“Can you give us a few minutes, Mr. Loring?” asked M’Tosh, when Loring had shaken hands with them, not as subordinates.

“Surely.  My time is not very valuable, just at present.  Come in, and I’ll see if Mr. Kent has left me any cigars.”

“Humph!” said Durgan, when the ex-manager had gone into Kent’s room to rummage for the smoke offering.  “And they give us the major in the place of such a man as that!” with a jerk of his thumb toward the door of the bedroom.

“Come off!” warned M’Tosh; “he’ll hear you.”  And when Loring came back with the cigars there was dry humor in his eye.

“You mustn’t let your loyalty to the old guard get you into trouble with the receiver,” he cautioned; and they both smiled.

“The trouble hasn’t waited for our bringing,” said M’Tosh.  “That is why we are here.  Durgan has soured on his job, and I’m more than sick of mine.  It’s hell, Mr. Loring.  I have been at it twenty years, and I never saw such crazy railroading in any one of them.”

“Bad management, you mean?”

“Bad management at the top, and rotten demoralization at the bottom as a natural consequence.  We can’t be sure of getting a train out of the yards without accident.  Dixon is as careful a man as ever stepped on an engine, and he smashed a farmer’s wagon and killed the farmer this morning within two train-lengths of the shop junction.”

“Drunk?” inquired the ex-manager.

“Never a drop; Dixon’s a Prohibitionist, dyed in the wool.  But just before he took his train, Halkett had him in the sweat-box, jacking him up for not making his time.  He came out red in the face, jumped on his engine, and yanked the Flyer down the yards forty miles an hour.”

“And what is your trouble, Durgan?” asked Loring.

“Another side of the same thing.  I wrote Major Guilford yesterday, telling him that six pit gangs, all the roundhouse ‘emergencies’ and two outdoor repair squads couldn’t begin to keep the cripples moving; and within a week every one of the labor unions has kicked through its grievance committee.  His reply is an order announcing a blanket cut in wages, to go into effect the first of the month.  That means a strike and a general tie-up.”

Loring shook his head regretfully.

“It hurts me,” he admitted.  “We had the best-handled piece of railroad in the West, and I give the credit to the men that did the handling.  And to have it wrecked by a gang of incompetent salary-grabbers——­”

The two left-overs nodded.

“That’s just it, Mr. Loring,” said M’Tosh.  “And we’re here to ask you if it’s worth while for us to stick to the wreck any longer.  Are you folks doing anything?”

“We have been trying all legal means to break the grip of the combination—­yes.”

“And what are the prospects?” It was the master-mechanic who wanted to know.

“They are not very bright at present, I must confess.  We have the entire political ring to fight, and the odds are overwhelming.”