“You say Dawson isn’t in?  He didn’t have more than five or six hours’ work on that wreck.  What is the matter?”

“He had a bit of bad luck.  He got the main line cleared early this morning, but in shifting his train and the ‘cripples’ on the abandoned spur, a culvert broke and let the big crane off.  He has been all day getting it on again, but he’ll be in before dark—­so Goodloe says.”

“And how about Benson?” queried Lidgerwood.

“He’s on 203.  I caught him on the other side of Crosswater, and took the liberty of signing your name to a wire calling him in.”

“That was right.  With this private-car party on our hands, we may need every man we can depend upon.  I wish Gridley were here.  He could handle the shop outfit.  I’m rather surprised that he should be away.  He must have known that the volcano was about ready to spout.”

“Gridley’s a law to himself,” said the trainmaster.  “Sometimes I think he’s all right, and at other times I catch myself wondering if he wouldn’t tread on me like I was a cockroach, if I happened to be in his way.”

Having had exactly the same feeling, and quite without reason, Lidgerwood generously defended the absent master-mechanic.

“That is prejudice, Mac, and you mustn’t give it room.  Gridley’s all right.  We mustn’t forget that his department, thus far, is the only one that hasn’t given us trouble and doesn’t seem likely to give us trouble.  I wish I could say as much for the force here in the Crows’ Nest.”

“With a single exception, you can—­to-day,” said McCloskey quickly.  “I’ve cleaned house.  There is only one man under this roof at this minute who won’t fight for you at the drop of the hat.”

“And that one is——?”

The trainmaster jerked his head toward the outer office.  “It’s the man out there—­or who was out there when I came through; the one you and I haven’t been agreeing on.”

“Hallock?  Is he here?”

“Sure; he’s been here since early this morning.”

“But how—­” Lidgerwood’s thought went swiftly backward over the events of the preceding night.  Judson’s story had left Hallock somewhere in the vicinity of the Wire-Silver mine and the wreck at some time about midnight, or a little past, and there had been no train in from that time on until the regular passenger, reaching Angels at noon.  It was McCloskey who relieved the strain of bewilderment.

“How did he get here? you were going to say.  You brought him from somewhere down the road on your special.  He rode on the engine with Williams.”

Lidgerwood pushed his chair back and got up.  It was high time for a reckoning of some sort with the chief clerk.

“Is there anything else, Mac?” he asked, closing his desk.

“Yes; one more thing.  The grievance committee is in session up at the Celestial.  Tryon, who is heading it, sent word down a little while ago that the men would wreck every dollar’s worth of company property in Angels if you didn’t countermand your wire of this morning to Superintendent Leckhard.”