The contortions of the trainmaster’s homely features indicated an inward struggle of the last-resort nature.  When he had reached a conclusion he spat it out.

“You haven’t asked my advice, Mr. Lidgerwood, but here it is anyway.  Flemister, the owner of the Wire-Silver mine over in Timanyoni Park, was the president of that building and loan outfit.  He and Hallock are at daggers drawn, for some reason that I’ve never understood.  If you could get them together, perhaps they could make some sort of a statement that would quiet the kickers for the time being, at any rate.”

Lidgerwood looked up quickly.  “That’s odd,” he said.  “No longer ago than yesterday, Gridley suggested precisely the same thing.”

McCloskey was on his feet again and fumbling behind him for the door-knob.

“I’m all in,” he grimaced.  “When it comes to figuring with Gridley and Flemister and Hallock all in the same breath, I’m done.”

Lidgerwood made a memorandum on his desk calendar to take the building and loan matter up with Hallock the following day.  But another wreck intervened, and after the wreck a conference with the Red Butte mine-owners postponed all office business for an additional twenty-four hours.  It was late in the evening of the third day when the superintendent’s special steamed home from the west, and Lidgerwood, who had dined in his car, went directly to his office in the Crow’s Nest.

He had scarcely settled himself at his desk for an attack upon the accumulation of mail when Benson came in.  It was a trouble call, and the young engineer’s face advertised it.

“It’s no use talking, Lidgerwood,” he began, “I can’t do business on this railroad until you have killed off some of the thugs and highbinders.”

Lidgerwood flung the paper-knife aside and whirled his chair to face the new complaint.

“What is the matter now, Jack?” he snapped.

“Oh, nothing much—­when you’re used to it; only about a thousand dollars’ worth of dimension timber gone glimmering.  That’s all.”

“Tell it out,” rasped the superintendent.  The mine-owners’ conference, from which he had just returned, had been called to protest against the poor service given by the railroad, and knowing his present inability to give better service, he had temporized until it needed but this one more touch of the lash to make him lose his temper hopelessly.

“It’s the Gloria bridge,” said Benson.  “We had the timbers all ready to pull out the old and put in the new, and the shift was to be made to-day between trains.  Last night every stick of the new stock disappeared.”

Lidgerwood was not a profane man, but what he said to Benson in the coruscating minute or two which followed resolved itself into a very fair imitation of profanity, inclusive and world-embracing.

“And you didn’t have wit enough to leave a watchman on the job!” he chafed—­this by way of putting an apex to the pyramid of objurgation.  “By heavens! this thing has got to stop, Benson.  And it’s going to stop, if we have to call out the State militia and picket every cursed mile of this rotten railroad!”