"I don't think; I _know_. You called me, and I heard you and came at
once."
"How absurd!" she protested. "I knew, or thought I knew, that you were
miles away, over in the Buckskin; and how could I call you?"
Brouillard pulled out his watch and scanned its face by the light of the
roadway electric.
"It is exactly twenty minutes since I left my office. What were you
doing twenty minutes ago?"
"As if I could tell! I don't believe I have looked at a clock or a watch
all evening. After Stevie had his supper I read to him--one of the
creepy Kipling stories that he is so fond of. You would say that 'Bimi'
would be just about the last thing in the world to put anybody to sleep,
wouldn't you? But Stevie dropped off, and I think I must have lost
myself for a minute or two, because the next thing I knew the nurse was
in the room."
"I know what happened," said Brouillard, speaking as soberly as if he
were stating a mathematical certainty. "You left that room up-stairs and
came to me. I didn't see you, but I heard you as plainly as I can hear
you now. You spoke to me and called me by name."
"What did I say? Can you remember the words?"
"Indeed I can. The room was perfectly still, and I was working at my
desk. Suddenly, and without any warning, I heard your voice saying:
'Victor, you said you would come if I needed you: I need you now.'"
She shook her head, laughing lightly.
"You have been overwrought about something, or maybe you are just plain
tired. I didn't say or even think anything like that; or if I did, it
must have been the other I, or one of the others, that Herr Freiborg
writes about--and I don't believe in. This I that you are talking to
doesn't remember anything about it."
"You are standing me off," he declared. "You are in trouble of some
sort, and you are trying to hide it from me."
"No, not exactly trouble; only a little worry."
"All right, call it worry if you like and share it with me. What is it?"
"I think you know without being told--or you will know when I say that
to-day was the day when the big debt to the bank became due. I am afraid
we have finally lost the 'Little Susan.' That is one of the worries and
the other I've been trying to call silly. I don't know what has become
of father--as if he weren't old enough to go and come without telling me
every move he makes!"
"Your father isn't at home?" gasped Brouillard.
"No; he hasn't been here since nine o'clock this morning. Murray Grislow
saw him going into the Metropole about one o'clock, but nobody that I
have been able to reach by 'phone seems to have seen him after that."
"I can bring the record down to two o'clock," was the quick reply. "He
ate with me at Bongras's, and afterward I walked with him as far as the
bank. And I can cure part of the first worry--all of it, in fact; he had
the money to take up the Cortwright notes, and when I left him he was on
his way to Hardwick's window to do it."
"_He had the money?_ Where did he get it?"
Brouillard put his back against a porch post, a change of position which
kept the light of the street electric from shining squarely upon his
face.
"It has been another of the get-rich-quick days in Mirapolis," he said
evasively. "Somebody told me that the corner opposite Poodles's was
bought and sold three times within a single hour and that each time the
price was doubled."
"And you are trying to tell me that father made a hundred thousand
dollars just in those few hours by buying and selling Mirapolis lots?
You don't know him, Victor. He is totally lacking the trading gift. He
has often said that he couldn't stand on a street corner and sell
twenty-dollar gold pieces at nineteen dollars apiece--nobody would buy
of him."
"Nevertheless, I am telling you that he had the money to take up those
notes," Brouillard insisted. "I saw it in his hands."
She left him abruptly and began to pace back and forth on the porch,
with her hands behind her, an imitative trait unconsciously copying her
father in his moments of stress. When she stopped she stood fairly in
the beam of the street light. The violet eyes were misty, and in the low
voice there was a note of deeper trouble.
"You say you saw the money in father's hands; tell me, Victor, did you
see him pay it into the bank?"
"Why, no; not the final detail. But, as I say, when I left him he was on
his way to Hardwick's window."
Again she turned away, but this time it was to dart into the house. A
minute later she had rejoined him, and the minute had sufficed for the
donning of a coat and the pinning on of the quaint cow-boy riding-hat.
"I must go and find him," she said with quiet resolution. "Will you go
with me, Victor? Perhaps that is why I--the subconscious I--called you a
little while ago. Let's not wait for the Quadjenai car. I'd rather walk,
and we'll save time."
They set out together, walking rapidly townward, and there was no word
to go with the brisk footing. Brouillard respected his companion's
silence. That the thing unspeakable, or at least unspoken, was something
more than a woman's undefined fears was obvious; but until she should
see fit to tell him what it was, he would not question her.
From the moment of outsetting the young woman's purpose seemed clearly
defined. By the shortest way she indicated the course to the Avenue, and
at the Metropole corner she turned unhesitatingly to the
northward--toward the region of degradation.
As was to be expected after the day of frantic speculation and quick
money changing, the lower Avenue was ablaze with light, the sidewalks
were passes of peril, and the saloons and dives were reaping a rich
harvest. Luckily, Brouillard was well known, and his position as chief
of the great army of government workmen purchased something like
immunity for himself and his companion. But more than once he was on the
point of begging the young woman to turn back for her own sake.
The quest ended unerringly at the door of Haley's Place, and when David
Massingale's daughter made as if she would go in, Brouillard protested
quickly.
"No, Amy," he said firmly. "You mustn't go in there. Let me take you
around to the Metropole, and then I'll come back alone."
"I have been in worse places," she returned in low tones. And then, with
her voice breaking tremulously: "Be my good friend just a little longer,
Victor!"
He took her arm and walked her into the garishly lighted bar-room,
bracing himself militantly for what might happen. But nothing happened.
Dissipation of the Western variety seldom sinks below the level of a
certain rude gallantry, quick to recognize the good and pure in
womankind. Instantly a hush fell upon the place. The quartets at the
card-tables held their hands, and a group of men drinking at the bar put
down their glasses. One, a Tri'-Circ' cow-boy with his back turned, let
slip an oath, and in a single swift motion his nearest comrade garroted
him with a hairy arm, strangling him to silence.
[Illustration: "It's all gone, little girl; it's all gone!"]
As if guided by the same unerring instinct which had made her choose
Haley's out of a dozen similar hells, Amy Massingale led Brouillard
swiftly to the green baize doors at the rear of the bar-room. At her
touch the swinging doors gave inward, and her goal was reached.
Three faro games, each with its inlaid table, its impassive dealer, its
armed "lookout," and its ring of silent players, lay beyond the baize
doors. At the nearest of the tables there was a stir, and the dealer
stopped running the cards. Somebody said, "Let him get out," and then an
old man, bearded, white-haired, wild-eyed, and haggard almost beyond
recognition, pushed his chair away from the table and stumbled to his
feet, his hands clutching the air like those of a swimmer sinking for
the last time.
With a low cry the girl darted across the intervening space to clasp the
staggering old man in her arms and draw him away. Brouillard stood aside
as they came slowly toward the doors which he was holding open for them.
He saw the distorted face-mask of a soul in torment and heard the
mumbling repetition of the despairing words, "It's all gone, little
girl; it's all gone!" and then he removed himself quickly beyond the
range of the staring, unseeing eyes.
For in the lightning flash of revealment he realized that once again the
good he would have done had turned to hideous evil in the doing, and
that this time the sword thrust of the blind-passion impulse had gone
straight to the heart of love itself.
XV
The Setting of the Ebb
Contrary to the most sanguine expectations of the speculators--contrary,
perhaps, even to those of Mr. J. Wesley Cortwright--the upward surge in
Mirapolis values, following the visit of the "distinguished citizens,"
proved to be more than a tidal wave: it was a series of them.
The time was fully ripe for the breaking down of the final barriers of
prudence and common-place sanity. Day after day the "curb" markets were
reopened, with prices mounting skyward; and when the news of how
fortunes could be made in a day in the Miracle City of the Niquoia got
abroad in the press despatches there was a fresh influx of mad money
hunters from the East, and the merry game of buying and selling that
which, inferentially at least, had no legal existence, went on with
ever-increasing activity and an utterly reckless disregard of values
considered as a basis for future returns on the investment.
Now, if never before, the croaker was wrathfully shouted down and
silenced. No one admitted, or seemed to admit, the possible
impermanence of the city. So far from it, the boast was made openly that
Mirapolis had fairly out-stripped the Reclamation Service in the race
for supremacy, and that among the first acts passed by Congress on its
reassembling would be one definitely annulling the Buckskin Desert
project, or, at any rate, so much of it as might be threatening the
existence of the great gold camp in the Niquoia Valley.
To the observer, anxious or casual, there appeared to be reasonable
grounds for the optimistic assertion. It was an indubitable fact that
Brouillard's force had been cut down, first to one half, and later to
barely enough men to keep the crushers and mixers moving and to add
fresh layers of concrete to the huge wall of sufficient quantities to
prevent the material--in technical phrase--from "dying."
True, in the new furor of buying and selling and booming it was not
remarked that the discharged government employees uniformly disappeared
from the city and the valley as soon as they were stricken from the time
rolls. True, also, was the fact that Brouillard said nothing for
publication, and little otherwise, regarding the successive reductions
in his working force. But in such periods of insanity it is only the
favorable indications which are marked and emphasized. The work on the
great dam was languishing visibly, as every one could see. The Navajos
had been sent home to their reservation, the tepees were gone, and two
thirds of the camp shacks were empty.
Past these material facts, plainly to be seen and weighed and measured
by any who would take the time to consider them, there was a strictly
human argument which was even more significant. It was known to
everybody in the frenzied marketplace that Brouillard himself was,
according to his means, one of the most reckless of the plungers,
buying, borrowing, and buying again as if the future held no threat of a
possible _debacle_. It was an object-lesson for the timid. Those who did
not themselves know certainly argued that there must be a few who did
know, and among these few the chief of the Reclamation Service must be
in the very foremost rank.
"You just keep your eye on Brouillard and steer your own boat
accordingly," was the way Editor Harlan put it to one of the timid ones.
"He knows it all, backward and forward, and from the middle both ways;
you can bet your final dollar on that. And you mustn't expect him to
talk. In his position he can't talk; one of the things he is drawing his
salary for is to keep his mouth shut. Besides, what a man may say
doesn't necessarily count for much. It is what he does."
Thus Harlan, speaking, as it were, in his capacity of a public dispenser
of the facts. But for himself he was admitting a growing curiosity about
the disappearing workmen, and this curiosity broke ground one evening
when he chanced to meet Brouillard at the club.
"Somebody was telling me that you let out another batch of your Buckskin
ditch diggers to-day, Brouillard," he began. And then, without any bush
beating, the critical question was fired point-blank: "What becomes of
all these fellows you are dropping? They don't stay in town or go to the
mines--not one of them."
"Don't they?" said Brouillard with discouraging brevity.
"You know mighty well they don't. And they don't even drift out like
other people; they go in bunches."
"Anything else remarkable up your sleeve?" was the careless query.
"Yes; Conlan, the railroad ticket agent, started to tell me yesterday
that they were going out on government transportation--that they didn't
buy tickets like ordinary folks; started to tell me, I say, because he
immediately took it back and fell all over himself trying to renege."
"You are a born gossip, Harlan, but I suppose you can't help it. Did no
one ever tell you that a part of the government contract with these
laborers includes transportation back to civilization when they are
discharged?"
"No, not by a jugful!" retorted the newspaper man. "And you're not
telling me so now. For some purpose of your own you are asking me to
believe it without being told. I refuse. This is the closed season, and
the fish are not biting."
Brouillard laughed easily.
"You are trying mighty hard to make a mountain out of a mole-hill. You
say the men clear out when they are discharged--isn't that about what
you'd do if you were out of a job?"
"Not with such unfailing unanimity if there were several hundred of me.
Mirapolis isn't such an infernally good place to go away from--not yet."
Brouillard's smile matched the easy-going laugh which had been its
forerunner.
"You are a most persistent gadfly, Harlan. If I tell you one small,
trifling, and safely uninflammable fact, can I trust you not to turn it
into a house afire in the columns of the _Spot-Light_?"
"You know well enough you can!" was the eager protest. "When have I ever
bleated when I should have kept still?"
"Well, then, the fact is this: the men leaving the Niquoia are not
discharged from the service. They are merely transferred to the
Escalante project, which the department is trying to push through to
completion before the northern winter sets in and freezes the concrete
in the mixers."
"Ah!" said Harlan with a quick indrawing of his breath. "That brings on
more talk--about a thousand miles of it, doesn't it?"
"For example?" suggested the engineer.
"To put it baldly, is the government really quitting on the Niquoia
project, or is it merely transferring its force from a job that can wait
to one that can't wait?"
Brouillard smiled again. "You see," he said; "it is second nature for
you pencil-pushers to try to make two facts grow where only one grew
before. Honestly, now, Harlan, what do you think about it yourself? You
don't need any kindergartner of a construction man to help you solve a
little problem like that, do you?"
"I'm doing a little sum in simple equations," was the thoughtful
answer--"putting this bit of information which you have just given me
against what I have been believing to be a pretty straight tip from
Washington."
"What is your tip?"
"It's this: that Congress does really propose to interfere in behalf of
Mirapolis."
"How can any one predict that when Congress is not in session?"
"The tip asserts that the string-pulling is all done. It will be a quiet
bit of special legislation smuggled through, I suppose, like the bills
for private relief. All it will need will be the recommendation and
backing of a handful of Western members and senators. Nobody else is
very vitally interested, outside of your own department, and there are
always plenty of clubs at hand for killing off department
opposition--threats of cutting down the appropriations and so on.
Properly engineered, the Mirapolis bill will go through like a greased
pig under a gate. You know it will."
"You say nobody else is vitally interested--that's a mistake big enough
to be called a crime," said Brouillard with emphasis. "The reclamation
of the Buckskin Desert is a matter of moment to the entire nation. Its
failure would be a public disaster."
Harlan laughed derisively.
"You are talking through your hat now--the salaried government
engineer's hat. Let your topographers go out and find some other stream
to dam up. Let them hunt up some other desert to reclaim. The supply of
arid lands isn't exhausted yet by a good bit."
Brouillard appeared to be silenced even if he were not fully convinced.
After a time, however, he dropped in another query.
"How straight is your tip, Harlan?"
"So straight that I'd print it in to-morrow's _Spot-Light_ if I wasn't
afraid of queering the deal by being too previous. The necessary backing
has been secured, and the bill is already prepared. If you don't believe
it, ask your own big bosses in Washington."
"You are certain that your information didn't originate right here in
Mirapolis--in Mr. Cortwright's office, to locate it more exactly?"
"It didn't; it came from a purely personal source and direct from
Washington."
"And the source couldn't possibly have become contaminated by the
Cortwright germs?"
Harlan's smile was the face-wrinkling of seasoned wisdom.
"You are pushing me too hard," he protested. "I know that there are
wheels within wheels. You'd say it would be a foxy move to have the
local newspaper in Mirapolis get such a tip from a strictly unprejudiced
source. I'll have to admit that myself."
Brouillard looked at his watch and reached for his hat.
"It's all right, Harlan," he said at the leave-taking. "Believe as much
as you like, but take my advice in just one small matter. Don't buy
Mirapolis dirt to hold; buy it to sell--and sell the minute you see your
profit. I told you I'd give you a pointer if I didn't forget; you've got
it."
For the better part of a fortnight the tidal waves of prosperity, as
evinced by increasing speculative values, kept on rolling in, each one
apparently a little higher than its immediate predecessor. Then the
flood began to subside, though so slowly that at first it was only by a
careful comparison of the daily transfers that the recession could be
measured.
Causes and consequences extraneous to the city itself contributed to the
almost imperceptible reactionary tendency. For one, the Buckskin Mining
and Milling Company reluctantly abandoned its pastime of ploughing
barren furrows on Jack's Mountain, and a little later went into
liquidation, as the phrase ran, though the Eastern bondholders probably
called it bankruptcy. About the same time the great cement plant,
deprived of the government market by the slackening of the work on the
dam, reduced its output to less than one fourth of its full capacity.
Most portentous of all, perhaps, was the rumor that the placers at
Quadjenai were beginning to show signs of exhaustion. It was even
whispered about that the two huge gold dredges recently installed were
not paying the expenses of operating them.
Quite naturally, the pulse of the Wonder City beat sensitive to all
these depressive rumors and incidents, responding slowly at first but a
little later in accelerated throbbings which could no longer be ignored
by the most optimistic bidder at the "curb" exchanges.
Still there was no panic. As the activities in local sales fell off and
the Mirapolitans themselves were no longer crowding the curbs or
standing in line at the real estate offices for their turn at the
listings, the prudent ones, with Mr. Cortwright and his chosen
associates far in advance of the field, were placing Mirapolis holdings
temptingly on view in distant markets; placing them and selling them
with a blazonry of advertising worthy of the envy of those who have
called themselves the suburb builders of Greater New York.
It was after this invasion of the distant market was fully in train that
Cortwright once more sent for Brouillard, receiving the engineer this
time in the newest offices of the power company, on the
many-times-bought-and-sold corner opposite Bongras's.
"Hello, Brouillard!" said the magnate jocosely, indicating a chair and
the never-absent open box of cigars in the same gesture. "You're getting
to be as much of a stranger as a man might wish his worst enemy to be.
Gene says you are neglecting her shamefully, but she seems to be making
a pretty good Jack-at-a-pinch of the English lord."
"You sent for me?" Brouillard broke in tersely. More and more he was
coming to acknowledge a dull rage when he heard the call of his master.
"Yes. What about the dam? Is your work going to start up again? Or is it
going off for good?"
Brouillard bit his lip to keep back the exclamation of astoundment that
the blunt inquiry threatened to evoke. To assume that Mr. Cortwright did
not know all there was to be known was to credit the incredible.
"I told you a good while ago that I was only the government's hired
man," he replied. "You doubtless have much better information than any I
can give you."
"You can tell me what your orders are--that's what I want to know."
The young chief of construction frowned first, then he laughed.
"What has given you the impression that you own me, Mr. Cortwright? I
have often wondered."
"Well, I might say that I have made you what you are, and----"
"That's true; the truest thing you ever said," snapped Brouillard.
"And, I was going to add, I can unmake you just as easily. But I don't
want to be savage with you. All I'm asking is a little information
first, and a little judicious help afterward. What are your orders from
the department?"
Brouillard got up and stood over the stocky man in the office chair,
with the black eyes blazing.
"Mr. Cortwright, I said a moment ago that you have made me what I am,
and you have. I am infinitely a worse man than you are, because I know
better and you don't. It is no excuse for me that I have had a motive
which I haven't explained to you, because, as I once told you, you
couldn't understand it in a thousand years. The evil has been done and
the consequences, to you, to me, and to every one in this cursed valley
are certain. Facing them as I am obliged to face them, I am telling
you--but what's the use? You can't make a tool of me any longer--that's
all. You must cook your meat over your own fire. I'm out of it."
"I can smash you," said the man in the chair, quite without heat.
"No, you can't even do that," was the equally cool retort. "No man's
fate is in another man's hands. If you choose to set in motion the
machinery which will grind me to a small-sized villain of the
county-jail variety, it is I myself who will furnish every foot-pound of
the power that is applied."
He was moving toward the door, but Cortwright stopped him.
"One more word before you go, Brouillard. It is to be war between us
from this on?"
"I don't say that: It would be awkward for Miss Genevieve. Let it be
armed neutrality if you like. Don't interfere with me and I won't
interfere with you."
"Ah!" said the millionaire. "Now you have brought it around to the
point I was trying to reach. You don't want to have anything more to do
with me, but you are not quite ready to cash in and pull out of the
game. How much money have you got?"
The cool impudence of the question brought a dull flush to the younger
man's face, but he would give the enemy no advantage in the matter of
superior self-control.
"That is scarcely a fair question--even between armed neutrals," he
objected. "Why do you want to know?"
"I'm asking because you have just proposed the non-interference policy,
and I'd like to know how fairly you mean to live up to it. A little
while back you interfered in a small business matter of mine very
pointedly. What became of the one hundred thousand dollars you gave old
David Massingale?"
"How do you know I gave him a hundred thousand dollars?"