corral to take charge of these horses of ours until Wimberley can come
and get them?” he said. “That would make it possible for us to catch
the eleven-thirty train for Brewster.”
Starbuck said it was quite feasible, and by the time they had disposed
of the horses the train was whistling for the station. When they
boarded the train, Sprague proposed that they postpone the mid-day
meal in the diner in order to ride out on the rear platform of the
observation-car.
“We’ll get to town in time for a late luncheon at the hotel,” was the
way he put it; “and on as fine a day as this I like to ride out of
doors and take in the scenery.”
Starbuck acquiesced, and smiled as one well used to the scenery. Truly,
the trip through the Timanyoni Canyon was one which usually brought
the tourists crowding to the rear platform of the train, but until the
morning of this purely sight-seeing jaunt he had been thinking that
Maxwell’s big friend was altogether superior to the scenic attractions.
Now, however, Sprague seemed greatly interested in the canyon passage.
Again and again he called his companion’s attention to the engineering
difficulties which had been overcome in building the narrow pathway
for the rails through the great gorge. Particularly, he dwelt upon the
stupendous cost of making the pathway, and upon the temerarious courage
of the engineers in adopting a grade so near, in dozens of places, to
the level of the foaming torrent at the track-side.
“Yes,” Starbuck agreed; “it sure did cost a heap of money. Dick says
the thirty-six miles are bonded at one hundred thousand dollars a mile,
and even that didn’t cover the cost of construction on some of the
miles.”
“But why did they put the grade so close to the river level?” persisted
the expert, when the foam from a mid-stream bowlder breathed a misty
breath on them as the train slid past. “Isn’t there constant trouble
from high water?”
“No, the Timanyoni’s a tolerably dependable creek,” was Starbuck’s
answer. “Summer and winter it holds its own, with nothing like the
variation you find in the Mississippi Valley rivers. An eight-foot
rise is the biggest they’ve ever recorded at the High Line dam, so J.
Montague Smith tells me.”
“They are fixed to take care of that much of a rise at the High Line
dam, are they?” queried Sprague.
“Oh, yes; I reckon they could take a bigger one than that, if they had
to. That dam is built for keeps. Williams, who was the constructing
engineer, says that the dam and plant will stand when the water of the
river is pouring through the second-story windows of the power-house.”
“And that, you would say, would never happen?” put in the expert
thoughtfully, adding, “If it should happen, your brother-in-law would
have to build him a new railroad through this canyon, wouldn’t he?”
“He sure would. That eight-foot rise I spoke of gave them a heap of
trouble up here--washouts to burn!”
“What caused that rise--rains?”
“Rains and cloud-bursts, in the season of the melting snows. It was
just as Smith was turning heaven and earth upside down to get the dam
completed, and for a little spell they sure was anticipatin’ trouble
a-plenty; thought they were going to be plumb paralyzed.”
“I want to meet that man Smith,” said the expert, going off at a
tangent, as his habit was. “Stillings, your friend the lawyer who has
his offices next door to my laboratory, says he’s a wonder.”
“Smith is all right,” was Starbuck’s verdict. “He’s a first-class
fighting man, and he doesn’t care much who knows it. He got big rich
out of that High Line fight, married old Colonel Baldwin’s little peach
of a daughter, and is layin’ off to live happy ever afterward.”
From that on, the rear platform talk had to do chiefly with Mr. J.
Montague Smith and his plucky struggle with the hydro-electric trust
which had tried, unsuccessfully as the event proved, to steal the High
Line dam and water privilege. In due time the train shot out of the
gorge, and after a dodging course among the Park hills, came to the
skirting of the High Line reservoir lake lying like a silver mirror in
its setting of forested buttes and spurs.
At the lower end of the lake, where the white concrete dam stretched
its massive rampart across the river gorge, the train halted for a
moment in obedience to an interposing block-signal. It was during the
momentary stop that a handsome young fellow with the healthy tan of the
hill country browning his frank, boyish face, came out of the near-by
power-house, ran up the embankment and swung himself over the railing
of the observation platform.
“Hello, John!” said Starbuck; and then he introduced the new-comer to
his companion.
“Glad to know you, Mr. Sprague,” said the young man, whose hearty
hand-grip was an instant recommendation to the good graces of the big
expert. “I’ve been hearing of you off and on all summer. It’s a saying
with us out here that any friend of Dick Maxwell’s owns Brewster--or as
much of it as he cares to make use of.”
“I have certainly been finding it that way, Mr. Smith,” Sprague
rejoined, in grateful recognition of the Brewster hospitality. And
then: “We were just talking about you and your dam as we came along,
Starbuck and I. You have a pretty good head of water on, haven’t you?”
“An unusually good head for this time of the year. The heavy storms we
have been having in the eastern foot-hills account for it. Our power
plant is working at normal load, and our ranchmen are all using water
liberally in their late irrigating, and yet you see the quantity that
is going over the splash-boards.”
“Yes, I see,” observed Sprague thoughtfully. And when the train began
to move onward: “With this big reservoir behind you, I suppose a sudden
flood couldn’t hurt you, Mr. Smith?”
The young man with the healthy tan on his clean-cut face promptly
showed his good business sense.
“We think we have a comfortably safe installation, but we are not
specially anxious to try it out merely for the satisfaction of seeing
how much it would stand,” was the conservative reply.
Sprague looked up curiously from his solid planting in the biggest of
the platform folding-chairs.
“And yet, three days ago, Mr. Smith, you said, in the presence of
witnesses, that a ten-foot rise wouldn’t endanger your dam or your
power plant,” he put in shrewdly.
Mr. J. Montague Smith, secretary and treasurer of the Timanyoni High
Line Company, was plainly taken unawares.
“How the dev--” he began; and then he tried again. “Pardon me, Mr.
Sprague; you hit me when I wasn’t looking for it. I believe I did say
something like that; in fact, I’ve said similar things a good many
times.”
“But not in exact feet and inches, I hope,” said Sprague, with a show
of mild concern. “These exactnesses are what murder us, Mr. Smith. Now,
I presume if somebody should come to you to-day and threaten to turn
another ten feet of river on you, you’d object, wouldn’t you?”
“We certainly should--object most strenuously!”
“Yet, if that person were so minded, he might quote you as having said
that ten additional feet wouldn’t hurt you.”
The young treasurer laughed a trifle uneasily.
“I can’t believe that anybody would make a bit of well-meant boasting
like that an excuse for--but it’s altogether absurd, you know. Your
case is unsupposable. Nobody pushes the button for the rains or the
cloud-burst storms. When you introduce me to the fellow who really has
the making of the weather in the Timanyoni head-waters, I’ll be very
careful what I say to him.”
“Just so,” said the expert quietly; and then a long-continued blast of
the locomotive whistle announced the approach to Brewster.
Sprague took leave of his latest acquaintance at the station entrance,
where a trim, high-powered motor-car, driven by an exceedingly pretty
young woman in leather cap, gauntlets, and driving-coat, was waiting
for Smith.
“I am a soil expert, as you may have heard, Mr. Smith,” he said at
parting, “and I am interested at the moment in alluvial washes--the
detritus brought down from the high lands by the rivers. One of these
days I may call upon you for a little information and help.”
“Command me,” said the young financier, with another of the hearty
hand-grips; and then he climbed in beside the pretty young woman and
was driven away.
Sprague was unusually silent during the tardy luncheon shared with
Starbuck in the Topaz café; and Starbuck, who never had much to say
unless he was pointedly invited, was correspondingly speechless.
Afterward, with a word of caution to his table companion not to mention
the morning’s adventure to any one, Sprague went to his laboratory,
to test the specimens of soil gathered on the Mesquite mesa, Starbuck
supposed.
But the supposition was wrong. What Mr. Calvin Sprague busied himself
with during the afternoon was the careful developing of the film taken
from his pocket camera, and the printing of several sets of pictures
therefrom. These prints he placed in his pocket note-book, and the book
and its enclosures went with him when, after the evening meal, at which
he had somehow missed both Maxwell and Starbuck, he climbed the three
flights of stairs in the Tribune Building and presented himself at the
door of Editor Kendall’s den.
Kendall was glad to see him, or at least he said he was, and,
waving him to a chair at the desk end, produced a box of rather
dubious-looking, curiously twisted cigars, at which the visitor shook
his head despondently.
“You’d say I was the picture of health, wouldn’t you, Kendall, and you
wouldn’t believe me if I were to tell you that I am smoking a great
deal too much?” he said, with a quizzical smile that was on the verge
of turning into a grin.
The editor was not fooled; as a matter of fact, it was an exceedingly
difficult matter to fool the tired-eyed tyrant of _The Tribune_
editorial rooms.
“Cut it out,” he said, with his mirthless laugh. “You wouldn’t expect
to find fifty-cent _Rienas_ in a newspaper shop--any more than I’d
expect you to climb up here with a news story for me. Smoke your own
cigars, and be damned to you.” And in sheer defiance he lighted one of
his own dubious monstrosities, while Sprague was chuckling and passing
his pocket-case of fat black _Maduros_.
“You say, any more than you’d expect a news story. Perhaps I have a
news story for you. Cast your eye over these,” and he threw out the
bunch of lately made photographs.
The editor went over the collection carefully, and at the end of the
inspection said, “Well, what’s the answer?”
“The construction camp of the Mesquite Land and Irrigation Company
at about half-past ten this forenoon. The held-up man is Mr. Engineer
Jennings, posed by Billy Starbuck, who was kindly holding a gun on him
for me. The people running are Jennings’s workmen, coming to help him
obliterate us. The water is the irrigation lake; the heap of dirt is
the dam.”
“Still, I don’t quite grasp the news value,” said Kendall doubtfully.
“Why should Jennings wish to obliterate you?”
“Because I was taking pictures on his job. He was unreasonable enough
to demand my camera, and to make the sham bad man’s break of handling
his gun without pulling it on me.”
The editor studied the pictures long and thoughtfully.
“You’ve got something up your sleeve, Mr. Sprague; what is it?” he
asked, after the considering pause.
Sprague drew his chair closer; and for five minutes the city editor,
who had come in for a word with his superior, forbore to break in
upon the low-toned earnest conference which was going on at the
managing editor’s desk. At the end of it, however, he heard Kendall
say, “I’ll get Monty Smith on the wire, and if he coincides with you,
we’ll take a hand in this. I more than half believe you’re right, but
you’ll admit that it sounds rather incredible. _The Tribune’s_
motto is ‘All the news that is news,’ but we don’t want to be classed
among the ‘yellows.’”
“You run no risk in the present instance,” was Sprague’s confident
assurance. “Of course, there is no direct evidence; if there were, the
case would be promptly taken to the courts. As a matter of fact, I’m
hoping that Mr. Smith will take it to the courts as it stands. But in
any event, an appeal to the public will do no harm.”
“All right; we’ll see what Smith says,” said Kendall; and then the
patient city editor had his inning.
Leaving the Tribune Building, the chemistry expert went to the nearest
telephone and called for the house number of Mr. Robert Stillings,
the attorney who served locally for the railroad company and was also
counsel for the High Line people. Happily, it was the young lawyer
himself who answered the ’phone.
“This is Sprague,” said the down-town caller. “How busy are you this
evening?”
The answer was apparently satisfactory, since the big man went on: “All
right; I wish you would arrange to meet me in the lobby of the Topaz.
Catch the next car if it won’t hurry you too much. You’ll do it? Thank
you. Good-by.”
Fifteen minutes later the Government man, writing a letter at one
of the desks in the hotel lobby, looked up to greet his summoned
visitor, a keen-eyed, self-contained young man whose reputation as a
fearless fighter in just causes was already spreading from the little
inter-mountain city of his adoption and becoming State-wide.
“I’m here,” said Stillings briefly; and Sprague rose and drew him aside
into one of the alcoves.
For some little time after they had drawn their chairs together,
Sprague held the floor, talking earnestly and exhibiting a set of the
snap-shot pictures. Stillings listened attentively, examining the
pictures by the aid of a small pocket magnifier. But when Sprague
finished he was shaking his head doubtfully, unconsciously following
the example set by _The Tribune_ editor.
“We have nothing definite to go on, Mr. Sprague, as you yourself admit.
These people are well within their legal rights. As you probably know,
there is no statutory provision in this State requiring the builders
of a dam to conform to any particular plan of construction; and, as a
matter of fact, there are dozens of dams just like this one--mere earth
embankments without masonry of any kind.”
“Do you mean to say that the safety of the entire Timanyoni Valley can
be endangered by a structure like this, and that the property owners
who are imperilled have no legal recourse?” demanded the expert.
“Recourse, yes; plenty of it after the fact. If the dam should give way
and cause damage, the irrigation company would be liable.”
“Humph!” snorted the big-bodied one, half-contemptuously. “Law is one
of the few things that I have never dabbled in. What you say amounts to
this: if I find a man training a cannon on my house, I have no right to
stop him; I can only try to collect damages after the gun has gone off
and ripped a hole through my property. I could make a better law than
that myself!”
Stillings was staring thoughtfully through the opposite window at the
lights in the railroad building across the plaza.
“There are times, Mr. Sprague, when we all feel that way; crises which
seem to call for something in the way of extra-judicial proceedings,”
he admitted. And then: “Have you told Maxwell about this?”
“Not specifically. Dick has troubles of his own just now; he has had
enough of them this summer to turn his hair gray, as you know. I have
been hoping that this latest move of the enemy could be blocked
without dragging him into it.”
Stillings turned quickly. “That is the frankest thing you’ve said this
evening. Is it another move of the enemy--the New Yorkers?”
Sprague spread his hands and his big shoulders went up in a shrug.
“You have just as much incriminating evidence as I have. How does it
strike you?”
The attorney shook his head in doubtful incredulity, again
unconsciously following Editor Kendall’s lead.
“It doesn’t seem possible!” he protested. “Think of the tremendous
consequences involved--outside of the crippling of the railroad. The
Short Line wouldn’t be the only sufferer in case of a dam-break in
the Mesquite. The entire valley would be flood-swept, and our High
Line dam--” he stopped abruptly and half-rose to his feet. “Good
Lord, Sprague! the breaking of the High Line dam would mean death and
destruction without end!”
Sprague had found a cigar in an overlooked pocket and was calmly
lighting it. Though he did not tell Stillings so, the argument had
finally gotten around into the field toward which he had been pushing
it from the first.
“Three days ago, your High Line treasurer, Mr. J. Montague Smith,
declared in the presence of witnesses--it was right here in this hotel
lobby, and I happened to overhear it--that a ten-foot rise in the
river, which, as you know, would submerge and sweep away miles of the
railroad track in the canyon, would by no means endanger his dam. There
you are, Mr. Stillings. Now fish or cut bait.”
“Great Scott! what could Smith have been thinking of!” ejaculated the
lawyer.
“It was merely a bit of loyal brag, as he admitted to Starbuck and me
on the train this afternoon; and it had been craftily provoked by one
of the men who heard it. But he said it, and what is more, he said it
to--Jennings!”
This time the attorney’s start carried him out of his chair and stood
him upon his feet.
“I shall have to see Smith at once,” he said hurriedly. “Still, I can’t
believe that these New York stock pirates would authorize any such
murderous thing as this!”
“Authorize murder or violence? Of course not; big business never does
that. What it does is to put a man into the field, telling him in
general terms the end that is to be accomplished. The head pushers
would turn blue under their finger-nails if you’d charge them with
murder.”
“But that is what this would amount to--cold-blooded murder!”
“Hold on a minute,” objected Sprague. “Let’s apply a little scientific
reasoning. Suppose this thing has been accurately figured out,
engineering-wise. Suppose that, by careful computation, it has been
found that a certain quantity of water, turned loose at the mouth of
Mesquite Valley, would produce a flood of a certain height in the
full length of Timanyoni Canyon--say ten or twelve feet--sufficient
to obliterate thirty-five or forty miles of the railroad track. Below
its path of the greatest destruction it comes out into your High Line
reservoir lake, with some miles farther to go, and a greatly enlarged
area over which to diffuse itself.”
Stillings was nodding intelligence. “I am beginning to see,” he said.
“Ten feet in the canyon wouldn’t necessarily mean ten feet at Smith’s
dam.”
“No; but at the same time Smith is on record as having said that ten
feet wouldn’t endanger his dam or the power plant. So there you are
again.”
Stillings walked the length of the alcove twice with his head down and
his hands in his pockets before he stopped in front of the expert to
say: “You’ve half-convinced me, Mr. Sprague. If we could get the barest
shred of evidence that these people are building a dam which isn’t
intended to hold----”
“There spoke the lawyer again,” laughed Sprague. “If you had the
evidence, what would you do?”
“Institute legal proceedings at once.”
“And how long would it take you to get action?”
“Oh, that would depend upon the nature of the evidence I had to offer,
of course.”
Sprague laughed again, derisively this time.
“Yes, I thought so; and while you were getting out your writs and
monkeying around--do you know what that piece of canyon track cost,
Mr. Stillings? I was told to-day that three million dollars wouldn’t
replace it--to say nothing of what it would mean to the railroad
company to have its through line put out of business indefinitely. No;
if we mean to----”
The interruption was the intrusion into the alcove of a huge-framed,
hard-faced man who was fumbling in his pocket for a paper.
“Hello, Harding,” said Stillings; and then, jokingly: “What brings the
respected sheriff of Timanyoni County charging in upon us at this time
of night?”
“It’s a warrant,” said the sheriff, half in apology. And then to
Sprague: “I hate like the mischief to trouble you, Mr. Sprague, but
duty’s duty.”
Sprague smiled up at the big man. “Tell us about it, Mr. Harding. You
needn’t bother to read the warrant.”
“It’s that scrap you had with Jennings up at the Mesquite this morning.
He’s swore out a warrant against you for assault and battery.”
“And are you going to lock me up over night? I fancy that is what he
would like to have you do.”
“Not me,” said the sheriff good-naturedly. “I got Judge MacFarland out
o’ bed and made him come down to his office. I’m goin’ to ask you to
walk around there with me, just to let me out of it whole. I’ve fixed
it with the judge so you won’t have to give bail.”
“I’ll go with you,” Stillings offered; and a few minutes later, in the
magistrate’s office, the Government man had bound himself on his own
recognizance to appear in court the next morning to answer the charge
against him.
On the sidewalk in front of the justice shop, Stillings reverted to the
more pressing matter.
“I’m going to see Smith before I sleep, if I have to drive out to
the Baldwin ranch to find him,” he declared. “In the meantime, Mr.
Sprague, if you can devise any scheme by which we can get a legal hold
on these fellows--anything that will serve as an excuse for our asking
that an injunction be issued----”
“That would come before Judge Watson, wouldn’t it?” Sprague broke in.
“Yes.”
“See Kendall, of _The Tribune_, about that. From what he told me a
couple of hours ago, I should say that your petition for an injunction
would be only a crude loss of time. We’ll try to think of a better way,
or at least a more effective way. Good-night; and don’t omit to throw
the gaff into Smith, good and hard.”
On the morning following Sprague’s visit to _The Tribune_
editorial rooms, the newspaper-reading public of Brewster had a small
sensation served, in Starbuck’s phrase, “hot from the skillet.” A good
portion of the front page of _The Tribune_ was given to a news
story of the work which was under way in the Mesquite Valley, and
pictures were printed of the camp, the dam, and the growing lake.
On the editorial page there was a caustic arraignment of the Mesquite
Company, which was called upon to show cause why it should not be
condemned as a public nuisance of a kind which had already brought
much reproach upon the West as a field for legitimate investment, and
the suggestion was made that a committee of responsible citizens be
sent to investigate the Mesquite project, to the end that the charges
made might be either substantiated or set aside.
Specifically, these charges were that there was no arable land within
reach of the Mesquite dam, and that the dam itself was unsafe.
Throughout his editorial Kendall had judiciously refrained from making
any mention of a possible disaster to the railroad; but he hinted
broadly at the danger to which the High Line dam--the source of the
city’s power and lights--would be subjected in the event of a flood
catastrophe on the distant project.
Maxwell, who was living at the hotel in the absence of his family,
had read the paper before he came down to join Sprague at the
breakfast-table, and, like every other newspaper reader in Brewster
that morning, he was full of the latest sensation.
“By George, Calvin,” he began, “somebody has been stirring up the mud
for those people we were talking about night before last. Have you seen
_The Tribune_?”
Sprague nodded assent.
“What do you make of it?” asked the railroad man.
“I should say that somebody--possibly the High Line management--is
beginning to sit up and take notice, wouldn’t you?”
“Y-yes; but see here--any such thing as Kendall hints at would knock
the Nevada Short Line out long before it would get to the High Line
dam!”
“Naturally,” said Sprague coolly.
“Great Jehu! was that what you meant when you were making me dig this
Mesquite project over for you the other day?”
“I didn’t want to drag you into it, and don’t yet,” said Sprague
quietly. “You’ve had grief enough for one summer. But the detective
half of me tells me that there is little doubt that this thing is
another attempt on the part of the big-money crowd to side-swipe your
railroad off the map. It can be done, and you have no preventive
recourse; Stillings says you haven’t.”
“But, Calvin--something’s _got_ to be done! Are we going to sit
still and----”