Lidgerwood left his chair and went again to consult the time-table.  A brief comparison of miles with minutes explained the effect without excusing the cause.  Train 201’s schedule from the summit station to the desert level was very fast; and Williams, nursing his hot box, either could not, or would not, increase his lead.

At first, Lidgerwood, anticipating rebellion, was inclined to charge the hazardous situation to intention on the part of his own train crew.  Having a good chance to lie out of it if they were accused, Williams and Bradford might be deliberately trying the nerve of the new boss.  The presumption did not breed fear; it bred wrath, hot and vindictive.  Two sharp tugs at the signal-cord brought Bradford from the engine.  The memory of the conductor’s gruff replies and easy impudence was fresh enough to make Lidgerwood’s reprimand harsh.

“Do you call this railroading?” he rasped, pointing backward to the menace.  “Don’t you know that we are on 201’s time?”

Bradford scowled in surly antagonism.

“That blamed hot box—­” he began, but Lidgerwood cut him off short.

“The hot box has nothing to do with the case.  You are not hired to take chances, or to hold out regular trains.  Go forward and tell your engineer to speed up and get out of the way.”

“I got my clearance at the summit, and I ain’t despatchin’ trains on this jerk-water railroad,” observed the conductor coolly.  Then he added, with a shade less of the belligerent disinterest:  “Williams can’t speed up.  That housin’ under the tender is about ready to blaze up and set the woods afire again, right now.”

Once more Lidgerwood turned to the time-card.  It was twenty miles farther along to the next telegraph station, and he heaped up wrath against the day of wrath in store for a despatcher who would recklessly turn two trains loose and out of his reach under such critical conditions, for thirty hazardous mountain miles.

Bradford, looking on sullenly, mistook the new boss’s frown for more to follow, with himself for the target, and was moving away.  Lidgerwood pointed to a chair with a curt, “Sit down!” and the conductor obeyed reluctantly.

“You say you have your clearance card, and that you are not despatching trains,” he went on evenly, “but neither fact relieves you of your responsibility.  It was your duty to make sure that the despatcher fully understood the situation at Crosswater, and to refuse to pull out ahead of the passenger without something more definite than a formal permit.  Weren’t you taught that?  Where did you learn to run trains?”

It was an opening for hard words, but the conductor let it pass.  Something in the steady, business-like tone, or in the shrewdly appraisive eyes, turned Bradford the potential mutineer into Bradford the possible partisan.