The big engineer nodded, but he was still unconvinced when he made the stop for the siding at Last Chance.  After the fireman had dropped off to set the switch for the following train, Williams put the unconvincement into words.

“That kind of sand is all right in God’s country, Andy, but out here in the nearer edges of hell you got to know how to fight with pitchforks and such other tools as come handy.  The new boss may be that kind of a scrapper, but he sure don’t look it.  You know as well as I do that men like Rufford and ‘Cat’ Biggs and Red-Light Sammy’ll eat him alive, just for the fun of it, if he can’t make out to throw lead quicker’n they can.  And that ain’t saying anything about the hobo outfit he’ll have to go up against on this make-b’lieve railroad.”

“No,” agreed Bradford, ruminating thoughtfully.  And then, by way of rounding out the subject:  “Here’s hopin’ his nerve is as good as his clothes.  I don’t love a Mongolian any better’n you do, Bat, but the way he hustled to save that little brown man’s skin sort o’ got next to me; it sure did.  Says I, ’A man that’ll do that won’t go round hunting a chance to kick a fice-dog just because the fice don’t happen to be a blooded bull-terrier.’”

Williams, brawny and broad-chested, leaned against his box, his bare arms folded and his short pipe at the disputatious angle.

“He’d better have nerve, or get some,” he commented.  “T’otherways it’s him for an early wooden overcoat and a trip back home in the express-car.  After which, let me tell you, Andy, that man Ford’ll sift this cussed country through a flour-shaker but what he’ll cinch the outfit that does it.  You write that out in your car-report.”

Back in the service-car Lidgerwood was sitting quietly in the doorway, smoking his delayed after-breakfast cigar, and timing the up-coming passenger-train, watch in hand.  Carter was ten minutes, to the exact second, behind his schedule time when the train thundered past on the main track, and Lidgerwood pocketed his watch with a smile of satisfaction.  It was the first small victory in the campaign for reform.

Later, however, when the special was once more in motion westward, the desert laid hold upon him with the grip which first benumbs, then breeds dull rage, and finally makes men mad.  Mile after mile the glistening rails sped backward into a shimmering haze of red dust.  The glow of the breathless forenoon was like the blinding brightness of a forge-fire.  To right and left the great treeless plain rose to bare buttes, backed by still barer mountains.  Let the train speed as it would, there was always the same wearying prospect, devoid of interest, empty of human landmarks.  Only the blazing sun swung from side to side with the slow veerings of the track:  what answered for a horizon seemed never to change, never to move.