“Suffering Moses! but this is a nice thing for the president of the road to see as he comes along!  Wouldn’t the luck we’re having make a dog sick?”

Lidgerwood shook his head.  “That isn’t the worst of it, Mac.  Mr. Brewster isn’t a railroad man, and he will probably think this is all in the day’s work.  But he is going to stop at Angels and go over to his copper mine, which means that he will camp right down in the midst of the mix-up.  I’d cheerfully give a year’s salary to have him stay away a few weeks longer.”

McCloskey was not a swearing man in the Red Desert sense of the term, but now his comment was an explosive exclamation naming the conventional place of future punishment.  It was the only word he could find adequately to express his feelings.

The superintendent changed the subject.

“Who is your foreman, Mac?” he inquired, as a huge mass of the tangled scrap was seen to rise at the end of the smaller derrick’s grapple.

“Judson,” said McCloskey shortly.  “He asked leave to come along as a laborer, and when I found that he knew more about train-scrapping than I did, I promoted him.”  There was something like defiance in the trainmaster’s tone.

“From the way in which you say it, I infer that you don’t expect me to approve,” said Lidgerwood judicially.

McCloskey had been without sleep for a good many hours, and his patience was tenuous.  The derby hat was tilted to its most contentious angle when he said: 

“I can’t fight for you when you’re right, and not fight against you when I think you are wrong, Mr. Lidgerwood.  You can have my head any time you want it.”

“You think I should break my word and take Judson back?”

“I think, and the few men who are still with us think, that you ought to give the man who stood in the breach for you a chance to earn bread and meat for his wife and babies,” snapped McCloskey, who had gone too far to retreat.

Lidgerwood was frowning when he replied:  “You don’t see the point involved.  I can’t reward Judson for what you, yourself, admit was a personal service.  I have said that no drunkard shall pull a train on this division.  Judson is no less a drink-maniac for the fact that he arrested Rufford when everybody else was afraid to.”

McCloskey was mollified a little.

“He says he has quit drinking, and I believe him this time.  But this job I’ve given him isn’t pulling trains.”

“No; and if you have cooled off enough, you may remember that I haven’t yet disapproved your action.  I don’t disapprove.  Give him anything you like where a possible relapse on his part won’t involve the lives of other people.  Is that what you want me to say?”

“I was hot,” said the trainmaster, gruffly apologetic.  “We’ve got none too many friends to stand by us when the pinch comes, and we were losing them every day you held out against Judson.”

“I’m still holding out on the original count.  Judson can’t run an engine for me until he has proved conclusively and beyond question that he has quit the whiskey.  Whatever other work you can find for him——­”