The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-06-26
GOO ooo-
The Tanning of Red Butte
By FRANCIS LYNDE
(Continued.)

tueIt was pTepOSSeSSlOu, 4ulIS dS unreasoning, for Hallock. There was absolutely nothing in the chief clerk to inspire liking or even common busi- ness confidence. On the contrary, while Hallock attended to his duties and car ried out his superior's instructions with the exactness of an automaton, his attitude was distinctly atagonistic. As the chief subaltern on Lidgerwood's small staff he was efficient and well nigh invaluable As man Lidger- wood felt he might easily be regarded as an enemy whose designs could never be fathomed or prefguro4, but under the grabbed and gloomy crust of the man the superintendent fancied he could discover a certain savage loyalty. But under the loyalty there was deeper depth-of misery or tragedy, or both.
 Questioned by Lidgerwood, McClos- key declared that Hallock was mar ried; that after the first few months in Angels his wife, strikingly beautiful young woman, had disappeared and that since her departure Hallock had lived alone in two rooms over the freight station. rooms which no one, save himself. ever entered.
 On the Red Butte Western orders. regarded by disciplined railroad men as having the inmutability of the laws of the Medes and Persians, were Still interpreted as loosely as if they were but the casual suggestions, of by stander. Rules were formulated only to be coolly ignored when they chanced foe conflict with some train crews desire to make up time or to kill it.. Directed to account for fuel and oil consumed, the enginemen good natured- ly forged reports and the storekeepers blandly o. K.'d them. Instructed to keep an accurate record of all material used, the trackmen jocosely scattered more spikes than they drove, made frewood of the stock crossties and were not above underpinning the sec ton houses with new dimension tim bers.
 In countless other ways the waste was prodigious and often mysteriously unexplainable. The company supplies had a curious fashion of disappearing in transit. Two carloads of building lumber sent to repair the station at Red Butte vanished somewhere be- tween the Angels. shipping yards and their billing destination.
 , In such a chaotic state of affairs track and train troubles were the rule rather than the exception, and it was a Red Butte Western boast that the fire was never drawn under the wreck ing train engine. For the first few weeks Lidgerwood let McCloskey an- ewer the "hurry calls'' to the various :. scenes of disaster. but when three sec tons of an eastbound cattle special, ignoring the ten minute interval rule, were piled up in the pinon hills he vent out and took personal command Of the track clearers
 This happened when the joke was at Aoodtide, and the men of the wreck ing crew took ten gallon keg of whisky along ,wherewith. to celebrate the first appearance of the new super fntendent in character as a practical wrecking boss. The outcome was rath- 6. uk, woods first executive act was to knock in the head of the ten gallon celebra- ton with a striking hammer, before it was even spigoted, and for another he quickly proved that he was Gridley's equal, if not his master, in the gentle art of track clearing Through the long day and the still longer night of ton and stress the new boss was able to endure hardship with the best man on the ground.
 This was excellent, as far as it went But later, with the offending cattle tTa!n crews before him for trial and punishment, Lidgerwood lost all he had 6ained by being too easy.
 We've got him chasin' his feet" said Tryon, one of the rule breaking engineers, making his report to the foundhouse contingent at the close of the "sweatbox" Interview "It's just as I've been tellin' you mugs all along he hain't got sand enough to fire any body"
 One day in Lidgerwood's private of 6ce Jack Benson said to him:
 What do you know about Fred Dawson. Gridley's shop draftsmanf',
 Next to nothing personally" replied Lidgerwood. "He seems a fine fellow much too fine a fellow to be wasting himself out here in the desert. Why?"
 "Oh,f I just wanted to know. Ever met his mother and sister,"
 ~No..
 "well, you ought to. The mother is one of the only two angels in Angels, and the sister is the other. Dawson himself is a ghastly monomaniac. He is lame duck, you know, like every other man this side of Crosswater Summit, present company excepted"
 "A lame duck?" repeated Lidger- wood.
 "Yes, a man with a past Over in the ranch country beyond the Timan- yonis they lump us all together and call us the outlaws"
 "Not without reason" said Lidger- wood.
 'Not any," asserted Benson, with cheerful pessimism. ''The entire Red Butte Western outfit is tared with the same stick"
 "I know" said Lidgerwood ''But you were speaking of Dawson, weren't youT
 "Yes, and that's what makes me say what I'm saying. He is one of them, Though he needn't be if he weren't Ecch hopelessly sensitive ass. He's