McCloskey, being of Scottish blood and desert-seasoned, was a cool
in-fighter who could take punishment without wincing overmuch. But at
the end of the first fortnight of the new time-card, he cornered his
chief in the private office and freed his mind.
"It's no use, Mr. Lidgerwood; we can't make these reforms stick with the
outfit we've got," he asserted, in sharp discouragement. "The next thing
on the docket will be a strike, and you know what that will mean, in a
country where the whiskey is bad and nine men out of every ten go fixed
for trouble."
"I know; nevertheless the reforms have got to stick," returned
Lidgerwood definitively. "We are going to run this railroad as it should
be run, or hang it up in the air. Did you discharge that operator at
Crow Canyon? the fellow who let Train 76 get by him without orders night
before last?"
"Dick Rufford? Oh yes, I fired him, and he came in on 202 to-day lugging
a piece of artillery and shooting off his mouth about what he was going
to do to me ... and to you. I suppose you know that his brother Bart,
they call him 'the killer', is the lookout at Red-Light Sammy Faro's
game, and the meanest devil this side of the Timanyonis?"
"I didn't know it, but that cuts no figure.
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