The Taming of Red Butte Western Read online

  "That's right," he assented briskly. "I was just going to suggest that." Then, indicating the men pouring out of the relief train: "I see that my buckies have come up on your train to lend a hand; command us just the same as if we belonged to you. That is what we are here for."

  Van Lew and the collegian walked the three young women a little way up the old spur while the wrecked train's company, the living, the injured, and the dead, were transferring down the line to the relief-train to be taken back to Red Butte. Flemister helped with the other helpers, but Lidgerwood had an uncomfortable feeling that the man was always at his elbow; he was certainly there when the last of the wounded had been carried around the wreck, and the relief-train was ready to back away to Little Butte, where it could be turned upon the mine-spur "Y." It was while the conductor of the train was gathering his volunteers for departure that Flemister said what he had apparently been waiting for a chance to say.

  "I can't help feeling indirectly responsible for this, Mr. Lidgerwood," he began, with something like a return of his habitual self-possession. "If I hadn't asked you to come over here to-night——"

  Lidgerwood interrupted sharply: "What possible difference would that have made, Mr. Flemister?"

  It was not a special weakness of Flemister's to say the damaging thing under pressure of the untoward and unanticipated event; it is rather a common failing of human nature. In a flash he appeared to realize that he had admitted too much.

  "Why—I understood that it was the unexpected sight of your special standing on the 'Y' that made the passenger engineer lose his head," he countered lamely, evidently striving to recover himself and to efface the damaging admission.

  It chanced that they were standing directly opposite the break in the track where the rail ends were still held apart by the small stone. Lidgerwood pointed to the loosened rail, plainly visible under the volleying play of the two opposing headlights.

  "There is the cause of the disaster, Mr. Flemister," he said hotly; "a trap set, not for the passenger-train, but for my special. Somebody set it; somebody who knew almost to a minute when we should reach it. Mr. Flemister, let me tell you something: I don't care any more for my own life than a sane man ought to care, but the murdering devil who pulled the spikes on that rail reached out, unconsciously perhaps, but none the less certainly, after a life that I would safe-guard at the price of my own. Because he did that, I'll spend the last dollar of the fortune my father left me, if needful, in finding that man and hanging him!"

  It was the needed flick of the whip for the shaken nerve of the mine-owner.

  "Ah," said he, "I am sure every one will applaud that determination, Mr. Lidgerwood; applaud it, and help you to see it through." And then, quite as calmly: "I suppose you will go back from here with your special, won't you? You can't get down to Little Butte until the track is repaired, and the wreck cleared. Your going back will make no difference in the right-of-way matter; I can arrange for a meeting with Grofield at any time—in Angels, if you prefer."

  "Yes," said Lidgerwood absently, "I am going back from here."

  "Then I guess I may as well ride down to my jumping-off place with my men; you don't need us any longer. Make my adieux to Miss Brewster and the young ladies, will you, please?"

  Lidgerwood stood at the break in the track for some minutes after the retreating relief-train had disappeared around the steep shoulder of the great hill; was still standing there when Bradford, having once more side-tracked the service-car on the abandoned mine spur, came down to ask for orders.

  "We'll hold the siding until Dawson shows up with the wrecking-train," was the superintendent's reply, "He ought to be here before long. Where are Miss Brewster and her friends?"

  "They are all up at the bonfire. I'm having the Jap launder the car a little before they move in."

  There was another interval of delay, and Lidgerwood held aloof from the group at the fire, pacing a slow sentry beat up and down beside the ditched train, and pausing at either turn to listen for the signal of Dawson's coming. It sounded at length: a series of shrill whistle-shrieks, distance-softened, and presently the drumming of hasting wheels.

  The draftsman was on the engine of the wrecking-train, and he dropped off to join the superintendent.

  "Not so bad for my part of it, this time," was his comment, when he had looked the wreck over. Then he asked the inevitable question: "What did it?"

  Lidgerwood beckoned him down the line and showed him the sprung rail. Dawson examined it carefully before he rose up to say: "Why didn't they spring it the other way, if they wanted to make a thorough job of it? That would have put the train into the river."

  Lidgerwood's reply was as laconic as the query. "Because the trap was set for my car, going west; not for the passenger, going east."

  "Of course," said the draftsman, as one properly disgusted with his own lack of perspicacity. Then, after another and more searching scrutiny, in which the headlight glare of his own engine was helped out by the burning of half a dozen matches: "Whoever did that, knew his business."

  "How do you know?"

  "Little things. A regular spike-puller claw-bar was used—the marks of its heel are still in the ties; the place was chosen to the exact rail-length—just where your engine would begin to hug the outside of the curve. Then the rail is sprung aside barely enough to let the wheel flanges through, and not enough to attract an engineer's attention unless he happened to be looking directly at it, and in a good light."

  The superintendent nodded. "What is your inference?" he asked.

  "Only what I say; that the man knew his business. He is no ordinary hobo; he is more likely in your class, or mine."

  Lidgerwood ground his heel into the gravel, and with the feeling that he was wasting precious time of Dawson's which should go into the track-clearing, asked another question.

  "Fred, tell me; you've known John Judson longer than I have: do you trust him—when he's sober?"

  "Yes." The answer was unqualified.

  "I think I do, but he talks too much. He is over here, somewhere, to-night, shadowing the man who may have done this. He—and the man—came down on 205 this evening. I saw them both board the train at Angels as it was pulling out."

  Dawson looked up quickly, and for once the reticence which was his customary shield was dropped.

  "You're trusting me, now, Mr. Lidgerwood: who was the man? Gridley?"

  "Gridley? No. Why, Dawson, he is the last man I should suspect!"

  "All right; if you think so."

  "Don't you think so?"

  It was the draftsman's turn to hesitate.

  "I'm prejudiced," he confessed at length. "I know Gridley; he is a worse man than a good many people think he is—and not so bad as some others believe him to be. If he thought you, or Benson, were getting in his way—up at the house, you know——"

  Lidgerwood smiled.

  "You don't want him for a brother-in-law; is that it, Fred?"

  "I'd cheerfully help to put my sister in her coffin, if that were the alternative," said Dawson quite calmly.

  "Well," said the superintendent, "he can easily prove an alibi, so far as this wreck is concerned. He went east on 202 yesterday. You knew that, didn't you?"

  "Yes, I knew it, but——"

  "But what?"

  "It doesn't count," said the draftsman, briefly. Then: "Who was the other man, the man who came west on 205?"

  "I hate to say it, Fred, but it was Hallock. We saw the wreck, all of us, from the back platform of my car. Williams had just pulled us out on the old spur. Just before Cranford shut off and jammed on his air-brakes, a man ran down the track, swinging his arms like a madman. Of course, there wasn't the time or any chance for me to identify him, and I saw him only for the second or two intervening, and with his back toward us. But the back looked like Hallock's; I'm afraid it was Hallock's."

  "But why should he weaken at the last moment and try to stop the train?" queried Dawson.

  "You forget
that it was the special, and not the passenger, that was to be wrecked."

  "Sure," said the draftsman.

  "I've told you this, Fred, because, if the man we saw were Hallock, he'll probably turn up while you are at work; Hallock, with Judson at his heels. You'll know what to do in that event?"

  "I guess so: keep a sharp eye on Hallock, and make Judson hold his tongue. I'll do both."

  "That's all," said the superintendent. "Now I'll have Bradford pull us up on the spur to give you room to get your baby crane ahead; then you can pull down and let us out."

  The shifting took some few minutes, and more than a little skill. While it was in progress Lidgerwood was in the service-car, trying to persuade the young women to go to his state-room for a little rest and sleep on the return run. In the midst of the argument, the door opened and Dawson came in. From the instant of his entrance it was plain that he had expected to find the superintendent alone; that he was visibly and painfully embarrassed.

  Lidgerwood excused himself and went quickly to the embarrassed one, who was still anchoring himself to the door-knob. "What is it, Fred?" he asked.

  "Judson: he has just turned up, walking from Little Butte, he says, with a pretty badly bruised ankle. He is loaded to the muzzle with news of some sort, and he wants to know if you'll take him with you to An—" The draftsman, facing the group under the Pintsch globe at the other end of the open compartment, stopped suddenly and his big jaw grew rigid. Then he said, in an awed whisper, "God! let me get out of here!"

  "Tell Judson to come aboard," said Lidgerwood; and the draftsman was twisting at the door-knob when Miriam Holcombe came swiftly down the compartment.

  "Wait, Fred," she said gently. "I have come all the way out here to ask my question, and you mustn't try to stop me: are you going to keep on letting it make us both desolate—for always?" She seemed not to see or to care that Lidgerwood made a listening third.

  Dawson's face had grown suddenly haggard, and he, too, ignored the superintendent.

  "How can you say that to me, Miriam?" he returned almost gruffly. "Day and night I am paying, paying, and the debt never grows less. If it wasn't for my mother and Faith ... but I must go on paying. I killed your brother——"

  "No," she denied, "that was an accident for which you were no more to blame than he was: but you are killing me."

  Lidgerwood stood by, man-like, because he did not know enough to vanish. But Miss Brewster suddenly swept down the compartment to drag him out of the way of those who did not need him.

  "You'd spoil it all, if you could, wouldn't you?" she whispered, in a fine feminine rage; "and after I have moved heaven and earth to get Miriam to come out here for this one special blessed moment! Go and drive the others into a corner, and keep them there."

  Lidgerwood obeyed, quite meekly; and when he looked again, Dawson had gone, and Miss Holcombe was sobbing comfortably in Eleanor's arms.

  Judson boarded the service-car when it was pulled up to the switch; and after Lidgerwood had disposed of his passengers for the run back to Angels, he listened to the ex-engineer's report, sitting quietly while Judson told him of the plot and of the plotters. At the close he said gravely: "You are sure it was Hallock who got off of the night train at Silver Switch and went up the old spur?"

  It was a test question, and the engineer did not answer it off-hand.

  "I'd say yes in a holy minute if there wasn't so blamed much else tied on to it, Mr. Lidgerwood. I was sure, at the time, that it was Hallock; and besides, I heard him talking to Flemister afterward, and I saw his mug shadowed out on the window curtain, just as I've been telling you. All I can say crosswise, is that I didn't get to see him face to face anywhere; in the gulch, or in the office, or in the mine, or any place else."

  "Yet you are convinced, in your own mind?"

  "I am."

  "You say you saw him and Flemister get on the hand-car and pump themselves down the old spur; of course, you couldn't identify either of them from the top of the ridge?"

  "That's a guess," admitted the ex-engineer frankly. "All I could see was that there were two men on the car. But it fits in pretty good: I hear 'em plannin' what-all they're going to do; foller 'em a good bit more'n half-way through the mine tunnel; hike back and hump myself over the hill, and get there in time to see two men—some two men—rushin' out the hand-car to go somewhere. That ain't court evidence, maybe, but I've seen more'n one jury that'd hang both of 'em on it."

  "But the third man, Judson; the man you saw beating with his fists on the bulkhead air-lock: who was he?" persisted Lidgerwood.

  "Now you've got me guessin' again. If I hadn't been dead certain that I saw Hallock go on ahead with Flemister—but I did see him; saw 'em both go through the little door, one after the other, and heard it slam before the other dub turned up. No," reading the question in the superintendent's eye, "not a drop, Mr. Lidgerwood; I ain't touched not, tasted not, n'r handled not—'r leastwise, not to drink any," and here he told the bottle episode which had ended in the smashing of Flemister's sideboard supply.

  Lidgerwood nodded approvingly when the modest narrative reached the bottle-smashing point.

  "That was fine, John," he said, using the exengineer's Christian name for the first time in the long interview. "If you've got it in you to do such a thing as that, at such a time, there is good hope for you. Let's settle this question once for all: all I ask is that you prove up on your good intentions. Show me that you have quit, not for a day or a week, but for all time, and I shall be only too glad to see you pulling passenger-trains again. But to get back to this crime of to-night: when you left Flemister's office, after telephoning Goodloe, you walked down to Little Butte station?"

  "Yes; walked and run. There was nobody there but the bridge watchman. Goodloe had come on up the track to find out what had happened."

  "And you didn't see Flemister or Hallock again?"

  "No."

  "Flemister told us he got the news by 'phone, and when he said it the wreck was no more than an hour old. He couldn't have walked down from the mine in that time. Where could he have got the message, and from whom?"

  Judson was shaking his head.

  "He didn't need any message—and he didn't get any. I'd put it up this way: after that rail-joint was sprung open, they'd go back up the old spur on the hand-car, wouldn't they? And on the way they'd be pretty sure to hear Cranford when he whistled for Little Butte. That'd let 'em know what was due to happen, right then and there. After that, it'd be easy enough. All Flemister had to do was to rout out his miners over his own telephones, jump onto the hand-car again, and come back in time to show up to you."

  Lidgerwood was frowning thoughtfully.

  "Then both of them must have come back; or, no—that must have been your third man who tried to flag Cranford down. Judson, I've got to know who that third man is. He has complicated things so that I don't dare move, even against Flemister, until I know more. We are not at the ultimate bottom of this thing yet."

  "We're far enough to put the handcuffs onto Mr. Pennington Flemister any time you say," asserted Judson. "There was one little thing that I forgot to put in the report: when you get ready to take that missing switch-engine back, you'll find it choo-chooin' away up yonder in Flemister's new power-house that he's built out of boards made from Mr. Benson's bridge-timbers."

  "Is that so? Did you see the engine?" queried the superintendent quickly.

  "No, but I might as well have. She's there, all right, and they didn't care enough to even muffle her exhaust."

  Lidgerwood took a slender gold-banded cigar from his desk-box, and passed the box to the ex-engineer.

  "We'll get Mr. Pennington Flemister—and before he is very many hours older," he said definitely. And then: "I wish we were a little more certain of the other man."

  Judson bit the end from his cigar, but he forbore to light it. The Red Desert had not entirely effaced his sense of the respect due to a superintendent riding in his own private car.


  "It's a queer sort of a mix-up, Mr. Lidgerwood," he said, fingering the cigar tenderly. "Knowin' what's what, as some of us do, you'd say them two'd never get together, unless it was to cut each other's throats."

  Lidgerwood nodded. "I've heard there was bad blood between them: it was about that building-and-loan business, wasn't it?"

  "Shucks! no; that was only a drop in the bucket," said Judson, surprised out of his attitude of rank-and-file deference. "Hallock was the original owner of the Wire-Silver. Didn't you know that?"

  "No."

  "He was, and Flemister beat him out of it—lock, stock, and barrel: just simply reached out an' took it. Then, when he'd done that, he reached out and took Hallock's wife—just to make it a clean sweep, was the way he bragged about it."

  "Heavens and earth!" ejaculated the listener. Then some of the hidden things began to define themselves in the light of this astounding revelation: Hallock's unwillingness to go to Flemister for the proof of his innocence in the building-and-loan matter; his veiled warning that evil, and only evil, would come upon all concerned if Lidgerwood should insist; the invasion of the service-car at Copah by the poor demented creature whose cry was still for vengeance upon her betrayer. Truly, Flemister had many crimes to answer for. But the revelation made Hallock's attitude all the more mysterious. It was unaccountable save upon one hypothesis—that Flemister was able to so play upon the man's weaknesses as to make him a mere tool in his hands. But Judson was going on to elucidate.

  "First off, we all thought Hallock'd kill Flemister. Rankin was never much of a bragger or much of a talker, but he let out a few hints, and, accordin' to Red Desert rulin's, Flemister wasn't much better than a dead man, right then. But it blew over, some way, and now——"

  "Now he is Flemister's accomplice in a hanging matter, you would say. I'm afraid you are right, Judson," was the superintendent's comment; and with this the subject was dropped.

  The early dawn of the summer morning was graying over the desert when the special drew into the Angels yard. Lidgerwood had the yard crew place the service-car on the same siding with the Nadia, and near enough so that his guests, upon rising, could pass across the platforms.