Brouillard drove it to the limit, bribing, cajoling, or threatening,
patrolling the long line of staging to encourage the awkward puddlers,
or side-stepping swiftly to the mixers to bring back a detachment of
skulkers at the rifle's muzzle. And by nightfall the thing was done,
with the loss reduced to a minimum and the makeshift laborers dropping
out in squads and groups, some laughing, some swearing, and all too
weary and toil-worn to be dangerous. "Give us a job if we come back
to-morrow, Mr. Brouillard?" called out the king of the gamblers in
passing; and the cry was taken up by others in grim jest.
"Thus endeth the first lesson," said Grislow, when the engineering corps
was reassembling at the headquarters preparatory to a descent upon the
supper-table. But Brouillard was dumb and haggard, and when he had hung
rifle and cartridge-belt on their pegs behind his desk, he went out,
leaving unbroken the silence which had greeted his entrance.
"The boss is taking it pretty hard," said young Griffith to no one in
particular, and it was Leshington who took him up savagely and invited
him to hold his tongue.
"The least said is the soonest mended--at a funeral," was the form the
first assistant's rebuke took. "You take my advice and don't mess or
meddle with the chief until he's had time to work this thing out of his
system."
Brouillard was working it out in his own way, tramping the streets,
hanging on the outskirts of arguing groups of newsmongers, or listening
to the bonanza talk of the loungers in the Metropole lobby. Soon after
dark the gold-seekers began to drop in, by twos and threes and in
squads, all with the same story of disappointment. By nine o'clock the
town was full of them, and since the liquor was flowing freely across
many bars, the mutterings of disappointment soon swelled to a thunder
roar of drunken rage, with the unknown exhibitor of the specimen nuggets
for its object. From threats of vengeance upon the man who had hoaxed an
entire town to a frenzied search for the man was but a step, and when
Brouillard finally left the Metropole and crossed over to his office
quarters, the mob was hunting riotously for the jeweller Levy and
promising to hang him--when found--to the nearest wire pole if he should
not confess the name and standing of his gold-bug.
The shouts of the mob were ringing in Brouillard's ears when he strode
dejectedly into the deserted map room, and the cries were rising with a
new note and in fresher frenzies a little later when Grislow came in.
The hydrographer's blue eyes were hard and his voice had a tang of
bitterness in it when he said: "Well, you've done it. Three men have
just come in with a double handful of nuggets, and Mirapolis makes its
bow to the world at large as the newest and richest of the gold camps."
Brouillard had been humped over his desk, and he sprang up with a cry
like that of a wounded animal.
"It can't be; Grizzy, I tell you it can't be! Steve Massingale planted
that gold that I washed out--played me for a fool to get me to work for
the railroad. I didn't know it until--until----"
"Until Amy Massingale told you about it this afternoon," cut in the
map-maker shrewdly. "That's all right. The bar Steve took you to was
barren enough; they tell me that every cubic foot of it has been washed
over in dish pans and skillets in the past few hours. But you know the
big bend opposite the Quadjenai Hills; the river has built that bend out
of its own washings, and the bulletin over at the _Spot-Light_ office
says that the entire peninsula is one huge bank of gold-bearing gravel."
At the word Brouillard staggered as from the impact of a bullet. Then he
crossed the room slowly, groping his way toward the peg where the coat
he had worn in the afternoon was hanging. Grislow saw him take something
out of the pocket of the coat, and the next moment the door opened and
closed and the hydrographer was left alone.
Having been planned before there was a city to be considered, the
government buildings enclosed three sides of a small open square, facing
toward the great dam. In the middle of this open space Brouillard
stopped, kicked up a little mound of earth, and stood the two paper
cylinders on it, side by side.
The tempered glow from the city electrics made a soft twilight in the
little plaza; he could see the wrapper colors of the two signal-fires
quite well. A sharp attack of indecision had prompted him to place both
of them on the tiny mound. With the match in his hand, he was still
undecided. Amy Massingale's words came back to him as he hesitated:
"Light the blue one when you are ready to send me my message of
cheer...." On the lips of another woman the words might have taken a
materialistic meaning; the miraculous gold discovery would bring the
railroad, and the railroad would rescue the Massingale mine and restore
the Massingale fortunes.
He looked up at the dark bulk of Chigringo, unrelieved even by the tiny
fleck of lamplight which he had so often called his guiding star. "Take
me out of your mind and heart and say which you will have, little girl,"
he whispered, sending the words out into the void of night. But only the
din and clamor of a city gone wild with enthusiasm came to answer him.
Somewhere on the Avenue a band was playing; men were shouting themselves
hoarse in excitement, and above the shouting came the staccato crackling
of pistols and guns fired in air.
He struck the match and stooped over the blue cylinder. "This is your
message of cheer, whether you take it that way or not," he went on,
whispering again to the silent void. But when the fuse of the blue light
was fairly fizzing, he suddenly pinched it out and held the match to the
other.
* * * * *
Up on the high bench of the great mountain Amy Massingale was pacing to
and fro on the puncheon-floored porch of the home cabin. Her father had
gone to bed, and somewhere down among the electric lights starring the
valley her brother was mingling with the excited mobs whose shoutings
and gun-firings floated up, distance-softened, on the still, thin air of
the summer night.
Though there was no pause in the monotonous pacing back and forth, the
girl's gaze never wandered far from a dark area in the western edge of
the town--the semicircle cut into the dotting lights and marking the
site of the government reservation. It was when a tiny stream of sparks
shot up in the centre of the dark area that she stopped and held her
breath. Then, when a blinding flare followed to prick out the
headquarters, the commissary, and the mess house, she sank in a
despairing little heap on the floor, with her face hidden in her hands
and the quick sobs shaking her like an ague chill. It was Brouillard's
signal, but it was not the signal of peace; it was the blood-red token
of revolution and strife and turmoil.
XI
The Feast of Hurrahs
Mirapolis the marvellous was a hustling, roaring, wide-open mining-camp
of twenty thousand souls by the time the railroad, straining every nerve
and crowding three shifts into the twenty-four-hour day, pushed its
rails along the foot-hill bench of Chigringo, tossed up its temporary
station buildings, and signalled its opening for business by running a
mammoth excursion from the cities of the immediate East.
Busy as it was, the city took time to celebrate fittingly the event
which linked it to the outer world. By proclamation Mayor Cortwright
declared a holiday. There were lavish displays of bunting, an impromptu
trades parade, speeches from the plaza band-stand, free lunches and free
liquor--a day of boisterous, hilarious triumphings, with, incidentally,
much buying and selling and many transfers of the precious "front foot"
or choice "corner."
Yielding to pressure, which was no less imperative from below than from
above, Brouillard had consented to suspend work on the great dam during
the day of triumphs, and the Reclamation-Service force, smaller now than
at any time since the beginning of the undertaking, went to swell the
crowds in Chigringo Avenue.
Of the engineering staff Grislow alone held aloof. Early in the morning
he trudged away with rod and trout-basket for the upper waters of the
Niquoia and was seen no more. But the other members of the staff,
following the example set by the chief, took part in the hilarities,
serving on committees, conducting crowds of sightseers through the
government reservation and up to the mixers and stagings, and otherwise
identifying themselves so closely with the civic celebration as to give
the impression, often commented upon by the visitors, that the building
of the great dam figured only as another expression of the Mirapolitan
activities.
For himself, Brouillard vaguely envied Grislow the solitudes of the
upper Niquoia. But Mr. Cortwright had been inexorable. It was right and
fitting that the chief executive of the Reclamation Service should have
a part in the rejoicings, and Brouillard found himself discomfortingly
emphasized as chairman of the civic reception committee. Expostulation
was useless. Mr. Cortwright insisted genially, and Miss Genevieve added
her word. And there had been only Grislow to smile cynically when the
printed programmes appeared with the chief of the Buckskin reclamation
project down for an address on "Modern City Building."
It was after his part of the speechmaking, and while the plaza crowds
were still bellowing their approval of the modest forensic effort, that
he went to sit beside Miss Cortwright in the temporary grand-stand,
mopping his face and otherwise exhibiting the after effects of the
unfamiliar strain.
"I didn't know you could be so convincing," was Miss Genevieve's
comment. "It was splendid! Nobody will ever believe that you are going
to go on building your dam and threatening to drown us, after this."
"What did I say?" queried Brouillard, having, at the moment, only the
haziest possible idea of what he had said.
"As if you didn't know!" she laughed. "You congratulated everybody: us
Mirapolitans upon our near-city, the miners on their gold output, the
manufacturers on their display in the parade, the railroad on its energy
and progressive spirit, and the visitors on their perspicuity and good
sense in coming to see the latest of the seven wonders of the modern
world. And the funny thing about it is that you didn't say a single word
about the Niquoia dam."
"Didn't I? That shows how completely your father has converted me, how
helplessly I am carried along on the torrent of events."
"But you are not," she said accusingly. "Deep down in your inner
consciousness you don't believe a little bit in Mirapolis. You are only
playing the game with the rest of us, Mr. Brouillard. Sometimes I am
puzzled to know why."
Brouillard's smile was rather grim.
"Your father would probably tell you that I have a stake in the game--as
everybody else has."
"Not Mr. Grislow?" she said, laying her finger inerrantly upon the
single exception.
"No, not Grizzy; I forgot him."
"Doesn't he want to make money?" she asked, with exactly the proper
shade of disinterest.
"No; yes, I guess he does, too. But he is--er--well, I suppose you might
call him a man of one idea."
"Meaning that he is too uncompromisingly honest to be one of us? I think
you are right."
Gorman, Mr. Cortwright's ablest trumpeter in the real-estate booming,
was holding the plaza crowd spellbound with his enthusiastic periods,
rising upon his toes and lifting his hands in angel gestures to high
heaven in confirmation of his prophetic outlining of the Mirapolitan
future.
In the middle distance, and backgrounding the buildings on the opposite
side of the plaza, rose the false work of the great dam--a standing
forest of sawed timbers, whose afternoon shadows were already pointing
like a many-fingered fate toward the city of the plain. But, though the
face of the speaker was toward the shadowing forest, his words ignored
it. "The snow-capped Timanyonis," "the mighty Chigringo," and "the
golden-veined slopes of Jack's Mountain" all came in for eulogistic
mention; but the massive wall of concrete, with its bristling parapet of
timbers, had no part in the orator's flamboyant descriptive.
Brouillard broke the spell of the grandiloquent rantings, and came back
to what Miss Genevieve was saying.
"Yes, Murray is stubbornly honest," he agreed; adding: "He is too good
for this world, or rather for this little cross-section of Pandemonium
named Mirapolis."
"Which, inasmuch as we are making Mirapolis what it is, is more than
can be said for most of us," laughed Miss Cortwright. Then, with a
purposeful changing of the subject: "Where is Miss Massingale? As the
original 'daughter of the Niquoia' she ought to have a place on the
band-stand."
"She was with Tig Smith and Lord Falkland when the parade formed,"
rejoined the engineer. "I saw them on the balcony of the Metropole."
"Since you are the chairman of the reception committee, I think you
ought to go and find her," said Miss Genevieve pointedly, so pointedly
that Brouillard rose laughing and said:
"Thank you for telling me; whom shall I send to take my place here?"
"Oh, anybody--Lord Falkland will do. By the way, did you know that he
_is_ Lord Falkland now? His elder brother died a few weeks ago."
"No, I hadn't heard it. I should think he would want to go home."
"He does. But he, too, has contracted Mirapolitis. He has been investing
any number of pounds sterling. If you find him send him to me. I want to
see how the real, simon-pure American brand of oratory affects a British
title."
Brouillard went, not altogether unwillingly. Loving Amy Massingale with
a passion which, however blind it might be on the side of the higher
moralities, was still keen-sighted enough to assure him that every
plunge he made in the Mirapolitan whirlpool was sweeping him farther
away from her; he found himself drifting irresistibly into the inner
circle of attraction of which Genevieve Cortwright was the centre.
Whether Miss Cortwright's influence was for good or for evil, in his own
case, or was entirely disinterested, he could never quite determine.
There were times, like this present instant of blatant rejoicings, when
she was brightly cynical, flinging a mocking jest at all things
Mirapolitan. But at other times he had a haunting conviction that she
was at heart her father's open-eyed ally and abettor, taking up as she
might the burden of filial loyalty thrown down by her brother Van Bruce,
who, in his short summer of Mirapolitan citizenship, had been
illustrating all the various methods by which a spoiled son of fortune
may go to the dogs.
Brouillard faced the impossible brother and the almost equally
impossible father when he thought of Genevieve Cortwright. But latterly
the barriers on that side had been crumbling more and more. Once, and
once only, had he mentioned the trusteeship debt to Genevieve, and on
that occasion she had laughed lightly at what she had called his
strained sense of honor.
The laugh had come at a critical moment. It was in the height of the
madness following the discovery of the placers, in an hour when
Brouillard would have given his right hand to undo the love-prompted
disloyalty to his service, that Cortwright, whose finger was on
everybody's pulse, had offered to buy in the thousand shares of power
company's stock at par. Brouillard had seen freedom in a stroke of the
millionaire's pen; but it was a distinct downward step that by this time
he was coming to look upon the payment of his father's honor debt as a
hard necessity. He meant to pay it, but there was room for the grim
determination that the payment should forever sever him from the
handicapped past.
He had transferred the stock, minus a single share to cover his official
standing on the power company's board, to Cortwright and had received
the millionaire's check in payment. It was in the evening of the same
eventful day, he remembered, that Genevieve Cortwright had laughed, and
the letter, which was already written to the treasurer of a certain
Indianapolis trust company, was not mailed. Instead of mailing it he had
opened an account at the Niquoia National, and the ninety-nine thousand
nine hundred dollars had since grown by speculative accretions to the
rounded first eighth of a million which all financiers agree in calling
the stepping-stone to fortune.
He had regarded this money--was still regarding it--as a loan; his lever
with which to pry out something which he could really call his own. But
more and more possession and use were dulling the keen edge of
accountability and there were moments of insight when the grim irony of
taking the price of honor to pay an honor debt forced itself upon him.
At such moments he plunged more recklessly, in one of them taking stock
in a gold-dredge company which was to wash nuggets by the wholesale out
of the Quadjenai bend, in another buying yet other options in the newest
suburb of Mirapolis.
What was to come of all this he would not suffer himself to inquire; but
two results were thrusting themselves into the foreground. Every added
step in the way he had chosen was taking him farther from the ideals of
an ennobling love and nearer to a possibility which precluded all
ideals. Notwithstanding Grislow's characterization of her as a trophy
hunter, Genevieve Cortwright was, after all, a woman, and as a woman
she was to be won. With the naive conceit of a man who has broken into
the heart of one woman, Brouillard admitted no insurmountable obstacles
other than those which the hard condition of being himself madly in love
with another woman might interpose; and there were times when, to the
least worthy part of him, the possibility was alluring. Miss
Cortwright's distinctive beauty, her keen and ready wit, the assurance
that she would never press the ideals beyond the purely conventional
limits; in the course of time these might happily smother the masterful
passion which had thus far been only a blind force driving him to do
evil that good might ensue.
Some such duel of motives was fighting itself to an indecisive
conclusion in the young engineer's thoughts when he plunged into the
sidewalk throngs in search of the Englishman, and it was not until after
he had found Falkland and had delivered Miss Genevieve's summons that
the duel paused and immediate and more disquieting impressions began to
record themselves.
With the waning of the day of celebrations the temper of the street
throngs was changing. It is only the people of the Latinized cities who
can take the carnival spirit lightly; in other blood liberty grows to
license and the thin veneer of civilized restraints quickly disappears.
From early dawn the saloons and dives had been adding fuel to the
flames, and light-heartedness and good-natured horse-play were giving
way to sardonic humor and brutality.
In the short faring through the crowded street from the plaza to the
Metropole corner Brouillard saw and heard things to make his blood boil.
Women, those who were not a part of the unrestrained mob, were
disappearing from the streets, and it was well for them if they could
find shelter near at hand. Twice before he reached Bongras's cafe
entrance the engineer shouldered his way to the rescue of some badgered
nucleus of excursionists, and in each instance there were frightened
women to be hurriedly spirited away to the nearest place of seclusion
and safety.
It was in front of Bongras's that Brouillard came upon the Reverend Hugh
Castner, the hot-hearted young zealot who had been flung into Mirapolis
on the crest of the tidal wave of mining excitement. Though Hosford--who
had not been effaced, as Mr. Cortwright had promised he should be--and
the men of his clique called the young missionary a meddlesome
visionary, he stood in the stature of a man, and lower Chigringo Avenue
loved him and swore by him; and sent for him now and then when some
poor soul, hastily summoned, was to be eased off into eternity.
When Brouillard caught sight of him Castner was looking out over the
seething street caldron from his commanding height of six feet of
athletic man stature, his strong face a mask of bitter humiliation and
concern.
"Brouillard, this is simply hideous!" he exclaimed. "If this devils'
carnival goes on until nightfall we shall have a revival of the old
Roman Saturnalia at its worst!" Then, with a swift blow at the heart of
the matter: "You're the man I've been wanting to see; you are pretty
close in with the Cortwright junta--is it true that free whiskey has
been dealt out to the crowd over the bar in the Niquoia Building?"
Brouillard said that he did not know, which was true, and that he could
not believe it possible, which was not true. "The Cortwright people are
as anxious to have the celebration pass off peaceably as even you can
be," he assured the young missionary, trying to buttress the thing which
was not true. "When riot comes in at the door, business flies out at the
window; and, after all, this feast of hurrahs is merely another bid for
business."
But Castner was shaking his head.
"I can't answer for Mr. Cortwright personally. He and Handley and
Schermerhorn and a few of the others seem to stand for respectability of
a sort. But, Mr. Brouillard, I want to tell you this: somebody in
authority is grafting upon the vice of this community, not only to-day
but all the time."
"The community is certainly vicious enough to warrant any charge you can
make," admitted Brouillard. Then he changed the topic abruptly. "Have
you seen Miss Massingale since noon?"
"Yes; I saw her with Smith, the cattleman, at the other end of the
Avenue about an hour ago."
"Heavens!" gritted the engineer. "Didn't Smith know better than to take
her down there at such a time as this?"
The young missionary was frowning thoughtfully. "I think it was the
other way about. Her brother has been drinking again, and I took it for
granted that she and Smith were looking for him."
Brouillard buttoned his coat and pulled his soft hat over his eyes.
"I'm going to look for her," he said. "Will you come along?"
Castner nodded, and together they put their shoulders to the crowd. The
slow progress northward was nearly a battle. The excursion trains
returning to Red Butte and Brewster were scheduled to leave early, and
the stream of blatant, uproarious humanity was setting strongly toward
the temporary railroad station.
Again and again the engineer and his companion had to intervene by word
and blow to protect the helpless in the half-drunken, gibe-flinging
crush, and in these sallies Castner bore his part like a man,
expostulating first and hitting out afterward in a fashion that left no
doubt in the mind of his antagonist of the moment.
So, struggling, they came finally to the open square of the plaza. Here
the speechmaking was concluded and the crowd was thinning a little.
There was a clamorous demonstration of some sort going on around the
band-stand, but they left it behind and pushed on into the less noisy
but more dangerous region of the lower Avenue.
In one of the saloons, as they passed, a sudden crackling of
pistol-shots began, and a mob of terrorized Reclamation-Service workmen
poured into the street, sweeping all obstacles before it in a mad rush
for safety.
"It was little less than a crime to turn your laborers loose on the town
on such an occasion as this," said Castner, dealing out his words as
frankly and openly as he did his blows.
Brouillard shrugged.
"If I hadn't given them the day they would have taken it without leave.
You'll have to pass the responsibility on to some one higher up."
The militant one accepted the challenge promptly.
"It lies ultimately at the door of those whose insatiate greed has built
this new Gomorrah in the shadow of your dam." He wheeled suddenly and
flung a long arm toward the half-finished structure filling the gap
between the western shoulders of Chigringo and Jack's Mountain. "There
stands the proof of God's wisdom in hiding the future from mankind, Mr.
Brouillard. Because a little section of humanity here behind that great
wall knows the end of its hopes, and the manner and time of that end, it
becomes demon-ridden, irreclaimable!"
At another time the engineer might have felt the force of the tersely
eloquent summing up of the accusation against the Mirapolitan attitude.
But now he was looking anxiously for Amy Massingale or her escort, or
both of them.