despatching.

"That will be Callahan, the day man," McCloskey broke in wrathfully.
"But that's the way of it. When we get through the twenty-four hours
without killing somebody or smashing something, I thank God, and put a
red mark on that calendar over my desk."

"Well, we won't go back of the returns," declared Lidgerwood, meaning to
be as just as he could to his predecessors in office. "But from now
on----"

The door leading into the room beyond the trainmaster's office opened
squeakily on dry hinges, and a chattering of telegraph instruments
heralded the incoming of a disreputable-looking office-man, with a green
patch over one eye and a blackened cob-pipe between his teeth. Seeing
Lidgerwood, he ducked and turned to McCloskey. Bradley, reporting in,
had given his own paraphrase of the new superintendent's strictures on
Red Butte Western despatching and the criticism had lost nothing in the
recasting.

"Seventy-one's in the ditch at Gloria Siding," he said, speaking
pointedly to the trainmaster. "Goodloe reports it from Little Butte;
says both enginemen are in the mix-up, but he doesn't know whether they
are killed or not."

"There you are!" snarled McCloskey, wheeling upon Lidgerwood. "They
couldn't let you get your chair warmed the first day!"

With the long run from Copah to Angels to his credit, and with all the
head-quarters loose ends still to be gathered up, Lidgerwood might