The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-06-23

"What all do you think of MT. Col | lars and Cuffs by this timer" Bradford took a 1eisurely minute to whittle a chewing cube from his pock- ct plug.
 "Well, first dash out O the box I al- lowed he was some locoed. He jumped me like jack rabbit for takin' clear ance right under Jim Carter's nose that away. Then we got down to business, and I was just beginnin' to get on to his gait little when the green flag butted in"
 Gait fits the laundry part of him?" suggested Williams.
 '1t does and it don't. If that little tailor made man don't get his finger mashed or somethiff and have to go home and get somebody to poultice it things are goin' to have a spell of happenin's on this little old COW trail of railroad. That's my ante" 'Think he's got the sand, Andy" said Williams.
 ''This time you've got me goin'," was the slow reply! q ain't so blamed sure. One kind O sand he's got to a dead moral certainty. When he saw what was due to happen back wonder at the culvert he told me '23,' all right, but he took time to hike up ahead and yank that Jap cook out O the car kitchen before he turned his own little handspring into the ditch"
 ''That kind of sand is all right in r,,,% you got to know how to fight with pitchforks and such other tools as come handy. The new boss may be that kind of a scrapper, but he sure don't look it."
 "No," agreed Bradford, ruminating thoughtfully.
 Williams, brawny and broad chested, leaned against his box.
 He'd better have nerve or get some," he commented. "T'other ways it's him for an early wooden overcoat and a trip back home in the express car"
 The special was now on the siding Back in the service car Lidgerwood was sitting quietly in the doorway smoking his delayed after breakfast cigar and timing the upcoming passen- ger train, watch in hand. Carter was ten minutes. to the exact second, be- hind his schedule time when the train thundered past on the main track, and Lidgerwood pocketed his watch with smile of satisfaction. It was the first small victory in the campaign for re-. form.
 Later, however, when the special was once more in motion westward, the desert laid hold upon him with the grip which first benumbs. then breeds dull rage and finally makes men mad
 There were no signs of life, no cat tie upon the distant hills, no loungers on the station platforms. Lidgerwood had crossed this arid. lifeless plain twice within the week on his prelim- mary tour of inspection, but both times he had been in the Pullman, with fellow passengers tp fill the near CT field of vision and to temper the awful loneliness of the waste Now, however, the desert with its heat, its [ stiffness, its vacancy. it's pitiless bar tenness. claimed him as its own. He wondered that he had been impatient with the men it bred.
 It was past noon when the shrill whistle of the locomotive signaled the approach to the division headquarters, and he was thankful that the builders of Angels had pitched their tents and driven their stakes in the deserts edge rather than in it's heart.
 Truly, Angels was not much to be thankful for, as the exile from the east regretfully admitted when he looked out upon it from the windows of his efice in the second story of the Crows Nest. A many tracked railroad yard. danked on one side by the repair shops. foundhouse and coal chutes and on the other by struggling town of bare and commonplace exteriors, unpainted, unfenced. treeless and windswept, An gels stood baldly for what it was-a mere stopping place in transit for the Red Butte Western.
 The new superintendent turned his back upon the depressing outlook and laid his hand upon the latch of the door opening into the adjoining room. There was thing to be said about the reckless punching of trains out of reach of the wires, and it might as well be said now as later, he deter mined. But at the moment of door opening he was made to realize that a tall, boxlike contrivance in one corner of the office was a desk and that it vas inhabited.
 The man who rose up to greet him was bearded, heavy shouldered and hollow eyed, and he was past middle age. Green cardboard cones protecting his shirt sleeves and shade of the same material visoring the sunken eyes were the only clerkly suggestions about him.
 "You are Mir. Hallock?' Lidgerwood made the guess without offering to shake hands. the high, boxlike desk forbidding the attempt
 "Yes." The answer was neither an tagonistic nor placatory; it was mere