Since Gridley was on the ground, Lidgerwood and McCloskey stood aside and let the master-mechanic organize the attack.  Though the problem of track-clearing, on level ground and with a convenient siding at hand for the sorting and shifting, was a simple one, there was still a chance for an exhibition of time-saving and speed, and Gridley gave it.  There was never a false move made or a tentative one, and when the huge lifting-crane went into action, Lidgerwood grew warmly enthusiastic.

“Gridley certainly knows his business,” he said to McCloskey.  “The Red Butte Western doesn’t need any better wrecking-boss than it has right now.”

“He can do the job, when he feels like it,” admitted the trainmaster sourly.

“But he doesn’t often feel like it?  You can’t blame him for that.  Picking up wrecks isn’t fairly a part of a master-mechanic’s duty.”

“That is what he says, and he doesn’t trouble himself to go when it isn’t convenient.  I have a notion he wouldn’t be here to-day if you weren’t.”

It was plainly evident that McCloskey meant more than he said, but once again Lidgerwood refused to go behind the returns.  He felt that he had been prejudiced against Gridley at the outset, unduly so, he was beginning to think, and even-handed fairness to all must be the watchword in the campaign of reorganization.

“Since we seem to be more ornamental than useful on this job, you might give me another lesson in Red Butte geography, Mac,” he said, purposely changing the subject.  “Where are the gulch mines?”

The trainmaster explained painstakingly, squatting to trace a rude map in the sand at the track-side.  Hereaway, twelve miles to the westward, lay Little Butte, where the line swept a great curve to the north and so continued on to Red Butte.  Along the northward stretch, and in the foot-hills of the Little Timanyonis, were the placers, most of them productive, but none of them rich enough to stimulate a rush.

Here, where the river made a quick turn, was the butte from which the station of Little Butte took its name—­the superintendent might see its wooded summit rising above the lower hills intervening.  It was a long, narrow ridge, more like a hogback than a true mountain, and it held a silver mine, Flemister’s, which was a moderately heavy shipper.  The vein had been followed completely through the ridge, and the spur track in the eastern gulch, which had originally served it, had been abandoned and a new spur built up along the western foot of the butte, with a main line connection at Little Butte.  Up here, ten miles above Little Butte, was a bauxite mine, with a spur; and here....

McCloskey went on, industriously drawing lines in the sand, and Lidgerwood sat on a cross-tie end and conned his lesson.  Below the siding the big crane was heaving the derailed cars into line with methodical precision, but now it was Gridley’s shop foreman who was giving the orders.  The master-mechanic had gone aside to hold converse with a man who had driven up in a buckboard, coming from the direction in which Little Butte lay.