The City of Numbered Days

by Francis Lynde

  VIII

  Table Stakes

  There were a dozen business blocks under construction in Mirapolis, witha proportional number of dwellings and suburban villas at various stagesin the race toward completion, when it began to dawn upon the collectiveconsciousness of a daily increasing citizenry that something wasmissing. Garner, the real-estate plunger from Kansas City, first gavethe missing quantity its name. The distant thunder of the blastsheralding the approach of the railroad had ceased between two days.

  There was no panic; there was only the psychoplasmic moment for one.Thus far there had been no waning of the fever of enthusiasm, noslackening of the furious pace in the race for growth, and, in a way, nolack of business. With money plentiful and credit unimpaired, with anarmy of workmen to spend its weekly wage, and a still larger army ofgovernment employees to pour a monthly flood into the strictly limitedpool of circulation, traffic throve, and in token thereof the saloonsand dance-halls never closed.

  Up to the period of the silenced dynamite thunderings new industrieswere projected daily, and investors, tolled in over the high mountaintrails or across the Buckskin in dust-encrusted automobiles by methodsbest known to a gray-mustached adept in the art of promotion, throngedthe lobby of the Hotel Metropole and bought and sold Mirapolis "corners"or "insides" on a steadily ascending scale of prices.

  Not yet had the time arrived for selling before sunset that which hadbeen bought since sunrise. On the contrary, a strange mania for holdingon, for permanency, seemed to have become epidemic. Many of theworking-men were securing homes on the instalment plan. A good few ofthe villas could boast parquetry floors and tiled bath-rooms. Onecoterie of Chicagoans refused an advance of fifty per cent on a quartersquare of business earth and the next day decided to build a six-storiedoffice-building, with a ground-floor corner for the Niquoia NationalBank, commodious suites for the city offices of the power company, thecement company, the lumber syndicate, and the water company, and anentire floor to be set apart for the government engineers andaccountants. And it was quite in harmony with the spirit of the momentthat the building should be planned with modern conveniences and thatthe chosen building material should be nothing less permanent thanmonolithic concrete.

  In harmony with the same spirit was the enterprise which cut greatgashes across the shoulder of Jack's Mountain in the search for preciousmetal. Here the newly incorporated Buckskin Gold Mining and MillingCompany had discarded the old and slow method of prospecting with pickand shovel, and power-driven machines ploughed deep furrows to bed-rockacross and back until the face of the mountain was zigzagged and scarredlike a veteran of many battles.

  In keeping, again, was the energy with which Mr. Cortwright and hismunicipal colleagues laid water-mains, strung electric wires, drove thepaving contractors, and pushed the trolley-line to the stage at which itlacked only the rails and the cars awaiting shipment by the railroad.Under other conditions it is conceivable that an impatient committee ofconstruction would have had the rails freighted in across the desert,would have had the cars taken to pieces and shipped by mule-trainexpress from Quesado. But with the railroad grade already in sight onthe bare shoulders of the Hophra Hills and the thunder-blasts playingthe presto march of promise the committee could afford to wait.

  This was the situation on the day when Garner, sharp-eared listener atthe keyhole of Opportunity, missing the dynamite rumblings, sent acipher wire of inquiry to the East, got a "rush" reply, and began warilyto unload his Mirapolitan holdings. Being a man of business, he duckedto cover first and talked afterward; but by the time his hint had grownto rumor size Mr. Cortwright had sent for Brouillard.

  "Pull up a chair and have a cigar," said the great man when Brouillardhad penetrated to the nerve-centre of the Mirapolitan activities in theMetropole suite and the two stenographers had been curtly dismissed."Have you heard the talk of the street? There is a rumor that therailroad grading has been stopped."

  Brouillard, busy with the work of setting the third series of forms onhis great wall, had heard nothing.

  "I've noticed that they haven't been blasting for two or three days. Butthat may mean nothing more than a delayed shipment of dynamite," was hisrejoinder.

  "It looks bad--devilish bad." The promoter was planted heavily in hispivot-chair, and the sandy-gray eyes dwindled to pin-points. "Three daysago the blasting stopped, and Garner--you know him, the little KansasCity shark across the street--got busy with the wire. The next thing weknew he was unloading, quietly and without making any fuss about it, butat prices that would have set us afire if he'd had enough stuff in hispack to amount to anything."

  Brouillard tried to remember that he was the Reclamation Serviceconstruction chief, that the pricking of the Mirapolitan bubble early orlate concerned him not at all,--tried it and failed.

  "I am afraid you are right," he said thoughtfully. "We've had a goodmany applications from men hunting work in the past two days, more thanwould be accounted for by the usual drift from the railroad camps."

  "You saw President Ford after I did; what did he say when he was overhere?"

  "He said very little to me," replied Brouillard guardedly. "From thatlittle I gathered that the members of his executive committee were notunanimously in favor of building the Extension."

  "Well, we are up against it, that's all. Read that," and the promoterhanded a telegram across the desk.

  The wire was from Chicago, was signed "Ackerman," and was still dampfrom the receiving operator's copying-press. It read:

  "Work on P. S-W.'s Buckskin Extension has been suspended for thepresent. Reason assigned, shrinkage in securities and uncertainty ofbusiness outlook in Niquoia."

  Brouillard's first emotion was that of the engineer and the economist."What a bunch of blanked fools!" he broke out. "They've spent a cleanmillion as it stands, and they are figuring to leave it tied up andidle!"

  Mr. Cortwright's frown figured as a fleshly mask of irritability.

  "I'm not losing any sleep over the P. S-W. treasury. It's our own basketof eggs here that I'm worrying about. Let it once get out that therailroad people don't believe in the future of Mirapolis and we'redone."

  Brouillard's retort was the expression of an upflash of sanity.

  "Mirapolis has no future; it has only an exceedingly precariouspresent."

  For a moment the sandy-gray eyes became inscrutable. Then the mask ofirritation slid aside, revealing the face which Mr. J. Wesley Cortwrightordinarily presented to his world--the face of imperturbable goodnature.

  "You're right, Brouillard; Mirapolis is only a good joke, after all.Sometimes I get bamfoozled into the idea that it isn't--that it's thereal thing. That's bad for the nerves. But about this railroad fizzle; Idon't relish the notion of having our little joke sprung on us beforewe're ready to laugh, do you? What do you think?"

  Brouillard shook himself as one who casts a burden.

  "It is not my turn to think, Mr. Cortwright."

  "Oh, yes, it is; very pointedly. You're one of us, to a certain extent;and if you were not you would still be interested. A smash just nowwould hamper the Reclamation Service like the mischief; the entire worksshut down; no cement, no lumber, no power; everything tied up in thecourts until the last creditor quits taking appeals. Oh, no, Brouillard;you don't want to see the end of the world come before it's due."

  It was the consulting engineer of the power company rather than theReclamation Service chief who rose and went to the window to look downupon the morning briskness of Chigringo Avenue. And it was the man whosaw one hundred thousand dollars, the price of freedom, slipping awayfrom him who turned after a minute or two of the absent street gazingand said: "What do you want me to do, Mr. Cortwright? I did put myshoulder to the wheel when Ford was here. I told him if I were in hisplace I'd take the long chance and build the Extension."

  "Did you?--and before you had a stake in the game? That was a whiteman's boost, right! Have another cigar. They're 'Poodles's Pride,' andthey're not half bad when you get used to
the near-Havana filler. Thinkyou could manage to get Ford on the wire and encourage him a littlemore?"

  "It isn't Ford; it is the New York bankers. You can read that betweenthe lines in your man Ackerman's telegram."

  The stocky gentleman in the pivot-chair thrust out his jaw and tiltedhis freshly lighted cigar to the aggressive angle.

  "Say, Brouillard, we've got to throw a fresh piece of bait into thecage, something that will make the railroad crowd sit up and takenotice. By George, if those gold hunters up on Jack's Mountain wouldonly stumble across something big enough to advertise----"

  Brouillard started as if the wishful musing had been a blow. Like a hotwave from a furnace mouth it swept over him--the sudden realization thatthe means, the one all-powerful, earth-moving lever the promoter was soanxiously seeking, lay in his hands.

  "The Buckskin people, yes," he said, making talk as the rifleman digs apit to hold his own on the firing-line. "If they should happen touncover a gold reef just now it would simplify matters immensely forMirapolis, wouldn't it? The railroad would come on, then, without ashadow of doubt. All the bankers in New York couldn't hold it back."

  Now came Mr. Cortwright's turn to get up and walk the floor, and he tookit, tramping solidly back and forth in the clear space behind thetable-topped desk. It was not until he had extended the meditativestump-and-go to one of the windows that he stopped short and came out ofthe inventive trance with a jerk.

  "Come here," he called curtly, with a quick finger crook for theengineer, and when Brouillard joined him: "Can you size up that littlecaucus over yonder?"

  The "caucus" was a knot of excited men blocking the sidewalk in front ofGarner's real-estate office on the opposite side of the street. Thepurpose of the excited ones was not difficult to divine. They were alltrying to crowd into the Kansas City man's place of business at once.

  "It looks like a run on a bank," said Brouillard.

  "It is," was the crisp reply. "Garner has beaten everybody else to thehome plate, but he couldn't keep his mouth shut. He's been talking, andevery man in that mob is a potential panic breeder. That thing has gotto be nipped in the bud, right now!"

  "Yes," Brouillard agreed. He was still wrestling with his ownbesetment--the prompting which involved a deliberate plunge where up tothe present crisis he had been merely wading in the shallows. A littlething stung him alive to the imperative call of the moment--the sight ofAmy Massingale walking down the street with Tig Smith, theTriangle-Circle foreman. It was of the death of her hopes that he wasthinking when he said coolly: "You have sized it up precisely, Mr.Cortwright; that is a panic in the making, and the bubble won't standfor very much pricking. Give me a free hand with your check-book for afew minutes and I'll try to stop it."

  It spoke volumes for the millionaire promoter's quick discernment anddecision that he asked no questions. "Do it," he snapped. "I'll coveryou for whatever it takes. Don't wait; that crowd is getting biggerevery minute."

  Brouillard ran down-stairs and across the street. It was no part of hisintention to stop and speak to Amy Massingale and the ranchman, but hedid it, and even walked a little way with them before he turned back toelbow his way through the sidewalk throng and into Garner's dingy littleoffice.

  "You are selling Mirapolis holdings short to-day, Garner?" he asked whenhe had pushed through the crowd to the speculator's desk. And whenGarner laughed and said there were no takers he placed his orderpromptly. "You may bid in for me, at yesterday's prices, anything withinthe city limits--not options, you understand, but the real thing. Bringyour papers over to my office after banking hours and we'll close forwhatever you've been able to pick up."

  He said it quietly, but there could be no privacy at such a time and insuch a place.

  "What's that, Mr. Brouillard?" demanded one in the counter jam. "You'regiving Garner a blank card to buy for your account? Say, that's plentygood enough for me. Garner, cancel my order to sell, will you? When thechief engineer of the government water-works believes in Mirapolisfutures and bets his money on 'em, I'm not selling."

  The excitement was already dying down and the crowd was melting awayfrom Garner's sidewalk when Brouillard rejoined Mr. Cortwright in thesecond-floor room across the street.

  "Well, it's done," he announced shortly, adding: "It's only a stop-gap.To make the bluff good, you've got to have the railroad."

  "That's the talk," said the promoter, relighting the cigar which the fewminutes of crucial suspense had extinguished. And then, without warning:"You're carrying something up your sleeve, Brouillard. What is it?"

  "It is the one thing you need, Mr. Cortwright. If I could get my ownconsent to use it I could bring the railroad here in spite of those NewYorkers who seem to have an attack of cold feet."

  Mr. J. Wesley Cortwright's hesitation was so brief as to be almostimperceptible. "I suppose that is your way of saying that your share inthe table stakes isn't big enough. All right; the game can't stop in themiddle of a bet. How much is it going to cost us to stay in?"

  "The cost isn't precisely in the kind of figures that you understandbest, Mr. Cortwright. And as to my share in the profits ... well, weneedn't mince matters; you may remember that you were at someconsiderable pains to ascertain my price before you made the originalbid--and the bid was accepted. You've just been given a proof that I'mtrying to earn my money. No other man in Mirapolis could have servedyour turn over there at Garner's as I did a few minutes ago. You knowthat."

  "Good Lord, man, I'm not kicking! But we are all in the same boat. Ifthe railroad work doesn't start up again within the next few days we areall due to go to pot. If you've got the odd ace up your sleeve and don'tplay it, you stand to lose out with the rest of us."

  The door was open into the anteroom where the stenographers' desks were,and Brouillard was staring gloomily into the farther vacancies.

  "I wonder if you know how little I care?" he said half musingly. Then,with sudden vehemence: "It is altogether a question of motive with me,Mr. Cortwright; of a motive which you couldn't understand in a thousandyears. If that motive prevails, you get your railroad and a littlelonger lease of life. If it doesn't, Mirapolis will go to the devil somefew weeks or months ahead of its schedule--and I'll take my punishmentwith the remainder of the fools--and the knaves."

  He was on his feet and moving toward the door of exit when the promotergot his breath.

  "Here, hold on, Brouillard--for Heaven's sake, don't go off and leave itup in the air that way!" he protested.

  But the corridor door had opened and closed and Brouillard was gone.

  Two hours later Mirapolis the frenetic had a new thrill, a shock soelectrifying that the rumor of the railroad's halting decision sank intoinsignificance and was forgotten. The suddenly evoked excitementfocussed in a crowd besieging the window of the principal jewelryshop--focussed more definitely upon a square of white paper in thewindow in the centre of which was displayed a little heap of virgin goldin small nuggets and coarse grains.

  While the crowds in the street were still struggling and fighting to getnear enough to read the labelling placard, the _Daily Spot-Light_ cameout with an extra which was all head-lines, the telegraph-wires to theEast were buzzing, and the town had gone mad. The gold specimen--so saidthe placard and the news extra--had been washed from one of the bars inthe Niquoia.

  By three o'clock the madness had culminated in the complete stoppage ofall work among the town builders and on the great dam as well, andgold-crazed mobs were frantically digging and panning on every bar inthe river from the valley outlet to the power dam five miles away.