commonplace world, I hope," was Ballard's summing-up, when he had
traversed the reflective mile and had let himself into the office
bungalow to find Bromley sleeping peacefully in his bunk. "But it's a
little hard to wait--with the air full of Damocles-swords, and with the
dear girl's heart gripped in a vise that I can't unscrew. That is what
makes it bitterer than death: she knows, and it is killing her by
inches--in spite of the bravest heart that ever loved and suffered. God
help her; God help us all!"
XX
THE GEOLOGIST
It was Miss Craigmiles herself who gave Ballard the exact date of
Professor Gardiner's coming; driving down to the construction camp alone
in the little motor-car for that avowed purpose.
A cloud-burst in the main range had made the stage road from Alta Vista
impassable for the moment, leaving the Arcadia Company's railroad--by
some unexplained miracle of good fortune--unharmed. Hence, unless the
expected guest could be brought over from Alta Vista on the material
train, he would be indefinitely detained on the other side of the
mountain. Miss Elsa came ostensibly to beg a favour.
"Of course, I'll send over for him," said Ballard, when the favour had
been named. "Didn't I tell you he is going to be _my_ guest?"
"But he isn't," she insisted, playfully. Bromley was out and at work,
Wingfield had entirely recovered from the effects of his electric shock,
and there had been no untoward happenings for three peaceful weeks.
Wherefore there was occasion for light-heartedness.
Ballard descended from the bungalow porch and arbitrarily stopped the
buzzing engines of the runabout by cutting out the batteries. "This is
the first time I've seen you for three weeks," he asserted--which was a
lover's exaggeration. "Please come up and sit on the porch. There is any
number of things I want to say."
"Where is Mr. Bromley?" she asked, making no move to leave the
driving-seat.
"He is out on the ditch survey--luckily for me. Won't you please 'light
and come in?--as we say back in the Blue-grass."
"You don't deserve it. You haven't been near us since Mr. Bromley went
back to work. Why?"
"I have been exceedingly busy; we are coming down the home-stretch on
our job here, as you know." The commonplace excuse was the only one
available. He could not tell her that it was impossible for him to
accept further hospitalities at Castle 'Cadia.
"Mr. Bromley hasn't been too busy," she suggested.
"Bromley owes all of you a very great debt of gratitude."
"And you do not, you would say. That is quite true. You owe us nothing
but uncompromising antagonism--hatred, if you choose to carry it to that
extreme."
"No," he returned gravely. "I can't think of you and of enmity at the
same moment."
"If you could only know," she said, half absently, and the trouble
shadow came quickly into the backgrounding depths of the beautiful eyes.
"There is no real cause for enmity or hatred--absolutely none."
"I am thinking of you," he reminded her, reverting to the impossibility
of associating that thought with the other.
"Thank you; I am glad you can make even that much of a concession. It is
more than another would make." Then, with the unexpectedness which was
all her own: "I am still curious to know what you did to Mr. Wingfield:
that day when he so nearly lost his life in the laboratory?"
"At what time in that day?" he asked, meaning to dodge if he could.
"You know--when you had him here in your office, with Jerry and Mr.
Bromley."
"I don't remember all the things I did to him, that day and before it. I
believe I made him welcome--when I had to. He hasn't been using his
welcome much lately, though."
"No; not since that day that came near ending so terribly. I'd like to
know what happened."
"Nothing--of any consequence. I believe I told you that Wingfield was
boring us with the plot of a new play."
"Yes; and you said you couldn't remember it."
"I don't want to remember it. Let's talk of something else. Is your
anxiety--the trouble you refuse to share with me--any lighter?"
"No--yes; just for the moment, perhaps."
"Are you still determined not to let me efface it for you?"
"You couldn't; no one can. It can never be effaced."
His smile was the man's smile of superior wisdom.
"Don't we always say that when the trouble is personal?"
She ignored the query completely, and her rejoinder was totally
irrelevant--or it seemed to be.
"You think I came down here to ask you to send over to Alta Vista for
Professor Gardiner. That was merely an excuse. I wanted to beg you once
again to suspend judgment--not to be vindictive."
Again he dissimulated. "I'm not vindictive: why should I be?"
"You have every reason; or, at least, you believe you have." She leaned
over the arm of the driving-seat and searched his eyes pleadingly:
"Please tell me: how much did Mr. Wingfield find out?"
It was blankly impossible to tell her the hideous truth, or anything
remotely approaching it. But his parrying of her question was passing
skilless.
"Not being a mind-reader, I can't say what Wingfield knows--or thinks he
knows. Our disagreement turned upon his threat to make literary material
out of--well, out of matters that were in a good measure my own private
and personal affairs."
"Oh; so there _was_ a quarrel? That is more than you were willing to
admit a moment ago."
"You dignify it too much. I believe I called him an ass, and he called
me an idiot. There was no bloodshed."
"You are jesting again. You always jest when I want to be serious."
"I might retort that I learned the trick of it from you--in the blessed
days that are now a part of another existence."
"Oh!" she said; and there was so much more of distress than of
impatience in the little outcry that he was mollified at once.
"I'm going to crank the engines and send you home," he asseverated. "I'm
not fit to talk to you to-day." And he started the engines of the
motor-car.
She put a dainty foot on the clutch-pedal. "You'll come up and see me?"
she asked; adding: "Some time when you are fit?"
"I'll come when I am needed; yes."
He walked beside the slowly moving car as she sent it creeping down the
mesa hill on the brakes. At the hill-bottom turn, where the camp street
ended and the roundabout road led off to the temporary bridge, she
stopped the car. The towering wall of the great dam, with its dotting of
workmen silhouetted black against the blue of the Colorado sky, rose
high on the left. She let her gaze climb to the summit of the huge dike.
"You are nearly through?" she asked.
"Yes. Two other weeks, with no bad luck, will see us ready to turn on
the water."
She was looking straight ahead again.
"You know what that means to us at Castle 'Cadia?--but of course you
do."
"I know I'd rather be a 'mucker' with a pick and shovel out yonder in
the ditch than to be the boss here when the spillway gates are closed at
the head of the cut-off tunnel. And that is the pure truth."
"This time I believe you without reservation, Breckenridge--my friend."
Then: "Will Mr. Pelham come out to the formal and triumphal opening of
the Arcadian Irrigation District?"
"Oh, you can count on that--with all the trimmings. There is to be a
demonstration in force, as Major Blacklock would say; special trains
from Denver to bring the crowd, a barbecue dinner, speeches, a
land-viewing excursion over the completed portion of the railroad, and
fireworks in the evening while the band plays 'America.' You can trust
Mr. Pelham to beat the big drum and to clash the cymbals vigorously and
man-fashion at the psychological instant."
"For purely commercial reasons, of course? I could go a step further and
tell you something else that will happen. There will be a good many
transfers of the Arcadia Company's stock at the triumphal climax."
He was standing with one foot on the car step and his hands buried in
the pockets of his short working-coat. His eyes narrowed to regard her
thoughtfully.
"What do you know about such things?" he demurred. "You know altogether
too much for one small bachelor maid. It's uncanny."
"I am the cow-punching princess of Arcadia, and Mr. Pelham's natural
enemy, you must remember," she countered, with a laugh that sounded
entirely care-free. "I could tell you more about the stock affair. Mr.
Pelham has been very liberal with his friends in the floating of this
great and glorious undertaking--to borrow one of his pet phrases. He has
placed considerable quantities of the Arcadia Company's stock among them
at merely nominal prices, asking only that they sign a 'gentlemen's
agreement' not to resell any of it, so that my father could get it. But
there is a wheel within that wheel, too. Something more than half of the
nominal capitalisation has been reserved as 'treasury stock.' When the
enthusiasm reaches the proper height, this reserved stock will be put
upon the market. People will be eager to buy it--won't they?--with the
work all done, and everything in readiness to tap the stream of sudden
wealth?"
"Probably: that would be the natural inference."
"I thought so. And, as the company's chief engineer, you could doubtless
get in on the 'ground floor' that Mr. Pelham is always talking about,
couldn't you?"
The question was one to prick an honest man in his tenderest part.
Ballard was hurt, and his face advertised it.
"See here, little girl," he said, flinging the formalities to the winds;
"I am the company's hired man at the present moment, but that is
entirely without prejudice to my convictions, or to the fact that some
day I am going to marry you. I hope that defines my attitude. As matters
stand, Mr. Pelham couldn't hand me out any of his stock on a silver
platter!"
"And Mr. Bromley?"
"You needn't fear for Loudon; he isn't going to invest, either. You know
very well that he is in precisely the same boat that I am."
"How shocking!" she exclaimed, with an embarrassed little laugh. "Is Mr.
Bromley to marry your widow? Or are you to figure as the consolation
prize for his widow? Doubtless you have arranged it amicably between
you."
Having said the incendiary thing, he brazened it out like a man and a
lover.
"It's no joke. I suppose I might sidestep, but I sha'n't. You know very
well that Bromley is in love with you--up to his chin, and I'm afraid
you have been too kind to him. That is a little hard on Loudon, you
know--when you are going to marry some one else. But let that rest, and
tell me a little more about this stock deal. Why should there be a
'gentlemen's agreement' to exclude your father? To a rank outsider like
myself, Arcadia Irrigation would seem to be about the last thing in the
world Colonel Adam Craigmiles would want to buy."
"Under present conditions, I think it is," she said. "_I_ shouldn't buy
it now."
"What would you do, O wise virgin of the market-place?"
"I'd wait patiently while the rocket is going up; I might even clap my
hands and say 'Ah-h-h!' with the admiring multitude. But afterward, when
the stick comes down, I'd buy every bit of Arcadia Irrigation I could
find."
Again he was regarding her through half-closed eyelids.
"As I said before, you know too much about such things--altogether too
much." He said it half in raillery, but his deduction was made seriously
enough. "You think your father will win his law-suit and so break the
market?"
"No; on the contrary, I'm quite sure he will be beaten. I am going, now.
Don't ask me any more questions: I've said too much to the company's
engineer, as it is."
"You have said nothing to the company's engineer," he denied. "You have
been talking to Breckenridge Ballard, your future----"
She set the car in motion before he could complete the sentence, and he
stood looking after it as it shot away up the hills. It was quite out of
sight, and the sound of its drumming motor was lost in the hoarse
grumbling of the river, before he began to realise that Elsa's visit had
not been for the purpose of asking him to send for Gardiner, nor yet to
beg him not to be vindictive. Her real object had been to warn him not
to buy Arcadia Irrigation. "Why?" came the unfailing question,
shot-like; and, like all the others of its tribe, it had to go
unanswered.
It was two days later when Gardiner, the assistant professor of geology,
kept his appointment, was duly met at Alta Vista by Ballard's special
engine and a "dinkey" way-car, and was transported in state to the
Arcadian fastnesses. Ballard had it in mind to run down the line on the
other engine to meet the Bostonian; but Elsa forestalled him by
intercepting the "special" at Ackerman's with the motor-car and whisking
the guest over the roundabout road to Castle 'Cadia.
Gardiner walked down to the construction camp at Elbow Canyon bright and
early the following morning to make his peace with Ballard.
"Age has its privileges which youth is obliged to concede, Breckenridge,
my son," was the form his apology took. "When I learned that I might
have my visit with you, and still be put up at the millionaire hostelry
in the valley above, I didn't hesitate a moment. I am far beyond the
point of bursting into enthusiastic raptures over a bunk shake-down in a
camp shanty, steel forks, tin platters, and plum-duff, when I can live
on the fat of the land and sleep on a modern mattress. How are you
coming on? Am I still in time to be in at the death?"
"I hope there isn't going to be any death," was the laughing rejoinder.
"Because, in the natural sequence of things, it would have to be mine,
you know."
"Ah! You are tarred a little with the superstitious stick, yourself, are
you? What was it you said to me about 'two sheer accidents and a
commonplace tragedy'? You may remember that I warned you, and the event
proves that I was a true prophet. I predicted that Arcadia would have
its shepherdess, you recollect."
Thus, with dry humour, the wise man from the East. But Ballard was not
prepared at the moment for a plunge into the pool of sentiment with the
mildly cynical old schoolman for a bath-master, and he proposed, as the
readiest alternative, a walking tour of the industries.
Gardiner was duly impressed by the industrial miracles, and by the
magnitude of the irrigation scheme. Also, he found fitting words in
which to express his appreciation of the thoroughness of Ballard's work,
and of the admirable system under which it was pressing swiftly to its
conclusion. But these matters became quickly subsidiary when he began to
examine the curious geological formation of the foothill range through
which the river elbowed its tumultuous course.
"These little wrinklings of the earth's crust at the foot of the great
mountain systems are nature's puzzle-pieces for us," he remarked. "I
foresee an extremely enjoyable vacation for me--if you have forgiven me
to the extent of a snack at your mess-table now and then, and a possible
night's lodging in your bungalow if I should get caught out too late to
reach the millionaire luxuries of Castle 'Cadia."
"If I haven't forgiven you, Bromley will take you in," laughed Ballard.
"Make yourself one of us--when you please and as you please. The camp
and everything in it belongs to you for as long as you can persuade
yourself to stay."
Gardiner accepted the invitation in its largest sense, and the afternoon
of the same day found him prowling studiously in the outlet canyon with
hammer and specimen-bag; a curious figure of complete abstraction in
brown duck and service leggings, overshadowed by an enormous cork-lined
helmet-hat that had been faded and stained by the sun and rains of three
continents. Ballard passed the word among his workmen. The absent-minded
stranger under the cork hat was the guest of the camp, who was to be
permitted to go and come as he chose, whose questions were to be
answered without reserve, and whose peculiarities, if he had any, were
to pass unremarked.
With the completion of the dam so near at hand, neither of the two young
men who were responsible for the great undertaking had much time to
spare for extraneous things. But Gardiner asked little of his secondary
hosts; and presently the thin, angular figure prowling and tapping at
the rocks became a familiar sight in the busy construction camp. It was
Lamoine, the camp jester, who started the story that the figure in brown
canvas was a mascot, imported specially by the "boss" to hold the
"hoodoo" in check until the work should be done; and thereafter the
Boston professor might have chipped his specimens from the facing stones
on the dam without let or hindrance.
The masons were setting the coping course on the great wall on a day
when Gardiner's studious enthusiasm carried him beyond the dinner-hour
at Castle 'Cadia and made him an evening guest in the engineer's adobe;
and in the after-supper talk it transpired that the assistant in geology
had merely snatched a meagre fortnight out of his work in the summer
school, and would be leaving for home in another day or two.
Both of the young men protested their disappointment. They had been too
busy to see anything of their guest in a comradely way, and they had
been looking forward to the lull in the activities which would follow
the opening celebration and promising themselves a more hospitable
entertainment of the man who had been both Mentor and elder brother to
them in the Boston years.
"You are not regretting it half as keenly as I am," the guest assured
them. "Apart from losing the chance to thresh it out with you two, I
have never been on more fascinatingly interesting geological ground. I
could spend an entire summer among these wonderful hills of yours
without exhausting their astonishing resources."
Ballard made allowances for scholastic enthusiasm. He had slighted
geology for the more strictly practical studies in his college course.
"Meaning the broken formations?" he asked.
"Meaning the general topsyturvyism of all the formations. Where you
might reasonably expect to find one stratum, you find others perhaps
thousands of years older--or younger--in the geological chronology. I
wonder you haven't galvanised a little enthusiasm over it: you discredit
your alma mater and me when you regard these marvellous hills merely as
convenient buttresses for your wall of masonry. And, by the way, that
reminds me: neither of you two youngsters is responsible for the
foundations of that dam; isn't that the fact?"
"It is," said Bromley, answering for both. Then he added that the
specifications called for bed-rock, which Fitzpatrick, who had worked
under Braithwaite, said had been uncovered and properly benched for the
structure.
"'Bed-rock,'" said the geologist, reflectively. "That is a workman's
term, and is apt to be misleading. The vital question, under such
abnormal conditions as those presenting themselves in your canyon, is,
What kind of rock was it?"
Bromley shook his head. "You can't prove it by me. The foundations were
all in before I came on the job. But from Fitzpatrick's description I
should take it to be the close-grained limestone."
"H'm," said Gardiner. "Dam-building isn't precisely in my line; but I
shouldn't care to trust anything short of the granites in such a
locality as this."
"You've seen something?" queried Ballard.
"Nothing immediately alarming; merely an indication of what might be.
Where the river emerges from your cut-off tunnel below the dam, it has
worn out a deep pit in the old bed, as you know. The bottom of this pit
must, in the nature of things, be far below the foundations of the
masonry. Had you thought of that?"
"I have--more than once or twice," Ballard admitted.
"Very well," continued the Master of the Rocks; "that circumstance
suggests three interrogation points. Query one: How has the diverted
torrent managed to dig such a deep cavity if the true primitives--your
workman's 'bed-rock'--under-lie its channel cutting? Query two: What
causes the curious reverberatory sound like distant thunder made by the
stream as it plunges into this pit--a sound suggesting subterranean
caverns? Query three--and this may be set down as the most important of
the trio: Why is the detritus washed up out of this singular pot-hole a
friable brown shale, quite unlike anything found higher up in the bed of
the stream?"
The two young men exchanged swift glances of apprehension. "Your
deductions, Professor?" asked Bromley, anxiously.
"Now you are going too fast. True science doesn't deduce: it waits until
it can prove. But I might hazard a purely speculative guess. Mr.
Braithwaite's foundation stratum--your contractor's 'bed-rock'--may not
be the true primitive; it may in its turn be underbedded by this brown
shale that the stream is washing up out of its pot-hole."
"Which brings on more talk," said Ballard, grappling thoughtfully with
the new perplexities forming themselves upon Gardiner's guess.
"Decidedly, one would say. Granting my speculative answer to Query
Number Three, the Arcadia Company's dam may stand for a thousand
years--or it may not. Its life may possibly be determined in a single
night, if by any means the water impounded above it should find its way
through Fitzpatrick's 'bed-rock' to an underlying softer stratum."
Ballard's eyes were fixed upon a blue-print profile of Elbow Canyon
pinned upon the wall, when he said: "If that pot-hole, or some rift
similar to it, were above the dam instead of below it, for example?"
"Precisely," said the geologist. "In five minutes after the opening of
such an underground channel your dam might be transformed into a
makeshift bridge spanning an erosive torrent comparable in fierce and
destructive energy, to nothing milder than a suddenly released Niagara."
Silence ensued, and afterward the talk drifted to other fields; was
chiefly reminiscent of the younger men's university years. It was while
Bromley and Gardiner were carrying the brunt of it that Ballard got up
and went out. A few minutes later the out-door stillness of the night
was shattered by the sharp crack of a rifle, and other shots followed in
quick succession.
Bromley sprang afoot at the first discharge, but before he could reach
the door of the adobe, Ballard came in, carrying a hatful of roughly
crumbled brown earth. He was a little short of breath, and his eyes were
flashing with excitement. Nevertheless, he was cool enough to stop
Bromley's question before it could be set in words.
"It was only one of the colonel's Mexican mine guards trying a little
rifle practice in the dark," he explained; and before there could be any
comment: "I went out to get this, Gardiner"--indicating the hatful of
earth. "It's a sample of some stuff I'd like to have you take back to
Boston with you for a scientific analysis. I've got just enough of the
prospector's blood in me to make me curious about it."
The geologist examined the brown earth critically; passed a handful of
it through his fingers; smelled it; tasted it.
"How much have you got of this?" he asked, with interest palpably
aroused.
"Enough," rejoined the Kentuckian, evasively.
"Then your fortune is made, my son. This 'stuff,' as you call it, is the
basis of Colonel Craigmile's millions. I hope your vein isn't a part of
his."
Again Ballard evaded the implied question. "What do you know about it,
Gardiner? Have you ever seen any of it before?"
"I have, indeed. More than that, I have 'proved up' on it, as your
Western miners say of their claims. A few evenings ago we were talking
of expert analyses--the colonel and young Wingfield and I--up at the
house of luxuries, and the colonel ventured to wager that he could stump
me; said he could give me a sample of basic material carrying fabulous
values, the very name of which I wouldn't be able to tell him after the
most exhaustive laboratory tests. Of course, I had to take him up--if
only for the honour of the Institute--and the three of us went down to
his laboratory. The sample he gave me was some of this brown earth."
"And you analysed it?" inquired Ballard with eagerness unconcealed.
"I did; and won a box of the colonel's high-priced cigars, for which,
unhappily, I have no possible use. The sample submitted, like this in
your hat, was zirconia; the earth-ore which carries the rare metal
zirconium. Don't shame me and your alma mater by saying that this means
nothing to you."
"You've got us down," laughed Bromley. "It's only a name to me; the name
of one of the theoretical metals cooked up in laboratory experiments.
And I venture to say it is even less than that to Breckenridge."