Produced by Suzanne Shell, Jason Isbell and the PG Online DistributedProofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net).
"I'll spend the last dollar of the fortune my fatherleft me, if needful, in finding that man and hanging him!"]
The Taming of Red Butte Western
by Francis Lynde
_Illustrated_
Charles Scribner's SonsNew York, 1916
1910, BYCharles Scribner's SonsPublished April, 1910
[ILLUSTRATION: Publishers Stamp]
To
Mr. CHARLES AUGUSTINE STICKLE
My brother--in deed, though not by blood--this tale of his birthland isaffectionately inscribed.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Collars-and-Cuffs 3II. The Red Desert 24III. A Little Brother of the Cows 38IV. At the Rio Gloria 59V. The Outlaws 80VI. Everyman's Share 102VII. The Killer 122VIII. Benson's Bridge-Timbers 141IX. Judson's Joke 157X. Flemister and Others 177XI. Nemesis 187XII. The Pleasurers 202XIII. Bitter-Sweet 224XIV. Blind Signals 248XV. Eleanor Intervenes 260XVI. The Shadowgraph 270XVII. The Dipsomaniac 289XVIII. At Silver Switch 305XIX. The Challenge 324XX. Storm Signals 346XXI. The Boss Machinist 369XXII. The Terror 380XXIII. The Crucible 398
ILLUSTRATIONS
"I'll spend the last dollar of the fortune myfather left me, if needful, in finding thatman and hanging him!" _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE
His hand was on the latch of the door-yardgate when a man rose out of the gloom. 138
"Bart's afraid he can't duck without dying." 176
"Well, gentlemen, I'm waiting. Why don't you shoot?" 400
* * * * *
The Taming of Red Butte Western
I
COLLARS-AND-CUFFS
The windows of the division head-quarters of the Pacific Southwestern atCopah look northward over bald, brown mesas, and across the Pannikin tothe eroded cliffs of the Uintah Hills. The prospect, lacking vegetation,artistic atmosphere, and color, is crude and rather harshly aggressive;and to Lidgerwood, glooming thoughtfully out upon it through theweather-worn panes scratched and bedimmed by many desert sandstorms, itwas peculiarly depressing.
"No, Ford; I hate to disappoint you, but I'm not the man you are lookingfor," he said, turning back to things present and in suspense, andspeaking as one who would add a reason to unqualified refusal. "I'vebeen looking over the ground while you were coming on from New York. Itisn't in me to flog the Red Butte Western into a well-behaved divisionof the P. S-W."
The grave-eyed man who had borrowed Superintendent Leckhard'spivot-chair nodded intelligence.
"That is what you have been saying, with variations, for the lasthalf-hour. Why?"
"Because the job asks for gifts that I don't possess. At the presentmoment the Red Butte Western is the most hopelessly demoralized threehundred miles of railroad west of the Rockies. There is no system, nodiscipline, no respect for authority. The men run the road as if it werea huge joke. Add to these conditions the fact that the Red Desert is acountry where the large-calibred revolver is----"
"Yes, I know all that," interrupted the man in the chair. "The road andthe region need civilizing--need it badly. That is one of the reasonswhy I am trying to persuade you to take hold. You are long oncivilization, Howard."
"Not on the kind which has to be inculcated by main strength and acheerful disregard for consequences. I'm no scrapper."
To the eye of appraisal, Lidgerwood's personal appearance bore out thepeaceable assertion to the final well-groomed detail. Compactly builtand neatly, brawn and bulk were conspicuously lacking; and the thin,intellectual face was made to appear still thinner by the pointed cut ofthe closely trimmed brown beard. The eyes were alert and not wanting insteadfastness; but they had a trick of seeming to look beyond, ratherthan directly at, the visual object. A physiognomist would haveclassified him as a man of studious habit with the leisure to indulgeit, and unconsciously he dressed the part.
In his outspoken moments, which were rare, he was given to railingagainst the fate which had made him a round peg in a square hole; atechnical engineer and a man of action, when his earlier tastes andinclinations had drawn him in other directions. But the temperamentalqualities; the niceties, the exactness, the thoroughness, which, findingno outlet in an artistic calling, had made him a master in his unchosenprofession, were well known to Mr. Stuart Ford, first vice-president ofthe Pacific Southwestern System. And, it was largely for the sake ofthese qualities that Ford locked his hands over one knee and spoke as aman and a comrade.
"Let me tell you, Howard--you've no idea what a savage fight we've hadin New York, absorbing these same demoralized three hundred miles. Youknow why we were obliged to have them. If the Transcontinental hadbeaten us, it meant that our competitor would build over here fromJack's Canyon, divide the Copah business with us, and have a line threehundred miles nearer to the Nevada gold-fields than ours."
"I understand," said Lidgerwood; and the vice-president went on.
"Since the failure of the Red Butte 'pocket' mines, the road and thecountry it traverses have been practically given over to the cowmen, thegulch miners, the rustlers, and the drift from the big camps elsewhere.In New York and on the Street, Red Butte Western was regarded as anexploded cartridge--a kite without a tail. It was only a few weeks agothat it dawned upon our executive committee that this particular kitewithout a tail offered us a ready-made jump of three hundred milestoward Tonopah and Goldfield. We began buying quietly for the controlwith the stock at nineteen. Naturally the Transcontinental people caughton, and in twenty-four hours we were at it, hammer and tongs."
Lidgerwood nodded. "I kept up with it in the newspapers," he cut in.
"The newspapers didn't print the whole story; not by many chapters," wasthe qualifying rejoinder. "When the stock had gone to par and beyond,our own crowd went back on us; and after it had passed the two-hundredmark, Adair and I were fighting it practically alone. Even PresidentBrewster lost his nerve. He wanted to make a hedging compromise with theTranscontinental brokers just before we swung over the summit with thefinal five hundred shares we needed."
Again Lidgerwood made the sign of assent.
"Mr. Brewster is a level-headed Westerner. He doubtless knew, to thedotting of an 'i,' the particular brand of trouble you two expansionistswere so eager to acquire."
"He did. He has a copper property somewhere in the vicinity of Angels,and he knows the road. He contended that we were buying two streaks ofrust and a right-of-way in the Red Desert. More than that, he assertedthat the executive officer didn't live who could bring order out of thechaos into which bad management and a peculiarly tough environment hadplunged the Red Butte Western. That's where I had him bested, Howard.All through the hot fight I kept saying over and over to myself that Iknew the man."
"But you don't know him, Stuart; that is the weak link in the chain."
Lidgerwood turned away to the scratched window-panes and the crudeprospect, blurred now by the gathering shadows of the early evening. Inthe yards below, a long freight-train was pulling in from the west, witha switching-engine chasing it to begin the cutting out of the Copahlocals. Over in the Red Butte yard a road-locomotive, turning on thetable, swept a wide arc with the beam of its electric headlight in thegraying dusk. Through the half-opened door in the despa
tcher's room camethe diminished chattering of the telegraph instruments; this, with theouter clamor of trains and engines, made the silence in the privateoffice more insistent.
When Lidgerwood faced about again after the interval of abstractionthere were fine lines of harassment between his eyes, and his words cameas if speech were costing him a conscious effort.
"If it were merely a matter of technical fitness, I suppose I might goover to Angels and do what you want done with the three hundred miles ofdemoralization. But the Red Butte proposition asks for more; forsomething that I can't give it. Stuart, there is a yellow streak in methat you seem never to have discovered. I am a coward."
The ghost of an incredulous smile wrinkled about the tired eyes of thebig man in the pivot-chair.
"You put it with your usual exactitude," he assented slowly; "I hadn'tdiscovered it." Then: "You forget that I have known you pretty much allyour life, Howard."
"You haven't known me at all," was the sober reply.
"Oh, yes, I have! Let me recall one of the boyhood pictures that hasnever faded. It was just after school, one hot day, in the IllinoisSeptember. Our crowd had gone down to the pond back of the school-house,and two of us were paddling around on a raft made of sawmill slabs. Oneof the two--who always had more dare-deviltry than sense under his skullthatch--was silly enough to 'rock the boat,' and it went to pieces. Youcouldn't swim, Howard, but if you hadn't forgotten that triflinghandicap and wallowed in to pull poor Billy Mimms ashore, I should havebeen a murderer."
Lidgerwood shook his head.
"You think you have made your case, but you haven't. What you say istrue enough; I wasn't afraid of drowning--didn't think much about it,either way, I guess. But what I say is true, also. There are many kindsof courage, and quite as many kinds of cowardice. I am a coward of men."
"Oh, no, you're not: you only think you are," protested the one whothought he knew. But Lidgerwood would not let that stand.
"I know I am. Hear me through, and then judge for yourself. What I amgoing to tell you I have never told to any living man; but it is yourright to hear it.... I have had the symptoms all my life, Stuart. Youhave spoken of the schoolboy days: you may remember how you used tofight my battles for me. You thought I took the bullying of the biggerboys because I wasn't strong enough physically to hold up my end. Thatwasn't it: it was fear, pure and simple. Are you listening?"
The man in the chair nodded and said, "Go on." He was of those to whomfear, the fear of what other men might do to him, was as yet a thingunlearned, and he was trying to attain the point of view of one to whomit seemed very real.
"It followed me up to manhood, and after a time I found myselfconstantly and consciously deferring to it. It was easy enough after thehabit was formed. Twentieth-century civilization is decently peaceable,and it isn't especially difficult to dodge the personal collisions. Ihave succeeded in dodging them, for the greater part, paying the pricein humiliation and self-abasement as I went along. God, Stuart, youdon't know what that means!--the degradation; the hot and cold chills ofself-loathing; the sickening misery of having your own soul turn uponyou to rend and tear you like a rabid dog!"
"No, I don't know what it means," said the other man, moved more than hecared to admit by the abject confession.
"Of course you don't. Nobody else can know. I am alone in my pit ofwretchedness, Ford ... as one born out of time; apprehending, as well asyou or any one, what is required of a man and a gentleman, and yetunable to answer when my name is called. I said I had been paying theprice; I am paying it here and now. This is the fourth time I have hadto refuse a good offer that carried with it the fighting chance."
The vice-president's heavy eyebrows slanted in questioning surprise.
"You knew in advance that you were going to turn me down? Yet you came athousand miles to meet me here; and you admit that you have gone thelength of looking the ground over."
Lidgerwood's smile was mirthless.
"A regular recurring phase of the disease. It manifests itself in adetermination to break away and do or die in the effort to win a littleself-respect. I can't take the plunge. I know beforehand that I can't... which brings us down to Copah, the present exigency, and the factthat you'll have to look farther along for your Red Butte Westernman-queller. The blood isn't in my veins, Stuart. It was left out in theassembling."
The vice-president was still a young man and he was confronting aproblem that annoyed him. He had been calling himself, and not withoutreason, a fair judge of men. Yet here was a man whom he had knownintimately from boyhood, who was but just now revealing a totallyunsuspected quality.
"You say you have been dodging the collisions. How do you know youwouldn't buck up when the real pinch comes?" he demanded.
"Because the pinch came once--and I didn't buck up. It was over a yearago, and to this good day I can't think calmly about it. You willunderstand when I say that it cost me the love of the one woman in theworld."
The vice-president did understand. Being a married lover himself, hecould measure the depth of the abyss into which Lidgerwood was looking.His voice was as sympathetic as a woman's when he said: "Go ahead andease your mind; tell me about it, if you can, Howard. It's barelypossible that you are not the best judge of your own act."
There was something approaching the abandonment of the shameless inLidgerwood's manner when he went on.
"It was in the Montana mountains. I was going in to do a bit of expertengineering for her father. Incidentally, I was escorting her and hermother from the railroad terminus to the summer camp in the hills, wherethey were to join a coaching party of their friends for the Yellowstonetour. We had to drive forty miles in a stage, and there were six ofus--the two women and four men. On the way the talk turned uponstage-robbings and hold-ups. With the chance of the real thing as remoteas a visit from Mars, I could be an ass and a braggart. One of the men,a salesman for a powder company, gave me the rope wherewith to hangmyself. He argued for non-resistance, and I remember that I grewsarcastic over the spectacle afforded by a grown man, armed and inpossession of his five senses, permitting himself to be robbed withoutattempting to resist. You can guess what followed?"
"I'd rather hear you tell it," said the listener at SuperintendentLeckhard's desk. "Go on."
Lidgerwood waited until the switching-engine, with its pop-valve openand screaming like a liberated devil of the noise pit, had passed.
"Three miles beyond the supper station we had our hold-up; thecut-and-dried, melodramatic sort of thing you read about, or used toread about, in the early days, with a couple of Winchesters pokingthrough the scrub pines to represent the gang in hiding, and one lone,crippled desperado to come down to the footlights in the speaking part.You get the picture?"
"Yes; I've seen the original."
"Of course, it struck every soul of us with the shock of theincredible--the totally unexpected. It was a rank anachronism,twenty-five years out of date in that particular locality. Beforeanybody realized what was happening, the cripple had us lined up in arow beside the stage, and I was reaching for the stars quite asanxiously as the little Jew hat salesman, who was swearing by all thepatriarchs that the twenty-dollar bill in his right-hand pocket was hisentire fortune."
"Naturally," Ford commented. "You needn't rawhide yourself for that.You've been West often enough and long enough at a time to know therules of the game--not to be frivolous when the other fellow has thedrop on you."
"Wait," said Lidgerwood. "One minute later the cripple had sized us upfor what we were. The other three men were not armed. I was, and MissEl--the young woman knew it. Also the cripple knew it. He tapped thegun bulging in my pocket and said, in good-natured contempt, 'Watch outthat thing don't go off and hurt you some time when you ain't lookin',stranger.' Ford, I think I must have been hypnotized. I stood there likea frozen image, and let that crippled cow-rustler rob those twowomen--take the rings from their fingers!"
"Oh, hold on; there's another side to all that, and you know it," thevice-pre
sident began; but Lidgerwood would not listen.
"No," he protested; "don't try to find excuses for me; there were none.The fellow gave me every chance; turned his back on me as an absolutelynegligible factor while he was going through the others. I'm quickenough when the crisis doesn't involve a fighting man's chance; and Ican handle a gun, too, when the thing to be shot at isn't a human being.But to save my soul from everlasting torments I couldn't go through thesimple motions of pulling the pistol from my pocket and dropping thatfellow in his tracks; couldn't and didn't."
"Why, of course you couldn't, after it had got that far along," assertedFord. "I doubt if any one could. That little remark about the gun inyour pocket did you up. When a man gets you pacified to the conditionin which he can safely josh you, he has got you going and he knowsit--and knows you know it. You may be twice as hot and bloodthirsty asyou were before, but you are just that much less able to strike back.It's not a theory; it is a psychological demonstration."
"But the fact remained," said Lidgerwood, sparing himself not at all. "Iwas weighed and found wanting; that is the only point worthconsidering."
"Well?" queried Ford, when the self-condemned culprit turned again tothe dusk-darkened window, "what came of it?"
"That which was due to come. I was told many times and in many differentways what the one woman thought of me. For the few days during which sheand her mother waited at her father's mine for the coming of theYellowstone party, she used me for a door-mat, as I deserved. That was ayear ago last spring. I haven't seen her since; haven't tried to."
The vice-president reached up and snapped the key of the electric bulbover the desk, and the lurking shadows in the corners of the room fledaway.
"Sit down," he said shortly; and when Lidgerwood had found a chair:"You treat it as an incident closed, Howard. Do you mean to go onleaving it up in the air like that?"
"It was left in the air a year ago last spring. I can't pull it downnow."
"Yes, you can. You haven't exaggerated the conditions on the Red Butteline an atom. As you say, the operating force is as godless a lot ofoutlaws as ever ran trains or ditched them. They all know that the roadhas been bought and sold, and that pretty sweeping changes areimpending. They are looking for trouble, and are quite ready to helpmake it. If you could discharge them in a body, you couldn't replacethem--the Red Desert having nothing to offer as a dwelling-place forcivilized men; and this they know, too. Howard, I'm telling you rightnow that it will require a higher brand of courage to go over to Angelsand manhandle the Red Butte Western as a division of the P. S-W. than itwould to face a dozen highwaymen, if every individual one of the dozenhad the drop on you!"
Lidgerwood left his chair and began to pace the narrow limits of theprivate office, five steps and a turn. The noisy switching-engine hadgone clattering and shrieking down the yard again before he said, "Youmean that you are still giving me the chance to make good over yonderin the Red Desert--after what I have told you?"
"I do; only I'll make it more binding. It was optional with you before;it's a sheer necessity now. You've _got_ to go."
Again Lidgerwood took time to reflect, tramping the floor, with his headdown and his hands in the pockets of the correct coat. In the end heyielded, as the vice-president's subjects commonly did.
"I'll go, if you still insist upon it," was the slowly spoken decision."There will doubtless be plenty of trouble, and I shall probably showthe yellow streak--for the last time, perhaps. It's the kind of anoutfit to kill a coward for the pure pleasure of it, if I'm notmistaken."
"Well," said the man in the swing-chair, calmly, "maybe you need alittle killing, Howard. Had you ever thought of that?"
A gray look came into Lidgerwood's face.
"Maybe I do."
A little silence supervened. Then Ford plunged into detail.
"Now that you are fairly committed, sit down and let me give you an ideaof what you'll find at Angels in the way of a head-quarters outfit. Drawup here and we'll go over the lay-out together."
A busy hour had elapsed, and the gong of the station dining-room belowwas adding its raucous clamor to the drumming thunder of the incomingtrain from Green Butte, when the vice-president concluded his outlinesketch of the Red Butte Western conditions.
"Of course, you know that you will have a free hand. We have alreadycleared the decks for you. As an independent road, the Red Butte linehad the usual executive organization in miniature: Cumberley had thetitle of general superintendent, but his authority, when he cared toassert it, was really that of general manager. Under him, in thehead-quarters staff at Angels, there was an auditor--who also acted aspaymaster, a general freight and passenger agent, and a superintendentof motive power. Operating the line as a branch of the P. S-W System, wecan simplify the organization. We have consolidated the auditing andtraffic departments with our Colorado-lines head-quarters at Denver. Thiswill leave you with only the operating, telegraph, train-service, andengineering departments to handle from Angels. With one exception, yourauthority will be absolute; you will hire and discharge as you see fit,and there will be no appeal from your decision."
"That applies to my own departments--the operating, telegraph,train-service, and engineering; but how about the motive power?" askedthe new incumbent.
Ford threw down the desk-knife, with which he had been sharpening apencil, with a little gesture indicative of displeasure.
"There lies the exception, and I wish it didn't. Gridley, themaster-mechanic, will be nominally under your orders, of course; but ifit should come to blows between you, you couldn't fire him. In theregular routine he will report to the Colorado-lines superintendent ofmotive power at Denver. But in a quarrel with you he could make a stilllonger arm and reach the P. S-W. board of directors in New York."
"How is that?" inquired Lidgerwood.
"It's a family affair. He is a widower, and his wife was a sister of theVan Kensingtons. He got his job through the family influence, and he'llhold it in the same way. But you are not likely to have any trouble withhim. He is a brute in his own peculiar fashion; but when it comes tohandling shopmen and keeping the engines in service, he can't be beat."
"That is all I shall ask of him," said the new superintendent. "Anythingelse?" looking at his watch.
"Yes, there is one other thing. I spoke of Hallock, the man you willfind holding down the head-quarters office at Angels. He was Cumberley'schief clerk, and long before Cumberley resigned he was the realsuperintendent of the Red Butte Western in everything but the title, andthe place on the pay-roll. Naturally he thought he ought to beconsidered when we climbed into the saddle, and he has already writtento President Brewster, asking for the promotion in fact. He happens tobe a New Yorker--like Gridley; and, again like Gridley, he has a friendat court. Magnus knows him, and he recommended him for thesuperintendency when Mr. Brewster referred the application to me. Icouldn't agree, and I had to turn him down. I am telling you this soyou'll be easy with him--as easy as you can. I don't know himpersonally, but if you can keep him on----"
"I shall be only too glad to keep him, if he knows his business and willstay," was Lidgerwood's reply. Then, with another glance at his watch,"Shall we go up-town and get dinner? Afterward you can give me yournotion in the large about the future extension of the road across thesecond Timanyoni, and I'll order out the service-car and an engine andgo to my place. A man can die but once; and maybe I shall contrive tolive long enough to set a few stakes for some better fellow to drive.Let's go."
* * * * *
At ten o'clock that night Engine 266, Williams, engineer, and Blackmar,fireman, was chalked up on the Red Butte Western roundhousebulletin-board to go west at midnight with the new superintendent'sservice-car, running as a special train.
Svenson, the caller, who brought the order from the Copahsub-despatcher's office, unloaded his news upon the circle of R.B.W.engineers, firemen, and roundhouse roustabouts lounging on the benchesin the tool-room and speculating morosely upon
the probable changeswhich the new management would bring to pass.
"Ve bane got dem new boss, Ay vant to tal you fallers," he drawled.
"Who is he?" demanded Williams, who had been looking on sourly while theengine-despatcher chalked his name on the board for the night run withthe service-car.
"Ay couldn't tal you his name. Bote he is dem young faller bane goin''round hare dees two, t'ree days, lukin' lak preacher out of a yob.Vouldn'd dat yar you?"
Williams rose up to his full height of six-feet-two, and flung hishands upward in a gesture that was more expressive than many oaths.
"_Collars-and-Cuffs, by God!_" he said.