"He is as stubborn as a 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, I think,
be duly grateful for small favors. Mac couldn't get a job east of the
Crosswater Hills, I'm afraid."
Lidgerwood had not inquired the reason for the eastern disability. He
had lived in the West long enough to know that it is an ill thing to pry
too curiously into any man's past. So there should be present
efficiency, no man in the service should be called upon to recite in
ancient history, much less one for whom Ford had spoken a good word.
Like all the other offices in the Crow's Nest, that of the trainmaster
was bare and uninviting. Lidgerwood, passing beyond the door of
communication, found himself in a dingy room, with cobwebs festooning
the ceiling and a pair of unwashed windows looking out upon the open
square called, in the past and gone day of the Angelic promoters, the
"railroad plaza." Two chairs, a cheap desk, and a pine table backed by
the "string-board" working model of the current time-table, did duty as
the furnishings, serving rather to emphasize than to relieve the
dreariness of the place.
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