“I guess you are quite right, Mother,” he said gravely. “I am glad to be in the train dispatching department. Of course, we are going to have a great deal of trouble putting any schedule through. But I do not believe the telegraphers will go on strike. My men, at least, are faithful.” “Faithful to you or to the road?” asked his mother. “To both, I firmly believe,” said Ralph confidently. “Why, I can’t understand any responsible employee going out for so little cause. Hopkins has made them all sore, it is true. But they can’t give that as a good reason. And the cut in wages was only threatened. The Brotherhoods took their cut months ago, even if it was a bitter pill to swallow. It is mainly such men as McCarrey who really are not even railroad men. Why, he never had a job on the Great Northern, as I understand.” “Do you actually believe that he followed Mr. Hopkins here to make trouble?” “I bet he did. But it is Hopkins’ own fault if he gives McCarrey a chance to make trouble.” Mrs. Fairbanks sighed. “I am sorry for his family. You say his daughter is an attractive girl, Ralph?” “That’s the surest thing you know, Mother,” declared Ralph, smiling reflectively. “I had her on the wire last evening when I sent word to her father that the shopmen had gone out. She has a sweet voice.” His mother looked at him again in some doubt. “I never knew you to be so greatly interested in a girl before, Ralph.” “I never knew a girl before who was so worth while,” he replied. “And there’s no nonsense about her. You’ll like her when you know her, Mother.” CHAPTER XIII NEWS FROM SHADOW VALLEY This was a day to be remembered in Rockton. Ralph passed a parade of the wildcat strikers and their sympathizers on his way to the office. A good many of the marchers were drunk. That was bad, for it showed that somebody was furnishing a supply of liquor forbidden under the prohibition régime. “I’ve an idea,” Ralph thought to himself, “that McCarrey and Grif Falk have a secret place to store liquor in, in that old house where Zeph and I had our run-in with them the other night. Wish Zeph would show up. I’d like to know what he told Mr. Adair about it.” He saw uniformed police at the yard gates and standing at the railroad crossing when he got downtown. But he observed none of the men in plain clothes he knew who belonged to the railroad police. Mr. Adair did not believe in making a show of force at a time of trouble like this, if it could be avoided. Extras of the evening papers soon began to appear on the street. Wild rumors were rife. It was said that the maintenance of way men on other divisions of the Great Northern were about to walk out. The day shifts of men in the Rockton shops had not even come to work. The yard crews, who were more closely affiliated with the big Brotherhoods, were remaining at work. And yet, as Ralph could easily sense, nothing was going right in the yard or around the offices.