"Fire him. I won't have a single solitary man in the train service who gets drunk. Tell him so."
"All right; one more stick of dynamite, with a cap and fuse in it, turned loose under foot," prophesied McCloskey gloomily. "Judson goes."
"Never mind the dynamite. Now, what has been done with Johnston, that conductor who turned in three dollars as the total cash collections for a hundred-and-fifty-mile run?"
"I've had him up. He grinned and said that that was all the money there was, everybody had tickets."
"You don't believe it?"
"No; Grantby, the superintendent of the Ruby Mine, came in on Johnston's train that morning and he registered a kick because the Ruby Gulch station agent wasn't out of bed in time to sell him a ticket. He paid Johnston on the train, and that one fare alone was five dollars and sixty cents."
Lidgerwood was adding another minute square to the pencilled checker-board on his desk blotter.
"Discharge Johnston and hold back his time-check. Then have him arrested for stealing, and wire the legal department at Denver that I want him prosecuted."
Again McCloskey's rough-cast face became the outward presentment of a soul in anxious trouble.
"Call it done—and another stick of dynamite turned loose," he acquiesced. "Is there anything else?"