Thereupon, quite in keeping with the militant state of affairs on a harassed Red Butte Western, ensued a sharp and abusive wire quarrel at long range; and when it was over, Timanyoni was temporarily stricken from the list of night telegraph stations pending the hastening forward of a relief operator, to take the place of the one who, with many profane objurgations curiously clipped in rattling Morse, had wired his opinion of McCloskey and the new superintendent, closely interwoven with his resignation.

It was after dark that evening when Lidgerwood closed his desk on the pencilled blotting-pad and groped his way down the unlighted stair to the Crow’s Nest platform.

The day passenger from the east was in, and the hostler had just coupled Engine 266 to the train for the night run to Red Butte.  Lidgerwood marked the engine’s number, and saw Dawson talking to Williams, the engineer, as he turned the corner at the passenger-station end of the building.  Later, when he was crossing the open plaza separating the railroad yard from the town, he thought he heard the draftsman’s step behind him, and waited for Dawson to come up.

[Illustration:  His hand was on the latch of the door-yard gate when a man rose out of the gloom.]

The rearward darkness, made blacker by contrast with the white beam of the 266’s headlight, yielding no one and no further sounds, he went on, past the tar-paper-covered hotel, past the flanking of saloons and the false-fronted shops, past the “Arcade” with its crimson sidewalk eye setting the danger signal for all who should enter Red-Light Sammy’s, and so up to the mesa and to the cottage of seven-o’clock dinners.

His hand was on the latch of the dooryard gate when a man rose out of the gloom—­out of the ground at his feet, as it appeared to Lidgerwood—­and in the twinkling of an eye the night and the starry dome of it were effaced for the superintendent in a flash of red lightning and a thunder-clap louder than the crash of worlds.

When he began to realize again, Dawson was helping him to his feet, and the draftsman’s mother was calling anxiously from the door.

“What was it?” Lidgerwood asked, still dazed and half blinded.

“A man tried to kill you,” said Dawson in his most matter-of-fact tone.  “I happened along just in time to joggle his arm.  That, and your quick drop, did the business.  Not hurt, are you?”

Lidgerwood was gripping the gate and trying to steady himself.  A chill, like a violent attack of ague, was shaking him to the bone.

“No,” he returned, mastering the chattering teeth by the supremest effort of will.  “Thanks to you, I guess—­I’m—­not hurt.  Who w-was the man?”

“It was Rufford.  He followed you from the Crow’s Nest.  Williams saw him and put me on, so I followed him.”

“Williams?  Then he isn’t——­”

“No,” said Dawson, anticipating the query.  “He is with us, and he is swinging the best of the engineers into line.  But come into the house and let me give you a drop of whiskey.  This thing has got on your nerves a bit—­and no wonder.”