V
THE OUTLAWS
For the first few weeks after the change in ownership and the arrival of
the new superintendent, the Red Butte Western and its nerve-centre,
Angels, seemed disposed to take Mr. Howard Lidgerwood as a rather
ill-timed joke, perpetrated upon a primitive West and its people by some
one of the Pacific Southwestern magnates who owned a broad sense of
humor.
During this period the sardonic laugh was heard in the land, and the
chuckling appreciation of the joke by the Red Butte rank and file, and
by the Angelic soldiers of fortune who, though not upon the company's
pay-rolls, still throve indirectly upon the company's bounty, lacked
nothing of completeness. The Red Desert grinned like the famed Cheshire
cat when an incoming train from the East brought sundry boxes and
trunks, said to contain the new boss's wardrobe. Its guffaws were long
and uproarious when it began to be noised about that the company
carpenters and fitters were installing a bath and other civilizing and
softening appliances in the alcove opening out of the superintendent's
sleeping-room in the head-quarters building.
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