"So you've made up your mind?" he said.
Lidgerwood was frowning abstractedly up at the windows of Hallock's office in the head-quarters building.
"I don't know," he said, half hesitantly. "But he is implicated in that murderous business of last night—that we both know—and now he is back here. McCloskey told you that, didn't he?"
Judson nodded again, and Lidgerwood went on, irresistibly impelled to justify his own action.
"It would be something worse than folly to leave him at liberty when we are on the ragged edge of a fight. Arrest him wherever you can find him, and take him over to Copah on the first train that serves. He'll have to clear himself, if he can; that's all."
When Judson, with his huge cow-boy pistol sagging at his hip, had turned back to do the first part of his errand, Lidgerwood went on around the Crow's Nest and presented himself at the door of the Nadia. Happily, for his purpose, he found only Mrs. Brewster and Judge Holcombe in possession, the young people having gone to climb one of the bare mesa hills behind the town for an unobstructed view of the Timanyonis.
The superintendent left Judge Holcombe out of the proposal which he urged earnestly upon Mrs. Brewster. Telling her briefly of the threatened strike and its promise of violence and rioting, he tried to show her that the presence of the private-car party was a menace, alike to its own members and to him. The run to Copah could be made on a special schedule and the party might be well outside of the danger zone before the armistice expired. Would she not defer to his judgment and let him send the Nadia back to safety while there was yet time?
Mrs. Brewster, the placid, let him say his say without interruption. But when he finished, the placidity became active opposition. The president's wife would not listen for a moment to an expedient which did not—could not—include the president himself.
"I know, Howard, you're nervous—you can't help being nervous," she said, cutting him to the quick when nothing was farther from her intention. "But you haven't stopped to think what you're asking. If there is any real danger for us—which I can't believe—that is all the more reason why we shouldn't run away and leave your cousin Ned behind. I wouldn't think of it for an instant, and neither would any of the others."
Being hurt again in his tenderest part by the quite unconscious gibe, Lidgerwood did not press his proposal further.