The man who rose up to greet him was bearded, heavy-shouldered, and hollow-eyed, and he was past middle age.  Green cardboard cones protecting his shirt-sleeves, and a shade of the same material visoring the sunken eyes, were the only clerkly suggestions about him.  Since he merely stood up and ran his fingers through his thick black hair, with no more than an abstracted “Good-afternoon” for speech, Lidgerwood was left to guess at his identity.

“You are Mr. Hallock?” Lidgerwood made the guess without offering to shake hands, the high, box-like desk forbidding the attempt.

“Yes.”  The answer was neither antagonistic nor placatory; it was merely colorless.

“My name is Lidgerwood.  You have heard of my appointment?”

Again the colorless “Yes.”

Lidgerwood saw no good end to be subserved by postponing the inevitable.

“Mr. Ford spoke to me about you last night.  He told me that you had been Mr. Cumberley’s chief clerk, and that since Cumberley’s resignation you have been acting superintendent of the Red Butte Western.  Do you want to stay on as my lieutenant?”

For the long minute that Hallock took before replying, the loose-lipped mouth under the shaggy mustache seemed to have lost the power of speech.  But when the words finally came, they were shorn of all euphemism.

“I suppose I ought to tell you to go straight to hell, Mr. Lidgerwood, put on my coat and walk out,” said this most singular of all railway subordinates.  “By all the rules of the game, this job belongs to me.  What I’ve gone through to earn it, you nor any other man will ever know.  If I stay, I’ll wish I hadn’t; and so will you.  You’d better give me a time-check and let me go.”

Lidgerwood walked to the window and once more stared out upon the dreary prospect, bounded by the bluffs of the second mesa.  A horseman was ambling down the single street of the town, weaving in his saddle, and giving vent to a series of Indian war-whoops.  Lidgerwood saw the drunken cowboy only with the outward eye.  And when he turned back to the man in the rifle-pit desk, he could not have told why the words of regret and dismissal which he had made up his mind to say, refused to come.  But they did refuse, and what he said was not at all what he had intended to say.

“If I can’t quite match your frankness, Mr. Hallock, it is because my early education was neglected.  But I’ll say this:  I appreciate your disappointment; I know what it means to a man situated as you are.  Notwithstanding, I want you to stay with me.  I’ll say more; I shall take it as a personal favor if you will stay.”

“You’ll be sorry for it if I do,” was the ungracious rejoinder.

“Not because you will do anything to make me sorry, I am sure,” said the new superintendent, in his evenest tone.  And then, as if the matter were definitely settled:  “I’d like to have a word with the trainmaster, Mr. McCloskey.  May I trouble you to tell me which is his office?”