"The hot box has nothing to do with the case. You are not hired to take
chances, or to hold out regular trains. Go forward and tell your
engineer to speed up and get out of the way."

"I got my clearance at the summit, and I ain't despatchin' trains on
this jerk-water railroad," observed the conductor coolly. Then he
added, with a shade less of the belligerent disinterest: "Williams can't
speed up. That housin' under the tender is about ready to blaze up and
set the woods afire again, right now."

Once more Lidgerwood turned to the time-card. It was twenty miles
farther along to the next telegraph station, and he heaped up wrath
against the day of wrath in store for a despatcher who would recklessly
turn two trains loose and out of his reach under such critical
conditions, for thirty hazardous mountain miles.

Bradford, looking on sullenly, mistook the new boss's frown for more to
follow, with himself for the target, and was moving away. Lidgerwood
pointed to a chair with a curt, "Sit down!" and the conductor obeyed
reluctantly.

"You say you have your clearance card, and that you are not despatching
trains," he went on evenly, "but neither fact relieves you of your
responsibility. It was your duty to make sure that the despatcher fully
understood the situation at Crosswater, and to refuse to pull out ahead
of the passenger without something more definite than a formal permit.
Weren't you taught that? Where did you learn to run trains?"

It was an opening for hard words, but the conductor let it pass.
Something in the steady, business-like tone, or in the shrewdly