THE NIGHT ALARM.
Before he was halfway to his cabin he came upon the runaway horse,
peacefully cropping the grass in a little hollow between the high hills.
It was but the work of a moment to catch it, and, after satisfying
himself that the animal was free from injuries, Nash adjusted the saddle
and sprang into it.
Arrived at the camp, he turned the horse into the stable where the
others were kept, but concluded then to take the saddle up to the cabin,
where it would be safer.
Finishing with supper and lighting the lamp in the big room of the
cabin, which he used as an office, Nash noticed a piece of paper in the
middle of the floor. He picked it up and unfolded it. Then he frowned
and looked around the room, as if expecting to find the owner watching
him. Traced upon the paper was a small but excellent map of the entire
Los Angeles Aqueduct route, showing the intake at Owens Lake. The
different elevations, the telephone stations were marked in red ink,
while the numerous tunnels, beginning with the long one at Elizabeth and
ending with the Reever Bore above San Fernando, were denoted by heavy
crosses.
Nash studied the map for a long time. “Now, where in the world did this
come from?” he muttered. “It’s an exceedingly clever drawing.” Suddenly
he lifted his head and whistled. “By Jove, that’s it! It fell from the
saddle pocket.”
He examined the saddle, which he had dragged to one corner. Sure enough,
there was a pocket under one of the flaps. He drew out several other
drawings; one of them proved to be an enlarged map of Camp Forty-seven.
Under it was written, in pencil, and partly erased:
“I think his name is Elliot Nash. Let me know positively.”
The signature was obliterated.
Nash returned the papers to the pocket. Then he went back to his chair
before the long table, where some blue prints were unrolled.
“I wonder if those maps belong to the girl, or to the person owning the
saddle?” he asked himself. “They’re not the kind used by any of the
engineering corps. They’re prepared especially on the finest kind of
paper. And some one has written my name upon one of them.” He took in a
deep breath, and reached for his pencil. “Well,” he mused, “I’ll ask the
girl--when we’re better acquainted.”
He was still poring over his figures at ten o’clock, when one the
subforemen came hurriedly in with the information that a big water main
had burst and threatened to flood out a part of the freshly laid
conduit.
“Never heard of such a thing in this weather,” Nash said, catching up
hat and coat.
“Came all of a sudden,” the other announced. “The watchman telephoned
in. I’ve been trying to get you for the past fifteen minutes, but your
wire must be out of order.”
In ten minutes, Nash, accompanied by the man who had brought the news,
was upon the scene. The sight was enough to make his blood boil. Several
hundred feet of concrete, laid that day, was washed out. He managed to
get the water shut off, and then hurried to inspect the pipe. The bright
moonlight proved his first suspicions correct.
“Bring that torch here!” he called to one of the men.
The torch was brought. Nash knelt down and examined the broken length of
cast-iron pipe.
“Just as I thought!” he muttered. “It’s been smashed--probably with a
sledge.” He turned to the subforeman. “Where’s the regular watchman on
this job?”
The man was called and questioned. No additional light was shed upon the
case; the watchman had seen no one in the vicinity of the pipe, and the
sound of escaping water and falling concrete was his first intimation of
anything wrong. Nash felt that the man was telling the truth.
These water mains had been laid long before the actual construction work
on the aqueduct had been started; this undertaking, together with the
stringing of telephone and electric-light wires--all preliminary to the
main project--had cost the city of Los Angeles more than two millions of
dollars. Water, to the different construction camps, was a valuable
asset, since the great part of the work lay through arid mountains and
vast stretches of the Mohave Desert.
While Nash was puzzling over the situation, a shout interrupted, and one
of the men came running up with a sledge hammer he had discovered a
couple of hundred feet up the slope.
“That’s the answer!” exclaimed Nash. “Find the owner of this, and we’ll
have the man who smashed our pipe.”
Before leaving the scene, he spoke again to the subforeman:
“You’d better double your watchmen from now on. We can’t afford to take
any risks. There’s five hundred dollars’ worth of a conduit ruined
to-night. Tell your men to hold any suspicious strangers they may run
across. If necessary, shoot first, and ask questions afterward.”