“Go and clear for the wrecking-train, and have some one in your office notify the shops and the yard,” he said briskly, compelling the attention of the one-eyed despatcher; and when Callahan was gone:  “Now, Mac, get out your map and post me.  I’m a little lame on geography yet.  Where is Gloria Siding?”

McCloskey found a blue-print map of the line and traced the course of the western division among the foot-hills to the base of the Great Timanyonis, and through the Timanyoni Canyon to a park-like valley, shut in by the great range on the east and north, and by the Little Timanyonis and the Hophras on the west and south.  At a point midway of the valley his stubby forefinger rested.

“That’s Gloria,” he said, “and here’s Little Butte, twelve miles beyond.”

“Good ground?” queried Lidgerwood.

“As pretty a stretch as there is anywhere west of the desert; reminds you of a Missouri bottom, with the river on one side and the hills a mile away on the other.  I don’t know what excuse those hoboes could find for piling a train in the ditch there.”

“We’ll hear the excuse later,” said Lidgerwood.  “Now, tell me what sort of a wrecking-plant we have?”

“The best in the bunch,” asserted the trainmaster.  “Gridley’s is the one department that has been kept up to date and in good fighting trim.  We have one wrecking-crane that will pick up any of the big freight-pullers, and a lighter one that isn’t half bad.”

“Who is your wrecking-boss?”

“Gridley—­when he feels like going out.  He can clear a main line quicker than any man we’ve ever had.”

“He will go with us to-day?”

“I suppose so.  He is in town and he’s—­sober.”

The new superintendent caught at the hesitant word.

“Drinks, does he?”

“Not much while he is on the job.  But he disappears periodically and comes back looking something the worse for wear.  They tell tough stories about him over in Copah.”

Lidgerwood dropped the master-mechanic as he had dropped the offending trainmen who had put Train 71 in the ditch at Gloria where, according to McCloskey, there should be no ditch.

“I’ll go and run through my desk mail and fill Hallock up while you are making ready,” he said.  “Call me when the train is made up.”

Passing through the corridor on the way to his private office back of Hallock’s room, Lidgerwood saw that the wreck call had already reached the shops.  A big, bearded man with a soft hat pulled over his eyes was directing the make-up of a train on the repair track, and the yard engine was pulling an enormous crane down from its spur beyond the coal-chutes.  Around the man in the soft hat the wrecking-crew was gathering:  shopmen for the greater part, as a crew of a master mechanic’s choosing would be.

As the event proved, there was little time for the doing of the preliminary work which Lidgerwood had meant to do.  In the midst of the letter-sorting, McCloskey put his head in at the door of the private office.