and it cost him an effort to put the athlete on a plane of brotherly

equality as a comrade in arms. But he compassed it.



"Yes, I asked her to send you up," he replied. Then: "I suppose you know

what we are confronting, Mr. Van Lew?"



"Mrs. Brewster told us as soon as we came back from the hills. Is it

likely to be serious?"



"Yes. I wish I could have persuaded Mrs. Brewster to order the Nadia

out of it. But she has refused to go and leave Mr. Brewster behind."



"I know," said Van Lew; "we have all refused."



"So Miss Brewster has just told me," frowned Lidgerwood. "That being the

case, we must make the best of it. How are you fixed for arms in the

president's car?"



"I have a hunting rifle--a forty-four magazine; and Jefferis has a small

armory of revolvers--boy-like."



"Good! The defense of the car, if a riot materializes, will fall upon

you two. Judge Holcombe can't be counted in. I'll give you all the help

I can spare, but you'll have to furnish the brains. I suppose I don't

need to tell you not to take any chances?"



Van Lew shook his head and smiled.



"Not while the dear girl whom, God willing, I'm going to marry, is a

member of our car-party. I'm more likely to be over-cautious than

reckless, Mr. Lidgerwood."



Here, in terms unmistakable, was a deep grave in which to bury any poor

phantom of hope which might have survived, but Lidgerwood did not

advertise the funeral.



"She is altogether worthy of the most that you can do for her, and the

best that you can give her, Mr. Van Lew," he said gravely. Then he

passed quickly to the more vital matter. "The Nadia will be placed on

the short spur track at this end of the building, close in, where you

can step from the rear platform of the car to the station platform. I'll

try to keep watch for you, but you must also keep watch for yourself. If

any firing begins, get your people out quietly and bring them up here.

Of course, none of you will have anything worse than a stray bullet to

fear, but the side walls of the Nadia would offer no protection

against that."



Van Lew nodded understandingly.



"Call it settled," he said. "Shall I use my own judgment as to the

proper moment to make the break, or will you pass us the word?"



Lidgerwood took time to consider. Conditions might arise under which the

Crow's Nest would be the most unsafe place in Angels to which to flee

for shelter.



"Perhaps you would better sit tight until I give the word," he directed,

after the reflective pause. Then, in a lighter vein: "All of these

careful prefigurings may be entirely beside the mark, Mr. Van Lew; I

hope the event may prove that they were. And until the thing actually

hits us, we may as well keep up appearances. Don't let the women worry

any more than they have to."



"You can trust me for that," laughed the athlete, and he went his way

to begin the keeping up of appearances.



At seven o'clock, just as Lidgerwood was finishing the luncheon which

had been sent up to his office from the station kitchen, Train 203

pulled in from the east; and a little later Dawson's belated

wrecking-train trailed up from the west, bringing the "cripples" from

the Little Butte disaster. Not to leave anything undone, Lidgerwood

summoned McCloskey by a touch of the buzzer-push connecting with the

trainmaster's office.



"No word from Judson yet?" he asked, when McCloskey's homely face

appeared in the doorway.



"No, not yet," was the reply.



"Let me know when you hear from him; and in the meantime I wish you

would go downstairs and see if Gridley came in on 203. If he did, bring

him and Benson up here and we'll hold a council of war. If you see

Dawson, send him home to his mother and sister. He can report to me

later, if he finds it safe to leave his womankind."



The door of the outer office had barely closed behind McCloskey when

that opening into the corridor swung upon its hinges to admit the

master-mechanic. He was dusty and travel-stained, but nothing seemed to

stale his genial good-humor.



"Well, well, Mr. Lidgerwood! so the hoboes have asked to see your hand,

at last, have they?" he began sympathetically. "I heard of it over in

Copah, just in good time to let me catch 203. You're not going to let

them make you show down, are you?"



"No," said Lidgerwood.



"That's right; that's precisely the way to stack it up. Of course, you

know you can count on me. I've got a beautiful lot of pirates over in

the shops, but we'll try to hold them level." Then, in the same even

tone: "They tell me we went into the hole again last night, over at

Little Butte. Pretty bad?"



"Very bad; six killed outright, and as many more to bury later on, I am

told by the Red Butte doctors."



"Heavens and earth! The men are calling it a broken rail; was it?"



"A loosened rail," corrected Lidgerwood.



The master-mechanic's eyes narrowed.



"Natural?" he asked.



"No, artificial."



Gridley swore savagely.



"This thing's got to stop, Lidgerwood! Sift it, sift it to the bottom!

Whom do you suspect?"



It was a plain truth, though an unintentionally misleading one, that the

superintendent put into his reply.



"I don't suspect any one, Gridley," he began, and he was going on to say

that suspicion had grown to certainty, when the latch of the door

opening from the outer office clicked again and McCloskey came in with

Benson. The master-mechanic excused himself abruptly when he saw who the

trainmaster's follower was.



"I'll go and get something to eat," he said hurriedly; "after which I'll

pick up a few men whom we can depend upon and garrison the shops. Send

over for me if you need me."



Benson looked hard at the door which was still quivering under Gridley's

outgoing slam. And when the master-mechanic's tread was no longer

audible in the upper corridor, the young engineer turned to the man at

the desk to say: "What tickled the boss machinist, Lidgerwood?"



"I don't know. Why?"



Benson looked at McCloskey.



"Just as we came in, he was standing over you with a look in his eyes as

if he were about to murder you, and couldn't quite make up his mind as

to the simplest way of doing it. Then the look changed to his usual

cast-iron smile in the flirt of a flea's hind leg--at some joke you were

telling, I took it."



Being careful and troubled about many things, Lidgerwood missed the

point of Benson's remark; could not remember, when he tried, just what

it was that he had been saying to Gridley when the interruption came.

But the matter was easily dismissed. Having his two chief lieutenants

before him, the superintendent seized the opportunity to outline the

plan of campaign for the night. McCloskey was to stay by the wires, with

Callahan to share his watch. Dawson, when he should come down, was to

pick up a few of the loyal enginemen and guard the roundhouse. Benson

was to take charge of the yards, keeping his eye on the Nadia. At the

first indication of an outbreak, he was to pass the word to Van Lew, who

would immediately transfer the private-car party to the second-floor

offices in the head-quarters building.



"That is all," was Lidgerwood's summing up, when he had made his

dispositions like a careful commander-in-chief; "all but one thing. Mac,

have you seen anything of Hallock?"



"Not since the middle of the afternoon," was the prompt reply.



"And Judson has not yet reported?"



"No."



"Well--this is for you, Benson--Mac already knows it: Judson is out

looking for Hallock. He has a warrant for Hallock's arrest."



Benson's eyes narrowed.



"Then you have found the ringleader at last, have you?" he asked.



"I am sorry to say that there doesn't seem to be any doubt of Hallock's

guilt. The arrest will be made quietly. Judson understands that. There

is another man that we've got to have, and there is no time just now to

go after him."



"Who is the other man?" asked Benson.



"It is Flemister; the man who has the stolen switching-engine boxed up

in a power-house built out of planks sawed from your Gloria

bridge-timbers."



"I told you so!" exclaimed the young engineer. "By Jove! I'll never

forgive you if you don't send him to the rock-pile for that,

Lidgerwood!"



"I have promised to hang him," said the superintendent soberly--"him and

the man who has been working with him."



"And that's Rankin Hallock!" cut in the trainmaster vindictively, and

his scowl was grotesquely hideous. "Can you hang them, Mr. Lidgerwood?"



"Yes. Flemister, and a man whom Judson has identified as Hallock, were

the two who ditched 204 at Silver Switch last night. The charge in

Judson's warrant reads,'train-wrecking and murder.'"



The trainmaster smote the desk with his fist.



"I'll add one more strand to the rope--Hallock's rope," he gritted

ferociously. "You remember what I told you about that loosened rail that

caused the wreck in the Crosswater Hills? You said Hallock had gone to

Navajo to see Cruikshanks; he did go to Navajo, but he got there just

exactly four hours after 202 had gone on past Navajo, and he came on

foot, walking down the track from the Hills!"



"Where did you get that?" asked Lidgerwood quickly.



"From the agent at Navajo. I wasn't satisfied with the way it shaped up,

and I did a little investigating on my own hook."



"Pass him up," said Benson briefly, "and let's go over this lay-out for

to-night again. I shall be out of touch down in the yards, and I want to

get it straight in my head."



Lidgerwood went carefully over the details again, and again cautioned

Benson about the Nadia and its party. From that the talk ran upon the

ill luck which had projected the pleasure-party into the thick of

things; upon Mrs. Brewster's obstinacy--which Lidgerwood most

inconsistently defended--and upon the probability of the president's

return from the Copperette--also in the thick of things, and it was

close upon eight o'clock when the two lieutenants went to their

respective posts.



It was fully an hour farther along, and the tense strain of suspense was

beginning to tell upon the man who sat thoughtful and alone in the

second-floor office of the Crow's Nest, when Benson ran up to report the

situation in the yards.



"Everything quiet so far," was the news he brought. "We've got the Nadia

on the east spur, where the folks can slip out and make their get-away,

if they have to. There are several little squads of the discharged men

hanging around, but not many more than usual. The east and west yards

are clear, and the three sections of the mid-night freight are crewed

and ready to pull out when the time comes. The folkses are playing dummy

whist in the Nadia; and Gridley is holding the fort at the shops with

the toughest-looking lot of myrmidons you ever laid your eyes on."



Once again Lidgerwood was making tiny squares on his desk blotter.



"I'm thankful that the news of the strike got to Copah in time to bring

Gridley over on 203," he said.



Benson's boyish eyes opened to their widest angle.



"Did he say he came in on Two-three?" he asked.



"He did."



"Well, that's odd--devilish odd! I was on that train, and I rambled it

from one end to the other--which is a bad habit I have when I'm trying

to kill travel-time. Gridley isn't a man to be easily overlooked. Reckon

he was riding on the brake-beams? He was dirty enough to make the guess

good. Hello, Fred"--this to Dawson, who had at that moment let himself

in through the deserted outer office--"we were just talking about your

boss, and wondering how he got here from Copah on Two-three without my

seeing him."



"He didn't come from Copah," said the draftsman briefly. "He came in

with me from the west, on the wrecking-train. He was in Red Butte, and

he had an engine bring him down to Silver Switch, where he caught us

just as we were pulling out."