The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-06-23
CHAPTER ".
AT THE RIO GLORIA.


 "HE matter to be taken up with McCloskey, master of trains and chief of the telegraph de
 ~ partment, was not altogether disciplinary. In the summarizing con- ference at Copah, Vice President Ford had spoken favorably of the trainmas- ter, recommending him to mercy in the event of a general beheading in the Angels headquarters. -"He is as stub born as mule, but he is honest and outspoken. If you can win him over to your side you will have at least one lieutenant whom you can trust and who will, think, be duly grateful for small favors. Mac couldn't get a job east of the Crosswater hills, I'm afraid.''
 Underwood had lived in the west long enough to know that it is an i'll thing to pry too curiously into any mans past. So there should be pres ent efficiency. No man in the service should be called upon to recite in an cient history. much less one for whom Ford had spoken good word.
 Like all the other offices in the Crows Nest, that of the trainmaster was bare and uninviting. Two chairs, cheap desk and a pine table backed by the "stringboard' working model of the current time table, did duty as the furnishings.
 McCloskey was at his desk at the moment of door opening. The train master was homely, and more; his hard featured face was a study in grotesques. There was fearless hon. esty in the shrewd gray eyes and a good promise of capability in the strong Scotch jaw and long upper lip, but the grotesque note was the one which persisted, and the trainmaster seemed willfully to accentuate it. His coat in a region where shirt sleeves predominated was a close buttoned gamblers frock, and his hat, in the country of the sombrero and the soft felt, was a derby: He rose and thrust out hand, great jointed and knobbed like laborer's.
 You're MT. Lidgerwood, take it?" said he. tilting the derby to the back of his head. Come to tell me to pack my kit and get out?'
 "Not yet, Mir. McCloskey," laughed Lidgerwood, getting his first real measure cf the man in the hearty hand grip. "On the contrary, I've come to thank you for not dropping things and running away before the neSv management could get on the ground"
 The trainmaster's rejoinder was out spokenly blunt. "I've nowhere to run to, MT. Lidgerwood, and that's no joke. Some of the backcappers will be telling you presently that I was a train dispatcher over in Gods country and that I put two trains together. It's your right to know that it's true"
 "Thank you, MT. McCloskey," said Lidgerwood simply. That sounds good to me. And take this for your self-the man who has done that once doesn't do it again. That is one thing, and another is this-we start with a clean slate on the Red Butte West ern. No man in the service who will turn in and help us make real rail- road out of the R. B. w need worry about his past record. It won't be dug up against him."
 That's fair. more than fair" said the trainmaster, land I wish I could promise you that the rank and file will meet you halfway. But I can't. The road has been running itself for the past two years and more"
 "I understand" said Lidgerwood. and then he spoke of the careless dis patching.
 "That will be Callahan, the day man." McCloskey~ broke in wrathfully. But that's the way of it. When we