two used

to be friends--Hallock and Flemister. I don't believe they are now.

Hallock didn't want to go to Flemister about that building-and-loan

business, and I couldn't make out whether he was afraid, or whether it

was just a plain case of dislike."



"It would doubtless be Hallock's policy--and Flemister's, too, for that

matter--to make you believe they are not friends. You'll have to admit

they are together a great deal."



"I'll admit it if you say so, but I didn't know it before. How do you

know it?"



"Hallock is over here every day or two; I have seen him three or four

times since that day when he and Flemister were walking down the new

spur together and turned back at sight of me," said Benson. "Of course,

I don't know what other business Hallock may have over here, but one

thing I do know, he has been across the river, digging into the inner

consciousness of my old prospector. And that isn't all. After he had got

the story of the timber stealing out of the old man, he tried to bribe

him not to tell it to any one else; tried the bribe first and a scare

afterward--told him that something would happen to him if he didn't keep

a still tongue in his head."



Lidgerwood shook his head slowly. "That looks pretty bad. Why should he

want to silence the old man?"



"That's just what I've been asking myself. But right on the heels of

that, another little mystery developed. Hallock asked the old man if he

would be willing to swear in court to the truth of his story. The old

man said he would."



"Well?" said Lidgerwood.



"A night or two later the old prospector's shack burned down, and the

next morning he found a notice pinned to a tree near one of his

sluice-boxes. It was a polite invitation for him to put distance between

him and the Timanyoni district. I suppose you can put two and two

together, as I did."



Again Lidgerwood said: "It looks pretty bad for Hallock. No one but the

thieves themselves could have any possible reason for driving the old

man out of the country. Did he go?"



"Not much; he isn't built that way. That same day he went to work

building him a new shack; and he swears that the next man who gets near

enough to set it afire won't live to get away and brag about it. Two

days afterward Hallock showed up again, and the old fellow ran him off

with a gun."



Just then the bridge-foreman came up to say that the timbers were in

place, and Benson swung off to give Lidgerwood's engineer instructions

to run carefully. As the service-car platform came along, Lidgerwood

leaned over the railing for a final word with Benson. "Keep in touch

with your old man, and tell him to count on us for protection," he said;

and Benson nodded acquiescence as the one-car train crept out upon the

dismantled bridge.



Having an appointment with Leckhard, of the main line, timed for an

early hour the following morning, Lidgerwood gave his conductor

instructions to stop at Angels only long enough to get orders for the

eastern division.



When the division station was reached, McCloskey met the service-car in

accordance with wire instructions sent from Timanyoni, bringing an

armful of mail, which Lidgerwood purposed to work through on the run to

Copah.



"Nothing new, Mac?" he asked, when the trainmaster came aboard.



"Nothing much, only the operators have notified me that there'll be

trouble, pronto, if we don't put Hannegan and Dickson back on the

wires. The grievance committee intimated pretty broadly that they could

swing the trainmen into line if they had to make a fight."



"We put no man back who has been discharged for cause," said the

superintendent firmly. "Did you tell them that?"



"I did. I have been saying that so often that it mighty nearly says

itself now, when I hear my office door open."



"Well, there is nothing to do but to go on saying it. We shall either

make a spoon or spoil a horn. How would you be fixed in the event of a

telegraphers' strike?"



"I've been figuring on that. It may seem like tempting the good Lord to

say it, but I believe we could hold about half of the men."



"That is decidedly encouraging," said the man who needed to find

encouragement where he could. "Two weeks ago, if you had said one in

ten, I should have thought you were overestimating. We shall win out

yet."



But now McCloskey was shaking his head dubiously. "I don't know. Andy

Bradford has been giving me an idea of how the trainmen stand, and he

says there is a good deal of strike talk. Williams adds a word about the

shop force: he says that Gridley's men are not saying anything, but

they'll be likely to go out in a body unless Gridley wakes up at the

last minute and takes a club to them."



Lidgerwood's conductor was coming down the platform of the Crow's Nest

with his orders in his hand, and McCloskey made ready to swing off. "I

can reach you care of Mr. Leckhard, at Copah, I suppose?" he asked.



"Yes. I shall be back some time to-morrow; in the meantime there is

nothing to do but to sit tight in the boat. Use my private code if you

want to wire me. I don't more than half trust that young fellow, Dix,

Callahan's day operator. And, by the way, Mr. Frisbie is sending me a

stenographer from Denver. If the young man turns up while I am away, see

if you can't get Mrs. Williams to board him."



McCloskey promised and dropped off, and the one-car special presently

clanked out over the eastern switches. Lidgerwood went at once to his

desk and promptly became deaf and blind to everything but his work. The

long desert run had been accomplished, and the service-car train was

climbing the Crosswater grades, when Tadasu Matsuwari began to lay the

table for dinner. Lidgerwood glanced at his watch, and ran his finger

down the line of figures on the framed time-table hanging over his desk.



"Humph!" he muttered; "Acheson's making better time with me than he ever

has before. I wonder if Williams has succeeded in talking him over to

our side? He is certainly running like a gentleman to-day, at all

events."



The superintendent sat down to Tadasu's table and took his time to

Tadasu's excellent dinner, indulging himself so far as to smoke a

leisurely cigar with his black coffee before plunging again into the

sea of work. Not to spoil his improving record, Engineer Acheson

continued to make good time, and it was only a little after eleven

o'clock when Lidgerwood, looking up from his work at the final slowing

of the wheels, saw the masthead lights of the Copah yards.



Taking it for granted that Superintendent Leckhard had long since left

his office in the Pacific Southwestern building, Lidgerwood gave orders

to have his car placed on the station-spur, and went on with his work.

Being at the moment deeply immersed in the voluminous papers of a claim

for stock killed, he was quite oblivious of the placement of the car,

and of everything else, until the incoming of the fast main-line mail

from the east warned him that another hour had passed. When the mail was

gone on its way westward, the midnight silence settled down again, with

nothing but the minimized crashings of freight cars in the lower

shifting-yard to disturb it. The little Japanese had long since made up

his bunk in one of the spare state-rooms, the train crew had departed

with the engine, and the last mail-wagon had driven away up-town.

Lidgerwood had closed his desk and was taking a final pull at the short

pipe which was his working companion, when the car door opened silently

and he saw an apparition.



Standing in the doorway and groping with her hands held out before her

as if she were blind, was a woman. Her gown was the tawdry half-dress of

the dance-halls, and the wrap over her bare shoulders was a gaudy

imitation in colors of the Spanish mantilla. Her head was without

covering, and her hair, which was luxuriant, hung in disorder over her

face. One glance at the eyes, fixed and staring, assured Lidgerwood

instantly that he had to do with one who was either drink-maddened or

demented.



"Where is he?" the intruder asked, in a throaty whisper, staring, not at

him, as Lidgerwood was quick to observe, but straight ahead at the

portieres cutting off the state-room corridor from the open compartment.

And then: "I told you I would come, Rankin; I've been watching years and

years for your car to come in. Look--I want you to see what you have

made of me, you and that other man."



Lidgerwood sat perfectly still. It was quite evident that the woman did

not see him. But his thoughts were busy. Though it was by little more

than chance, he knew that Hallock's Christian name was Rankin, and

instantly he recalled all that McCloskey had told him about the chief

clerk's marital troubles. Was this poor painted wreck the woman who

was, or who had been, Hallock's wife? The question had scarcely

formulated itself before she began again.



"Why don't you answer me? Where are you?" she demanded, in the same

husky whisper; "you needn't hide--I know you are here. What have you

done to that man? You said you would kill him; you promised me that,

Rankin: have you done it?"



Lidgerwood reached up cautiously behind him, and slowly turned off the

gas from the bracket desk-lamp. Without wishing to pry deeper than he

should into a thing which had all the ear-marks of a tragedy, he could

not help feeling that he was on the verge of discoveries which might

have an important bearing upon the mysterious problems centring in the

chief clerk. And he was afraid the woman would see him.



But he was not permitted to make the discoveries. The woman had taken

two or three steps into the car, still groping her way as if the

brightly lighted interior were the darkest of caverns, when some one

swung over the railing of the observation platform, and Superintendent

Leckhard appeared at the open door. Without hesitation he entered and

touched the woman on the shoulder. "Hello, Madgie," he said, not

ungently, "you here again? It's pretty late for even your kind to be

out, isn't it? Better trot away and go to bed, if you've got one to go

to; he isn't here."



The woman put her hands to her face, and Lidgerwood saw that she was

shaking as if with a sudden chill. Then she turned and darted away like

a frightened animal. Leckhard was drawing a chair up to face Lidgerwood.



"Did she give you a turn?" he asked, when Lidgerwood reached up and

turned the desk-lamp on full again.



"Not exactly that, though it was certainly startling enough. I had no

warning at all; when I looked up, she was standing pretty nearly where

she was when you came in. She didn't seem to see me at all, and she was

talking crazily all the time to some one else--some one who isn't here."



"I know," said Leckhard; "she has done it before."



"Whom is she trying to find?" asked Lidgerwood, wishing to have his

suspicion either denied or confirmed.



"Didn't she call him by name?--she usually does. It's your chief clerk,

Hallock. She is--or was--his wife. Haven't you heard the ghastly story

yet?"



"No; and, Leckhard, I don't know that I care to hear it. It can't

possibly concern me."



"It's just as well, I guess," said the main-line superintendent

carelessly. "I probably shouldn't get it straight anyway. It's a rather

horrible affair, though, I believe. There is another man mixed up in

it--the man whom she is always asking if Hallock has killed. Curiously

enough, she never names the other man, and there have been a good many

guesses. I believe your head boiler-maker, Gridley, has the most votes.

He's been seen with her here, now and then--when he's on one of his

'periodicals.' By Jove! Lidgerwood, I don't envy you your job over

yonder in the Red Desert a little bit.... But about the consolidation of

the yards here: I got a telegram after I wired you, making it necessary

for me to go west on main-line Twenty-seven early in the morning, so I

stayed up to talk this yard business over with you to-night."



It was well along in the small hours when the roll of blue-print maps

was finally laid aside, and Leckhard rose yawning. "We'll carry it out

as you propose, and divide the expense between the two divisions," he

said in conclusion. "Frisbie has left it to us, and he will approve

whatever we agree upon. Will you go up to the hotel with me, or bunk

down here?"



Lidgerwood said he would stay with his car; or, better still, now that

the business for which he had come to Copah was despatched, he would

have the roundhouse night foreman call a Red Butte Western crew and go

back to his desert.



"We are in the thick of things over on the jerk-water just now," he

explained, "and I don't like to stay away any longer than I have to."



"Having a good bit of trouble with the sure-shots?" asked Leckhard.

"What was that story I heard about somebody swiping one of your

switching-engines?"



"It was true," said Lidgerwood, adding, "But I think we shall recover

the engine--and some other things--presently." He liked Leckhard well

enough, but he wished he would go. There are exigencies in which even

the comments of a friend and well-wisher are superfluous.



"You have a pretty tough gang to handle over these," the well-wisher

went on. "I wouldn't touch a job like yours with a ten-foot pole, unless

I could shoot good enough to be sure of hitting a half-dollar nine times

out of ten at thirty paces. Somebody was telling me that you have

already had trouble with that fellow Rufford."



"Nobody was hurt, and Rufford is in jail," said Lidgerwood, hoping to

kill the friendly inquiry before it should run into details.



"Oh, well, it's all in the day's work, I suppose, which reminds me: my

day's work to-morrow won't amount to much if I don't go and turn in.

Good-night."



When Leckhard was gone, Lidgerwood climbed the stair in the station

building to the despatcher's office and gave orders for the return of

his car to Angels. Half an hour later the one-car special was retracing

its way westward up the valley of the Tumbling Water, and Lidgerwood was

trying to go to sleep in the well-appointed little state-room which it

was Tadasu Matsuwari's pride to keep spick and span and spotlessly

clean. But there were disturbing thoughts, many and varied, to keep him

awake, chief among them those which hung upon the dramatic midnight

episode with the demented woman for its central figure. Through what

dreadful Valley of Humiliation had she come to reach the abysmal depths

in which the one cry of her soul was a cry for vengeance? Who was the

unnamed man whom Hallock had promised to kill? How much or how little

was this tragedy figuring in the trouble storm which was brooding over

the Red Desert? And how much or how little would it involve one who was

anxious only to see even-handed justice prevail?



These and similar insistent questions kept Lidgerwood awake long after

his train had left the crooked pathway marked out by the Tumbling Water,

and when he finally fell asleep the laboring engine of the one-car

special was storming the approaches to Crosswater Summit.