“Yes, I know all that,” interrupted the man in the chair.  “The road and the region need civilizing—­need it badly.  That is one of the reasons why I am trying to persuade you to take hold.  You are long on civilization, Howard.”

“Not on the kind which has to be inculcated by main strength and a cheerful disregard for consequences.  I’m no scrapper.”

To the eye of appraisal, Lidgerwood’s personal appearance bore out the peaceable assertion to the final well-groomed detail.  Compactly built and neatly, brawn and bulk were conspicuously lacking; and the thin, intellectual face was made to appear still thinner by the pointed cut of the closely trimmed brown beard.  The eyes were alert and not wanting in steadfastness; but they had a trick of seeming to look beyond, rather than directly at, the visual object.  A physiognomist would have classified him as a man of studious habit with the leisure to indulge it, and unconsciously he dressed the part.

In his outspoken moments, which were rare, he was given to railing against the fate which had made him a round peg in a square hole; a technical engineer and a man of action, when his earlier tastes and inclinations had drawn him in other directions.  But the temperamental qualities; the niceties, the exactness, the thoroughness, which, finding no outlet in an artistic calling, had made him a master in his unchosen profession, were well known to Mr. Stuart Ford, first vice-president of the Pacific Southwestern System.  And, it was largely for the sake of these qualities that Ford locked his hands over one knee and spoke as a man and a comrade.

“Let me tell you, Howard—­you’ve no idea what a savage fight we’ve had in New York, absorbing these same demoralized three hundred miles.  You know why we were obliged to have them.  If the Transcontinental had beaten us, it meant that our competitor would build over here from Jack’s Canyon, divide the Copah business with us, and have a line three hundred miles nearer to the Nevada gold-fields than ours.”

“I understand,” said Lidgerwood; and the vice-president went on.

“Since the failure of the Red Butte ‘pocket’ mines, the road and the country it traverses have been practically given over to the cowmen, the gulch miners, the rustlers, and the drift from the big camps elsewhere.  In New York and on the Street, Red Butte Western was regarded as an exploded cartridge—­a kite without a tail.  It was only a few weeks ago that it dawned upon our executive committee that this particular kite without a tail offered us a ready-made jump of three hundred miles toward Tonopah and Goldfield.  We began buying quietly for the control with the stock at nineteen.  Naturally the Transcontinental people caught on, and in twenty-four hours we were at it, hammer and tongs.”

Lidgerwood nodded.  “I kept up with it in the newspapers,” he cut in.

“The newspapers didn’t print the whole story; not by many chapters,” was the qualifying rejoinder.  “When the stock had gone to par and beyond, our own crowd went back on us; and after it had passed the two-hundred mark, Adair and I were fighting it practically alone.  Even President Brewster lost his nerve.  He wanted to make a hedging compromise with the Transcontinental brokers just before we swung over the summit with the final five hundred shares we needed.”