“Yes, you can.  You haven’t exaggerated the conditions on the Red Butte line an atom.  As you say, the operating force is as godless a lot of outlaws as ever ran trains or ditched them.  They all know that the road has been bought and sold, and that pretty sweeping changes are impending.  They are looking for trouble, and are quite ready to help make it.  If you could discharge them in a body, you couldn’t replace them—­the Red Desert having nothing to offer as a dwelling-place for civilized men; and this they know, too.  Howard, I’m telling you right now that it will require a higher brand of courage to go over to Angels and manhandle the Red Butte Western as a division of the P. S-W. than it would to face a dozen highwaymen, if every individual one of the dozen had the drop on you!”

Lidgerwood left his chair and began to pace the narrow limits of the private office, five steps and a turn.  The noisy switching-engine had gone clattering and shrieking down the yard again before he said, “You mean that you are still giving me the chance to make good over yonder in the Red Desert—­after what I have told you?”

“I do; only I’ll make it more binding.  It was optional with you before; it’s a sheer necessity now.  You’ve got to go.”

Again Lidgerwood took time to reflect, tramping the floor, with his head down and his hands in the pockets of the correct coat.  In the end he yielded, as the vice-president’s subjects commonly did.

“I’ll go, if you still insist upon it,” was the slowly spoken decision.  “There will doubtless be plenty of trouble, and I shall probably show the yellow streak—­for the last time, perhaps.  It’s the kind of an outfit to kill a coward for the pure pleasure of it, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Well,” said the man in the swing-chair, calmly, “maybe you need a little killing, Howard.  Had you ever thought of that?”

A gray look came into Lidgerwood’s face.

“Maybe I do.”

A little silence supervened.  Then Ford plunged into detail.

“Now that you are fairly committed, sit down and let me give you an idea of what you’ll find at Angels in the way of a head-quarters outfit.  Draw up here and we’ll go over the lay-out together.”

A busy hour had elapsed, and the gong of the station dining-room below was adding its raucous clamor to the drumming thunder of the incoming train from Green Butte, when the vice-president concluded his outline sketch of the Red Butte Western conditions.

“Of course, you know that you will have a free hand.  We have already cleared the decks for you.  As an independent road, the Red Butte line had the usual executive organization in miniature:  Cumberley had the title of general superintendent, but his authority, when he cared to assert it, was really that of general manager.  Under him, in the head-quarters staff at Angels, there was an auditor—­who also acted as paymaster, a general freight and passenger