THE ISLE OF ARCADY
"Then the moon shone out so broad and good
That the barn-fowl crowed:
And the brown owl called to his mate in the wood
_That a dead man lay in the road!_"
--WILL WALLACE HARNEY.
Arcadia's assets were the railroad, two large modern sawmills, the
climate and printer's ink. The railroad found it a patch of bare
ground, six miles from water; put in successively a whistling-post, a
signboard, a depot, townsite papers and a water-main from the Alamo;
and, when the townsite papers were confirmed, established machine shops
and made the new town the division headquarters and base for northward
building.
The railroad then set up the sawmills, primarily to get out ties
and timbers for its own lanky growth, and built a spur to bring
the forest down from Rainbow to the mills. The word "down" is used
advisedly. Arcadia nestled on the plain under the very eavespouts of
Rainbow Range. The branch, following with slavish fidelity the lines
of a twisted corkscrew, took twenty-seven miles, mostly tunnel and
trestlework, to clamber to the logging camps, with a minimum grade that
was purely prohibitive and a maximum that I dare not state; but there
was a rise of six thousand feet in those twenty-seven miles. You can
figure the average for yourself. And if the engine should run off the
track at the end of her climb she would light on the very roundhouse
where she took breakfast, and spoil the shingles.
Yes, that was some railroad. There was a summer hotel--Cloudland--on
the summit, largely occupied by slackwire performers. Others walked up
or rode a horse. They used stem-winding engines, with eight vertical
cylinders on the right side and a shaft like a steamboat, with beveled
cogwheel transmission on the axles. And they haven't had a wreck on
that branch to date. No matter how late a train is, when an engine sees
the tail-lights of her caboose ahead of her she stops and sends out
flagmen.
The railroad, under the pseudonym of the Arcadia Development Company,
also laid out streets and laid in a network of pipe-lines, and staked
out lots until the sawmill protested for lack of tie-lumber. It put
down miles of cement walks, fringed them with cottonwood saplings,
telephone poles and electric lights. It built a hotel and a few streets
of party-colored cottages--directoire, with lingerie tile roofs,
organdy façades and peplum, intersecting panels and outside chimneys
at the gable ends. It decreed a park, with nooks, lanes, mazes, lake,
swans, ballground, grandstand, bandstand and the band appertaining
there-unto--all of which apparently came into being over night. Then it
employed a competent staff of word-artists and capitalized the climate.
The result was astonishing. The cottonwoods grew apace and a swift town
grew with them--swift in every sense of the word. It took good money
to buy good lots in Arcadia. People with money must be fed, served
and amused by people wanting money. In three years the trees cast a
pleasant shade and the company cast a balance, with gratifying results.
They discounted the unearned increment for a generation to come.
It was a beneficent scheme, selling ozone and novelty, sunshine and
delight. The buyers got far more than the worth of their money, the
company got their money--and every one was happy. Health and good
spirits are a bargain at any price. There were sandstorms and hot days;
but sand promotes digestion and digestion promotes cheerfulness. Heat
merely enhanced the luxury of shaded hammocks. As an adventurer thawed
out, he sent for seven others worse than himself. Arcadia became the
metropolis of the county and, by special election, the county-seat.
Courthouse, college and jail followed in quick succession.
For the company, Arcadia life was one grand, sweet song, with, thus
far, but a single discord. As has been said, Arcadia was laid out on
the plain. There was higher ground on three sides--Rainbow Mountain to
the east, the deltas of La Luz Creek and the Alamo to the north and
south. New Mexico was dry, as a rule. After the second exception, when
enthusiastic citizens went about on stilts to forward a project for
changing the town's name to Venice, the company acknowledged its error
handsomely. When dry land prevailed once more above the face of the
waters, it built a mighty moat by way of the _amende honorable_--a moat
with its one embankment on the inner side of the five-mile horseshoe
about the town. This, with its attendant bridges, gave to Arcadia an
aspect singularly medieval. It also furnished a convenient line of
social demarcation. Chauffeurs, college professors, lawyers, gamblers,
county officers, together with a few tradesmen and railroad officials,
abode within "the Isle of Arcady," on more or less even terms with the
Arcadians proper; millmen, railroaders, lumberjacks, and the underworld
generally, dwelt without the pale.
The company rubbed its lamp again--and behold! an armory, a hospital
and a library! It contributed liberally to churches and campaign
funds; it exercised a general supervision over morals and manners. For
example, in the deed to every lot sold was an ironclad, fire-tested,
automatic and highly constitutional forfeiture clause, to the effect
that sale or storage on the premises of any malt, vinous or spirituous
liquors should immediately cause the title to revert to the company.
The company's own vicarious saloon, on Lot Number One, was a sumptuous
and magnificent affair. It was known as The Mint.
All this while we have been trying to reach the night watchman.
In the early youth of Arcadia there came to her borders a warlock Finn,
of ruddy countenance and solid build. He had a Finnish name, and they
called him Lars Porsena.
Lars P. had been a seafaring man. While spending a year's wage in San
Francisco, he had wandered into Arcadia by accident. There, being
unable to find the sea, he became a lumberjack--with a custom, when in
spirits, of beating the watchman of that date into an omelet.
The indulgence of this penchant gave occasion for much adverse
criticism. Fine and imprisonment failed to deter him from this playful
habit. One watchman tried to dissuade Lars from his foible with a
club, and his successor even went so far as to shoot him--to shoot
Lars P., of course, not his predecessor--the successor's predecessor,
not Lars Porsena's--if he ever had one, which he hadn't. (What we need
is more pronouns.) He--the successor of the predecessor--resigned
when Lars became convalescent; but Lars was no whit dismayed by this
contretemps--in his first light-hearted moment he resumed his old
amusement with unabated gayety.
Thus was one of our greatest railroad systems subjected to
embarrassment and annoyance by the idiosyncrasies of an ignorant but
cheerful sailorman. The railroad resolved to submit no longer to such
caprice. A middleweight of renown was imported, who--when he was able
to be about again--bitterly reproached the president and demanded a
bonus on the ground that he had knocked Lars down several times before
he--Lars--got angry; and also because of a disquisition in the Finnish
tongue which Lars Porsena had emitted during the procedure--which
address, the prizefighter stated, had unnerved him and so led to
his undoing. It was obviously, he said, of a nature inconceivably
insulting; the memory of it rankled yet, though he had heard only the
beginning and did not get the--But let that pass.
The thing became a scandal. Watchman succeeded watchman on the company
payroll and the hospital list, until some one hit upon a happy and
ingenious way to avoid this indignity. Lars Porsena was appointed
watchman.
This statesmanlike policy bore gratifying results. Lars Porsena
straightway abandoned his absurd and indefensible custom, and no
imitator arose. Also, Arcadia within the moat--the island--which was
the limit of his jurisdiction, became the most orderly spot in New
Mexico.
* * * * *
In the first gray of dawn, Uncle Sam, whistling down Main Street on his
way home from the masquerade, found Lars Porsena lying on his face in a
pool of blood.
The belated reveler knelt beside him. The watchman was shot, but still
breathed. "Ho! Murder! Help! Murder!" shouted Uncle Sam. The alarm
rolled crashing along the quiet street. Heads were thrust from windows;
startled voices took up the outcry; other home-goers ran from every
corner; hastily arrayed householders poured themselves from street
doors.
Lars Porsena was in disastrous plight. He breathed, but that was about
all. He was shot through the body. A trail of blood led back a few
doors to Lake's Bank. A window was cut out; the blood began at the sill.
Messengers ran to telephone the doctor, the sheriff, Lake. The
knot of men grew to a crowd. A rumor spread that there had been an
unusual amount of currency in the bank over night--a rumor presently
confirmed by Bassett, the bare-headed and white-faced cashier. It was
near payday; in addition to the customary amount to cash checks for
railroaders and millhands--itself no mean sum--and the money for
regular business, there had been provision for contemplated loans to
promoters of new local industries.
The doctor came running, made a hasty examination, took emergency
measures to stanch the freshly started blood, and swore whole-heartedly
at the ambulance and the crowding Arcadians. He administered a
stimulant. Lars Porsena fluttered his eyes weakly.
"Stand back, you idiots! Bash these fools' faces in for 'em, some one!"
said the medical man. He bent over the watchman. "Who did it, Lars?"
Lars made a vain effort to speak. The doctor gave him another sip of
restorative and took a pull himself.
"Try again, old man. You're badly hurt and you may not get another
chance. Did you know him?"
Lars gathered all his strength to a broken speech:
"No.... Bank.... Found window.... Midnight ... Nearly .... Shot me....
Didn't see him." He fell back on Uncle Sam's starry vest.
"Ambulance coming," said Uncle Sam. "Will he live, doc?"
Doc shook his head doubtfully.
"Poor chance. Lost too much blood. If he had been found in time he
might have pulled through. Wonderful vitality. Ought to be dead now,
by the books. Still, there's a chance."
"I never thought," said Uncle Sam to Cyrano de Bergerac, as the
ambulance bore away its unconscious burden, "that I would ever be so
sorry at anything that could happen to Lars Porsena--after the way he
made me stop singing on my own birthday. He was one grand old fighting
machine!"