Lidgerwood saw no good end to be subserved by postponing the inevitable.
"Mr. Ford spoke to me about you last night. He told me that you had been
Mr. Cumberley's chief clerk, and that since Cumberley's resignation you
have been acting superintendent of the Red Butte Western. Do you want to
stay on as my lieutenant?"
For the long minute that Hallock took before replying, the loose-lipped
mouth under the shaggy mustache seemed to have lost the power of speech.
But when the words finally came, they were shorn of all euphemism.
"I suppose I ought to tell you to go straight to hell, Mr. Lidgerwood,
put on my coat and walk out," said this most singular of all railway
subordinates. "By all the rules of the game, this job belongs to me.
What I've gone through to earn it, you nor any other man will ever know.
If I stay, I'll wish I hadn't; and so will you. You'd better give me a
time-check and let me go."
Lidgerwood walked to the window and once more stared out upon the dreary
prospect, bounded by the bluffs of the second mesa. A horseman was
ambling down the single street of the town, weaving in his saddle, and
giving vent to a series of Indian war-whoops. Lidgerwood saw the drunken
cowboy only with the outward eye. And when he turned back to the man in
the rifle-pit desk, he could not have told why the words of regret and
dismissal which he had made up his mind to say, refused to come. But
they did refuse, and what he said was not at all what he had intended to
say.
"If I can't quite match your frankness, Mr. Hallock, it is because my
early education was neglected. But I'll say this: I appreciate your
disappointment; I know what it means to a man situated as you are.
Notwithstanding, I want you to stay with me. I'll say more; I shall take
it as a personal favor if you will stay."
"You'll be sorry for it if I do," was the ungracious rejoinder.
"Not because you will do anything to make me sorry, I am sure," said the
new superintendent, in his evenest tone. And then, as if the matter were
definitely settled: "I'd like to have a word with the trainmaster, Mr.
McCloskey. May I trouble you to tell me which is his office?"
Hallock waved a hand toward the door which Lidgerwood had been about to
open a few minutes earlier.
"You'll find him in there," he said briefly, adding, with his
altogether remarkable disregard for the official proprieties: "If he
gives you the same chance that I did, don't take him up. He is the one
man in this outfit worth more than the powder it would take to blow him
to the devil."