The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-07-01
The Tanning of Red Butte
By FRANCIS lYNDE
(Continued.)

kept lHe uTe lEcm SeICluS IO ncF, DuL she's dug herself into the ground like a dog after woodchuckt'
 Lidgerwood nodded. q looked her over," he said. 'If she'd had little more time and another wheel turn or two to spare she might have disap- peared entirely-like that switching engine you can't find"
 T gave you all the pointers I could find two weeks ago." said McCloskey. Whenever you get ready to put Hai- lock under the hydraulic press you'll squeeze what you want to know out of him."
 This was coming to be an old sub ject and a sore one. The trainmaster still insisted that Hallock was the man who was planning the robberies and plotting the downfall of the Lidger- wood management. and he wanted to have the chief clerk systematically shadowed. And it was Lidgerwood's wholly groundless prepossession for Hallock that was still keeping him from turning the matter over to the company's legal department-this in spite of the growing accumulation of evidence all pointing to Hallocks trea- son. Subjected to rigid cross exam ination. Judson had insisted that a part at least of his drunken recollec- ton was real-that part identifying the voices of the two plotters in Cat Riggs back room as those of Rufford and Hallock. Moreover. it was no longer deniable that the chief clerk was keeping in close touch with the discharged employees. for some pur- pose best known to himself. and lat terly he had been dropping out of his office without notice. disappearing sometimes for a day at time.
 Lidgerwood was recalling the last of these disappearances when the second wrecking train came up to go into ac- ton. McCloskey shaded his eyes from the suns glare and looked down the line
 'Hellor' he exclaimed "Got a new wrecking boss:'
 The superintendent nodded. CT have one in the making. Dawson wanted to come along and try his hand"
 Did Gridley send him?"
 "No: Gridley is away somewhere" e"So Fred's your understudy, is he? Well. I've got one too. I'll show him to you after awhile"
 They were walking back over the ties toward the half buried 195. Daw- son had already C.vided his men-half of them to place the huge jackbeams and outriggers of the self contained steam lifting machine to insure its sta bility and the other half to trench un- der the fallen engine and to adjust the chain slings for the hitch.
 "It's pretty long reach. Fred" said the superintendent. Going to try it from here?''
 Best place." said the reticent one shortly. ,zst
 Lidgerwood was looking at his watch.
 williams will, be due here before long with a special from Copah. don't want to hold him up," he re- marked.
 Thirty minutes?r Inquired the draftsman without taking mind or eye of his problem.
 "Oh. yes; forty or fifty, maybe"
 "All right; I'll be out of the way" was the quiet rejoinder.
 "Yes, he will" was McCloskey's 1ronical comment when the\ drafts man had gone around to the other side of the great crane. That crane won't pick up the 195 clear the way she's Iy- ing''
 Wont it?" said Lidgerwood. That's where you are mistaken. It will pick up anything we have on the two di- visions. It's the biggest and best there is made. How did you come to get a tool like. that on the Red Butte West ern?' p1
 McCloskey grinned.
 "You don't know Gridley yet. He's crank on good machinery. That crane was clean steal"
 "What?"
 'T mean it. It was ordered for one of the South American railroads and was on its way to the coast over the P. s. W. About the time it got as far as Copah we happened to have a mixup in our CCl,ah yards with a ditched engine that Gridley couldn't rick up with the sixty ton crane we had on the ground. So he borrowed this one out of the F. S. w yards, used it, liked it and kept it. sending our sixty-ton machine on to the South Americans in it's place.
 "What rank piracy" Lidgerwood exclaimed. "I don't wonder they cali us buccaneers over here. How could he do it without being found out?"
 ''That puzzled more than two or three of us but one of the men told me some time afterward how it was done. Gridley had a painter go down in the night and change the lettering on our old crane and on this new one. It happened that they were both made by the same manufacturing con- pany and were of substantially the same general pattern. I suppose the P. s. W. yard crew didn't notice par ticularly that the crane they had lent us out of the through westbound freight had shrunk somewhat in the using. But I'll bet those South Ameri- cans are saying pleasant things to the manufacturers yet"
 'Doubtless'' Lidgerwood agreed, and now he was not smiling. The lit tle side light on the former Red Butte Western methods-and upon Gridley-