at our little cob house of a venture, Brouillard," the host allowed at
the lighting of the gold-banded cigars. "You're the government engineer
and the builder of the big dam; it's only natural that your horizons
should be filled with government-report pictures and half-tones of
what's going to be when you get your dam done. But you can't build your
dam in one day, or in two, and the interval is ours. I tell you, we're
going to make Mirapolis a buzz-hummer while the daylight lasts. Don't
you forget that."
"'Mirapolis'?" queried Brouillard. "Is that the new name?"
Cortwright laughed and nodded. "It's Gene's name--'Miracle City.' Fits
like the glove on a pretty girl's arm, doesn't it?"
"It does. But the miracle is that there should be any money daring
enough to invest itself in the Niquoia."
"There you go again, with your ingrained engineering ideas that to be
profitable a scheme must necessarily have rock-bottom foundations and a
time-defying superstructure," chuckled the host. "Why, bless your
workaday heart, Brouillard, nothing is permanent in this shuffling,
growing, progressive world of ours--absolutely nothing. Some of the
biggest and costliest buildings in New York and Chicago are built on
ground leases. Our ground lease will merely be a little shorter in the
factor of time."
"So much shorter that the parallel won't hold," argued Brouillard.
"The parallel does hold; that is precisely the point. Every ground-lease
investment is a gamble. The investor simply bets that he can make the
turn within the time limit."
"Yes; but a long term of years----"
"There you are," cut in the financier. "Now you've got it down to the
hard-pan basis: long time, small profits and a slow return; short time,
big profits and a quick return. You've eaten here before; what do you
pay Bongras for a reasonably good dinner?"
Brouillard laughed. "Oh, Poodles. He cinches us, all right; four or five
times as much as it's worth--or would cost anywhere else."
"That's it. He knows he has to make good on all these little luxuries he
gives you--cash in every day, as you might say, and come out whole
before you stop the creek and drown him. Let me tell you something,
Brouillard; San Francisco brags about being the cheapest city in the
country; they'll tell you over there that you can buy more for your
money than you can anywhere else on earth. Well, Mirapolis is going to
take the trophy at the other end of the speedway. When we get in motion
we're going to have Alaska faded to a frazzle on prices--and you'll see
everybody paying them joyfully."
"And in the end somebody, or the final series of somebodies, will be
left to hold the bag," finished Brouillard.
"That's a future. What is it the Good Book says? 'Let us eat, drink and
be merry, for to-morrow we die.' That's philosophy, and it's good
business, too. Not that I'm admitting your pessimistic conclusions for a
single minute; don't mistake me on that point. There needn't be any bag
holders, Brouillard. Let me put it in a nutshell: we're building a
cement plant, and we shall sell you the output--at a good, round price,
I promise you, but still at a lower figure than you're paying for the
imported article now, or than you will pay even after the railroad gets
in. When our government orders are filled we can afford to wreck the
plant for what it will bring as junk. We'll be out of it whole, with a
nice little profit."
"That is only one instance," objected the guest.
"Well, Bongras, here, is one more," laughed the host. "He gets a piece
of his investment back every time anybody looks over his _menu_ card.
And our power plant is another. You made your little kick on that to
Washington--you thought the government ought to control its own power.
That was all right, from your point of view, but we beat you to it. Now
the Reclamation Service gets all the power it needs at a nominal price,
and we're going to sell enough more to make us all feel happy."
"Sell it? To whom?"
Mr. Cortwright leaned back in his chair and the sandy-gray eyes seemed
to be searching the inner recesses of the querying soul.
"That's inside information, but I don't mind taking you in on it," he
said between leisurely puffs at his cigar. "We've just concluded a few
contracts: one with Massingale--he's going to put in power drills,
electric ore-cars, and a modern equipment generally and shove the
development of the 'Little Susan'; one with a new mining syndicate which
will begin operations at once on half a dozen prospects on Jack's
Mountain; and one with a lumber combination that has just taken over the
sawmills, and will install others, with a planing-mill and sash
factory."
Brouillard nodded. The gray eyes were slowly hypnotizing him.
"But that isn't all," continued the promoter. "We are about to
reincorporate the power plant as the Niquoia Electric Power, Lighting,
and Traction Company. Within a fortnight we'll be lighting Mirapolis,
and within a month after the railroad gets in we'll be operating
trolley-cars."
The enthusiast paused to let the information sink in, also to note the
effect upon the subject. The noting was apparently satisfactory, since
he went on with the steady assurance of one who sees his way clearly.
"That brings us down to business, Brouillard. I don't mind admitting
that I had an object in asking you to dine with me this evening. It's
this: we feel that in the reorganization of the power company the
government, which will always be the largest consumer, should be
represented in some effective way; that its interests should be
carefully safeguarded. It is not so easy as it might seem. We can't
exactly make the government a stockholder."
"No," said Brouillard mechanically. The under-depths were stirring
again, heaving as if from a mighty ground-swell that threatened a tidal
wave of overturnings.
"We discussed that phase of it in the directors' meeting this morning,"
continued the hypnotist smoothly, "and I made a suggestion which, as
president of the company, I was immediately authorized to carry out.
What we need, and what the government needs, is a man right here on the
ground who will be absolutely loyal to the government's interests and
who can be, at the same time, broad enough and honorable enough to be
fair to us."
Brouillard roused himself by a palpable effort.
"You have found your man, Mr. Cortwright?"
A genial smile twinkled in the little gray eyes.
"I didn't have very far to go. You see, I knew your father and I'm not
afraid to trust his son. We are going to make you the government
director, with full power to investigate and to act. And we're not going
to be mean about it, either. The capital stock of the company is ten
millions, with shares of a par value of one hundred dollars each, full
paid and non-assessable. Don't gasp; we'll cut a nice little melon on
that capitalization every thirty days, or my name isn't Cortwright."
"But I have no money to invest," was the only form the younger man's
protest took.
"We don't need your money," cut in the financier with curt good nature.
"What we do need is a consulting engineer, a man who, while he is one of
us and identified with us, will see to it that we're not tempted to
gouge our good Uncle Samuel. It will be no sinecure, I warn you. We're
all pretty keen after the dollar, and you'll have to hold us down good
and hard. Of course, a director and a consulting officer must be a
stockholder, but we'll take care of that."
Brouillard smoked in silence for a full minute before he said: "You know
as well as I do, Mr. Cortwright, that it is an unwritten law of the
Service that a civilian employee of the government shall not engage in
any other business."
"No, I don't," was the blunt reply. "That rule may be good enough to
apply to senators and representatives--and it ought to; outside jobs for
them might influence legislation. But in your case it would not only be
unjust to apply it; it would be absurd and contradictory. Supposing your
father had left you a hundred thousand dollars to invest instead of a
debt of that amount--you see, I know what a load your keen sense of
honor is making you carry--suppose you had this money to invest, would
your position in the Reclamation Service compel you to lock it up in a
safety vault?"
"Certainly not. But----"
"Very good. Your objection to taking part in our project would be that a
man can't be strictly impartial when he has a stake in the game; some
men couldn't, Mr. Brouillard, but you can; you know you can, and I know
it. Otherwise you wouldn't be putting half of your salary and more into
life-insurance premiums to secure a debt that isn't even constructively
yours."
"Yes; but if the department should learn that I am a stockholder in a
company from which it buys its power----"
"There wouldn't be a word said--not one single word. They know you in
Washington, Brouillard, better, perhaps, than you think they do. They
know you would exact a square deal for the department even if it cost
you personal money. But this is all academic. The practical facts are
that you'll come in as consulting engineer and that you'll hold us
strictly up to the mark on the government power contract. It's your duty
and part of your job as chief of construction. And we'll leave the money
consideration entirely out of it if you like. You'll get a
stock-certificate, which you may keep or tear up and throw into the
waste-basket, just as you please. If you keep it and want to realize on
it at any time before you begin to put the finishing forms on the dam,
I'll do this: I'll agree to market it for you at par. Now let's quit and
go and find Gene. She'll think we've tippled ourselves under the table."
"One moment," said Brouillard. "You have a way of taking a man off his
feet, Mr. Cortwright; a rather pleasant way I'm bound to admit. But in
this thing which you are proposing there are issues involved which----"
"You want time to think it over? Take it, man; take all the time you
need. There's no special hurry."
Brouillard felt that in accepting the condition he was potentially
committing himself. It was a measure of the distance he had already
travelled that he interposed a purely personal obstacle.
"I couldn't serve as your engineer, Mr. Cortwright, not even in a
consulting capacity. Call it prejudice or anything you please, but I
simply couldn't do business in an associate relation with your man
Hosford."
Cortwright had risen, and he took his guest confidentially by the
buttonhole.
"Do you know, Brouillard, Hosford gets on my nerves, too? Don't let that
influence you. We'll let Hosford go. We needed him at first to sort of
knock things into shape; it takes a man of his calibre in the early
stages of a project like ours, you know. But he has outlived his
usefulness and we'll drop him. Let's go up-stairs."
It was quite late in the evening when Brouillard, a little light-headed
from an after-dinner hour of purely social wit-matching with Miss
Genevieve, passed out through the cafe of the Metropole on his way to
his quarters.
There were a few late diners at the tables, and Bongras, smug and
complacent in evening regalia, was waddling about among them like a
glorified head waiter, his stiffly roached hair and Napoleonic mustaches
striving for a dignity and fierceness which was cruelly negatived by a
round, full-fed face and an obese little body.
"Ze dinnare--she was h-all right, M'sieu' Brouillard?" he inquired,
holding the engineer for a moment at the street door.
"As right as the price you're going to charge Mr. Cortwright for it,"
joked Brouillard.
"_Sacre!_" swore the amiable one, spreading his hands, "if you could
h-only know 'ow eet is cost to bring dose dinnare on dis place! Two
dollare de 'undred pounds dat mule-freightare is charge me for bringing
dose chip-pest wine from Quesado! Sommtime ve get de railroad, _n'est-ce
pas_, M'sieu' Brouillard? Den ve make dose dinnare moz risson-able."
"Yes, you will!" Brouillard scoffed jocosely. "You'll be adding
something then for the uniqueness--for the benefit of the tourists.
It'll be a great ad, 'The Hotel Metropole, the Delmonico's of the Lake
Bottom. Sit in and dine with us before the heavens open and the floods
come.'"
"I'll been wanting to h-ask you," whispered the Frenchman with a
quick-flung glance for the diners at the nearest of the tables, "doze
flood--when she is coming, M'sieu' Brouillard?"
"When we get the dam completed."
"You'll bet money h-on dat?--h-all de money you got?"
"It's a sure thing, if that's what you're driving at. You can bet on it
if you want to."
"I make my bet on de price of de dinnare," smiled Bongras. "_Mais_, I
like to know for sure."
"Why should you doubt it?"
"_Moi_, I don't doubt nottings; I make de grass to be cut w'ile de sun
is shine. But I'll been hearing somebody say dat maybe-so dis town she
grow so fas' and so beeg dat de gover'ment is not going drown her."
"Who said that?"
"I don't know; it is _bruit_--what you call rumaire. You hear it h-on
de Avenue, in de cafe, h-anyw'eres you go."
Brouillard laughed again, this time with his hand on the door-latch.
"Don't lower your prices on the strength of any such rumor as that,
Poodles. The dam will be built, and the Niquoia will be turned into a
lake, with the Hotel Metropole comfortably anchored in the deepest part
of it--that is, if it doesn't get gay enough to float."
"Dat's juz what I'll been thinking," smiled the little man, and he sped
the parting guest with a bow that would have graced the antechamber of a
_Louis le Grand_.
Out in the crisp night air, with the stars shining clear in the velvet
sky and the vast bulks of the ramparting mountains to give solidity and
definiteness to the scheme of things, Brouillard was a little better
able to get his feet upon the stable earth.
But the major impulse was still levitant, almost exultant. When all was
said, it was Mr. Cortwright's rose-colored view of the immediate future
that persisted. "Mirapolis!" It was certainly a name to conjure with; an
inspiration on the part of the young woman who had chosen it.
Brouillard saw the projected streets pointing away into the four
quarters of the night. It asked for little effort of the imagination to
picture them as the streets of a city--lighted, paved, and busy with
traffic. Would the miracle be wrought? And if it should be, was there
any possibility that in time the building of the great dam and the
reclamation of the Buckskin Desert would become secondary in importance
to the preservation of Mirapolis?
It seemed highly incredible; before the little dinner and the social
evening Brouillard would have said it was blankly impossible. But it is
only fools and dead men who cannot admit a changing angle in the point
of view. At first Brouillard laid it to the champagne, forgetting that
he had permitted but a single refilling of his glass. Not then, nor for
many days, did he suspect that it was his first deep draught of a far
headier wine that sent the blood laughing through his veins as he strode
down Chigringo Avenue to his darkened office quarters--the wine of the
vintner whose name is Graft.
VII
The Speedway
It was in the days after he had found on his desk a long envelope
enclosing a certificate for a thousand shares of stock in the Niquoia
Electric Power, Lighting, and Traction Company that Brouillard began to
lose his nickname of "Hell's-Fire" among his workmen, with the promise
of attaining, in due time, to the more affectionate title of "the Little
Big Boss."
At the envelope-opening moment, however, he was threatened with an
attack of heart failure. That Mr. Cortwright and his fellow promoters
should make a present of one hundred thousand dollars of the capital
stock of the reorganized company to a mere government watch-dog who
could presumably neither help nor hinder in the money-making plans of
the close corporation, was scarcely believable. But a hastily sought
interview with the company's president cleared the air of all the
incredibilities.
"Why, my dear Brouillard! what in Sam Hill do you take us for?" was the
genial retort when the young engineer had made his deprecatory protest.
"Did you think we were going to cut the melon and hand you out a piece
of the rind? Not so, my dear boy; we are not built on any such
narrow-gauge lines. But seriously, we're getting you at a
bargain-counter price. One of the things we're up against is the
building of another dam higher in the canyon for an auxiliary plant. In
taking you in, we've retained the best dam builder in the country to
tell us where and how to build it."
"That won't go, Mr. Cortwright," laughed Brouillard, finding the great
man's humor pleasantly infectious. "You know you can hire engineers by
the dozen at the usual rates."
"All right, blot that out; say that I wanted to do the right thing by
the son of good old Judge Antoine; just imagine, for the sake of
argument, that I wanted to pose as the long-lost uncle of the
fairy-stories to a fine young fellow who hasn't been able to draw a full
breath since his father died. You can do it now, Victor, my boy. Any old
time the trusteeship debt your father didn't really owe gets too heavy,
you can unload on me and wipe it out. Isn't it worth something to
realize that?"
"I guess it will be, if I am ever able to get down to the solid fact of
realizing it. But I can't earn a hundred thousand dollars of the
company's stock, Mr. Cortwright."
"Of course you can. That's what we are willing to pay for a good,
reliable government brake. It's going to be your business to see to it
that the Reclamation Service gets exactly what its contract calls for,
kilowatt for kilowatt."
"I'd do that, anyhow, as chief of construction on the dam."
"You mean you would try to do it. As an officer of the power company,
you can do it; as an official kicker on the outside, you couldn't feaze
us a particle. What? You'd put us out of business? Not much, you
wouldn't; we'd play politics with you and get a man for your job who
wouldn't kick."
"Well," said the inheritor of sudden wealth, still matching the
promoter's mood, "you won't get me fired now, that's one comfort. When
will you want my expert opinion on your auxiliary dam?"
"On _our_ dam, you mean. Oh, any time soon; say to-morrow or Friday--or
Saturday if that hurries you too much. We sha'n't want to go to work on
it before Monday."
Being himself an exponent of the modern theory that the way to do
things is to do them now, Brouillard accepted the hurry order without
comment. Celerity, swiftness of accomplishment that was almost magical,
had become the Mirapolitan order of the day. Plans conceived over-night
leaped to their expositions in things done as if the determination to do
them had been all that was necessary to their realization.
"You shall have the report to-morrow," said the newly created consulting
engineer, "but you can't go to work Monday. The labor market is empty,
and I'm taking it for granted that you're not going to stampede my
shovellers and concrete men."
"Oh, no," conceded the city builder, "we sha'n't do that. You'll
admit--in your capacity of government watch-dog--that we have played
fair in that game. We have imported every workman we've needed, and we
shall import more. That's one thing none of us can afford to do--bull
the labor market. And it won't be necessary; we have a train load of
Italians and Bulgarians on the way to Quesado to-day, and they ought to
be here by Monday."
"You are a wonder, Mr. Cortwright," was Brouillard's tribute to the
worker of modern miracles, and he went his way to ride to the upper end
of the valley for the exploring purpose.
On the Monday, as President Cortwright had so confidently predicted, the
train load of laborers had marched in over the War Arrow trail and the
work on the auxiliary power dam was begun. On the Tuesday a small army
of linemen arrived to set the poles and to string the wires for the
lighting of the town. On the Wednesday there were fresh accessions to
the army of builders, and the freighters on the Quesado trail reported a
steady stream of artisans pouring in to rush the city making.
On the Thursday the grading and paving of Chigringo Avenue was begun,
and, true to his promise, Mr. Cortwright was leaving a right of way in
the street for the future trolley tracks. And it was during this
eventful week that the distant thunder of the dynamite brought the
welcome tidings of the pushing of the railroad grade over the mountain
barrier. Also--but this was an item of minor importance--it was on the
Saturday of this week that the second tier of forms was erected on the
great dam and the stripped first section of the massive gray foot-wall
of concrete raised itself in mute but eloquent protest against the
feverish activities of the miracle-workers. If the protest were a
threat, it was far removed. Many things might happen before the gray
wall should rise high enough to cast its shadow, and the shadow of the
coming end, over the miraculous city of the plain.
It was Brouillard himself who put this thought into words on the Sunday
when he and Grislow were looking over the work of form raising and
finding it good.
"Catching you, too, is it, Victor?" queried the hydrographer, dropping
easily into his attitude of affable cynicism. "I thought it would. But
tell me, what are some of the things that may happen?"
"It's easy to predict two of them: some people will make a pot of money
and some will lose out."
Grislow nodded. "Of course you don't take any stock in the rumor that
the government will call a halt?"
"You wouldn't suppose it could be possible."
"No. Yet the rumor persists. Hosford hinted to me the other day that
there might be a Congressional investigation a little further along to
determine whether the true _pro bono publico_ lay in the reclamation of
a piece of yellow desert or in the preservation of an exceedingly
promising and rapidly growing young city."
"Hosford is almost as good a boomer as Mr. Cortwright. Everybody knows
that."
"Yes. I guess Mirapolis will have to grow a good bit more before
Congress can be made to take notice," was the hydrographer's dictum.
"Isn't that your notion?"
Brouillard was shaking his head slowly.
"I don't pretend to have opinions any more, Grizzy. I'm living from day
to day. If the tail should get big enough to wag the dog----"
They were in the middle of the high staging upon which the puddlers
worked while filling the forms and Grislow stopped short.
"What's come over you, lately, Victor? I won't say you're half-hearted,
but you're certainly not the same driver you were a few weeks ago,
before the men quit calling you 'Hell's-Fire.'"
Brouillard smiled grimly. "It's going to be a long job, Grizzy. Perhaps
I saw that I couldn't hope to keep keyed up to concert pitch all the way
through. Call it that, anyway. I've promised to motor Miss Cortwright to
the upper dam this afternoon, and it's time to go and do it."
It was not until they were climbing down from the staging at the Jack's
Mountain approach that Grislow acquired the ultimate courage of his
convictions.
"Going motoring, you said--with Miss Genevieve. That's another change.
I'm beginning to believe in your seven-year hypothesis. You are no
longer a woman-hater."
"I never was one. There isn't any such thing."
"You used to make believe there was and you posed that way last summer.
Think I don't remember how you were always ranting about the dignity of
a man's work and quoting Kipling at me? Now you've taken to mixing and
mingling like a social reformer."
"Well, what of it?" half-absently.
"Oh, nothing; only it's interesting from a purely academic point of
view. I've been wondering how far you are responsible; how much you
really do, yourself, and how much is done for you."
Brouillard's laugh was skeptical.
"That's another leaf out of your psychological book, I suppose. It's
rot."
"Is it so? But the fact remains."
"What fact?"
"The fact that your subconscious self has got hold of the pilot-wheel;
that your reasoning self is asleep, or taking a vacation, or something
of that sort."
"Oh, bally! There are times when you make me feel as if I had eaten too
much dinner, Grizzy! This is one of them. Put it in words; get it out
of your system."
"It needs only three words: you are hypnotized."
"That is what you say; it is up to you to prove it," scoffed Brouillard.