“Colgan wired that you were on Mr. Brewster’s special, and I was waiting on the chance that you might want to rush something through when you got in,” returned the young Irishman, reaching mechanically for his note-book.

“I shall want to rush a lot of it through after a while, but you’d better go and get your supper now and come back fresh for it,” said the superintendent, who was always humane to every one but himself.  “Was there anything special in to-day’s mail?”

“Only this,” turning up a letter marked “Immediate” and bearing the cancellation stamp of the postal car which had passed eastward on Train 202.

Lidgerwood read the marked letter twice before he placed it face down in the “unanswered” basket.  It was from Flemister, and it called for a decision which the superintendent was willing to postpone for the moment.  After he had read thoughtfully through everything else on the waiting list, he took up the mine-owner’s letter again.  All things considered, it was a little puzzling.  He had not seen Flemister since the day of the rather spiteful conversation, with the building-and-loan theft for a topic, and on that occasion the mine-owner had gone away with threats in his mouth.  Yet his letter was distinctly friendly, conveying an offer of neighborly help.

The occasion for the neighborliness arose upon a right-of-way involvement.  Acting under instructions from Vice-President Ford, Lidgerwood had already begun to move in the matter of extending the Red Butte Western toward the Nevada gold-fields, and Benson had been running preliminary surveys and making estimates of cost.  Of the two more feasible routes, that which left the main line at Little Butte, turning southward up the Wire-Silver gulch, had been favorably reported on by the engineer.  The right of way over this route, save for a few miles through an upland valley of cattle ranches, could be acquired from the government, and among the ranch owners only one was disposed to fight the coming of the railroad—­for a purely mercenary purpose, Benson declared.

It was about this man, James Grofield, that Flemister wrote.  The ranchman, so the letter stated, had passed through Little Butte early in the day, on his way to Red Butte.  He would be returning by the accommodation late in the afternoon, and would stop at the Wire-Silver mine, where he had stabled his horses.  For some reason he had taken a dislike to Benson, but if Lidgerwood could make it convenient to come over to Little Butte on the evening passenger-train from Angels, the writer of the letter would arrange to keep Grofield over-night, and the right-of-way matter could doubtless be settled satisfactorily.

This was the substance of the mine-owner’s letter, and if Lidgerwood hesitated it was partly because he was suspicious of Flemister’s sudden friendliness.  Then the motive—­Flemister’s motive—­suggested itself, and the suspicion was put to sleep.  The Wire-Silver mine was five miles distant from the main line at Little Butte, at the end of a spur; if the extension should be built, it would be a main-line station, with all the advantages accruing therefrom.  Flemister was merely putting the personal animosities aside for a good and sufficient business reason.