XIX
The Sunset Gun
Notwithstanding the preliminary rumors which Bongras and many others hadsought so anxiously to verify, the Mirapolitan awakening to arealization that once more the tide had turned to bring new billows ofprosperity tumbling into the valley of the Niquoia came with a suddenand triumphant shock.
The first of the quickening waves fell upon the government reservation.Between sunrise and nightfall, on a day when the cloud of depression hadgrown black with panic threatenings, the apathy which had latelycharacterized the work on the great dam disappeared as if by magic. Thecity found its bill-boards posted with loud calls for labor; the idlemixers were put in commission; the quarries and crushers began tothunder again; and the stagings once more shook and trembled under thefeet of a busy army of puddlers.
While the revival was as yet only in the embryonic period, fresh laborbegan to come in gangs and in car loads and presently by specialtrains. Swarming colonies of Greeks, Italians, and Bulgarians weredumped upon the city through the gate of the railroad station, and oncemore Chigringo Avenue at night became a cheerful Midway answering to thespeech of all nations.
Change, revivification, reanimation instantly became the new order ofthe day; and again Mirapolis flung itself joyously into the fray,reaping where it had not sown and sowing only where the quickest cropcould be gathered. For now the dullest of the reapers saw that thegovernment work was really the Mirapolitan breath of life. Neither thequickening of the city's industries nor the restarting of the golddredges in the Quadjenai canals, the reopening of the Real EstateExchange nor the Buckskin Company's sudden resumption of the profitlessprospecting on Jack's Mountain served to obscure the principalfact--that without the money the Reclamation Service was disbursing thenew prosperity structure would collapse like a house of cards.
This new and never-mentioned conviction wrought an eager change in menand in methods. Credit vanished and spot cash was tacitly acknowledgedto be the only way to do business in a live community. Fortunes changedhands swiftly, as before, but now there was little bargaining and, withhot haste for the foreword, little time for it. To the Western motto of"Go to it and get the money" was added: "And don't come back withoutit." It was said with a laugh, but behind the laugh there was a menace.
Among the individual transformations wrought by the new conditions, theyoung chief of the Reclamation Service afforded the most strikingexample. From the morning when he had summarily cancelled the lease forthe offices in the Niquoia Building and had returned his headquarters tothe old log buildings on the government reservation and thence hadissued his first series of orders for the resumption of full-force workon the dam and canals, those who had known him best discovered that theyhad not known him at all. Even to Grislow and the men of his staff hewas curt, crisply mandatory, almost brutal. For one and all there wasrarely anything beyond the shot-like sentence: "Drive it, men; drive it;that's what you're here for--_drive it_!"
The time he took to eat his hurried meals at Bongras's could be measuredin minutes, and what hours he gave to sleep no man knew, since he wasthe last to leave the headquarters at night and the first on the workin the morning. Twice, after the renewed activities on the great wallhad become a well-ordered race against time, and the concrete waspouring into the high forms in steady streams from the ranked batteriesof mixers, Mr. Cortwright had sent for Brouillard, and on each occasionthe messenger had gone back with the brief word: "Too busy duringworking hours." And when a third messenger came to inquire what Mr.Brouillard's working hours were, the equally blunt answer returned was:"All the time."
In the face of such discouragements Mr. Cortwright was constrained topocket his dignity as mayor, as the potentate of the exchanges, and asthe unquestionable master of the surly young industry captain whorefused to come when he was called, and to go in person. Choosing theevening hour when he had been assured that he was likely to findBrouillard alone and at work, he crossed the boundaries of the sacredreservation and made his way to the door of the log-built mapping room.
"I came around to see what is eating you these days," was the pudgytyrant's greeting for the young man sitting under the shaded desk lamp."Why don't you drop in once in a while and give me the run of things?"
"I gave your clerk the reason," said Brouillard laconically. "I'm toobusy."
"The devil you are!" snapped the great man, finding the only arm chairin the room and dropping heavily into it. "Since when?"
"Since the first time you sent for me--and before."
Mr. Cortwright recovered his working geniality only with a palpableeffort.
"See here, Brouillard, you know you never make any money by being shortwith me. Let's drop it and get down to business. What I wanted to say isthat you are overdoing it; you are putting on too much steam. You'vebrought the boom, all right, but at the pace you're setting it won'tlast long enough. Are you catching on?"
"I'm listening," was the non-committal reply.
"Well, enough's enough, and too much of a good thing scalds the hogbefore you're ready to dress it and cut it up. It's all right for you torun men in here by the train load and scatter 'em out over yourscaffolding--the more the merrier, and it's good for the town--but youneedn't sweat the last shovelful of hurry out of them the way you'redoing. It won't do to get your job finished too soon."
"Before Congress convenes, you mean?" suggested Brouillard.
"That's just what I mean. String it out. Make it last."
Brouillard sat back in his pivot chair and began to play with thepaper-knife.
"And if I don't choose to 'string it out'--if I even confess that I amstraining every nerve to do this thing that you don't want me todo--what then, Mr. Cortwright?"
The quiet retort jolted the stocky man in the arm chair as if it hadbeen a blow. But he recovered quickly.
"I've been looking for that," he said with a nervous twinkling of thelittle gray eyes. "You've no business being out of business, Brouillard.If you'd quit puddling sand and cement and little rocks together andstrike your gait right in ten years you'd be the richest man this sideof the mountains. I'll be open-handed with you: this time you've got uswhere we can't wiggle. We've _got_ to have more time. How much is itgoing to cost us?"
Brouillard shook his head slowly.
"Odd as it may seem to you, I'm out of your market this time, Mr.Cortwright--quite out of it."
"Oh, no, you're not. You've got property to sell--a good bit of it. Wecan turn it for you at a figure that will----"
"No; you are mistaken," was the quick reply. "I have no property inMirapolis. I am merely a squatter on government land, like every oneelse in the Niquoia valley."
"For Heaven's sake!" the promoter burst out. "What's got into you? Don'tyou go around trying to stand that corpse on its feet; it's a dead one,I tell you! The Coronida titles are all right!"
"There are no Coronida titles. You have known it all along, and I knowit--now. I have it straight from the bureau of land statistics, in aletter from a man who knows. The nearest boundary of the old Spanishgrant is Latigo Peak, ten miles south of Chigringo. The department knowsthis and is prepared to prove it. And in the very beginning you and yourassociates were warned that you could not acquire homestead or otherrights in the Niquoia."
"Let it go!" snapped the gray-eyed king of the pack. "We've got to getout alive and we're going to get out alive. What's your price?"
"I have answered that question once, but I'll make it a little plainerif you wish. It is beyond your reach; if you should turn yourmoney-coining soul into cash you couldn't pay it this time, Mr.Cortwright."
"That's guff--boy-talk--play-ranting! You want something--is it thatdamned Massingale business again? I don't own the railroad, but if youthink I do, I'll sign anything you want to write to the traffic people.Let Massingale sell his ore and get the money for it. He'll go gamble itas he did yours."
Brouillard looked up under the shaded electric globe and his handsomeface wrinkled in a sour smile.
"Y
ou are ready to let go, are you?" he said. "You are too late. Mr. Fordreturned from Europe a week ago, and I have a wire saying thatto-night's through freight from Brewster is chiefly made up of emptyore-cars for the 'Little Susan.'"
The sandy-gray eyes blinked at this, but Mr. Cortwright was of those whodie hard.
"What I said still holds good. Massingale or his son, or both of them,will gamble the money. And if they don't, we've got 'em tied up in ahard knot on the stock proposition."
"I was coming to that," said Brouillard quietly. "For a long time youhave been telling me what I should do and I have done it. Now I'll takemy turn. You must notify your associates that the 'Little Susan' deal isoff. There will be a called meeting of the directors here in this roomto-morrow evening at eight o'clock, and----"
"Who calls it?" interrupted the tyrant.
"The president."
"President nothing!" was the snorted comment. "An old, drunken gamblerwho hasn't got sense enough to go in when it rains! Say, Brouillard,I'll cut that pie so there'll be enough to go around the table. Justleave Massingale out of it and make up your mind that you're going tosit in with us. We've bought the mine and paid for it. I've got thestock put away where it's safe. Massingale can't touch a share of it, orvote it, either."
Brouillard shook his head.
"You are stubbornly hard to convince, Mr. Cortwright, but I'll try onemore time. You will come here to-morrow evening, with your confederatesin the deal, prepared to take the money you have actually spent inbetterments and prepared to release the stock. If you fail to do so youwill get nothing. Is that explicit enough?"
"You're crazy!" shouted the promoter. "You talk as if there wasn't anylaw in this country!"
"There isn't--for such men as you; you and your kind put yourselvesabove the law. But that is neither here nor there. You don't want to gointo court with this conspiracy which you have cooked up to beat DavidMassingale out of his property. It's the last thing on earth you want todo. So you'd better do the other thing--while you can."
Mr. Cortwright sat back in his chair, and once more Brouillard saw inthe sandy-gray eyes the look which had been in the son's eyes when thederelict fought for freedom to finish killing Stephen Massingale.
"It's a pretty dangerous thing to try to hold a man up unless you've gotthe drop on him, Brouillard," he said significantly. "I've got youcovered from my pocket; I've had you covered that way ever since youbegan to buck and rear on me a couple of months ago. One little wireword to Washington fixes you for good and all. If I say the word, you'llstay on your job just as long as it will take another man to get here tosupersede you."
Brouillard laughed.
"The pocket drop is never very safe, Mr. Cortwright. You are likely tolose too much time feeling for the proper range. Then, too, you cannever be sure that you won't miss. Also, your assumption that I'm takingan unarmed man's chance is wrong. I can kill you before you can pull thetrigger of the pocket gun you speak of--kill you so dead that you won'tneed anything but a coroner's jury and a coffin. How long would it takeyou to get action in the Washington matter, do you think?"
"I've told you; you'd have just about a week longer to live, at thefurthest."
"I can better that," was the cool reply. "I have asked you to do acertain thing to-morrow night. If you don't do it, the _Spot-Light_ willprint, on the following morning, that letter I spoke of--the letter frommy friend in the bureau of land statistics. When that letter is printedeverybody in Mirapolis will know that you and your accomplices are plainswindlers, amenable to the criminal law, and from that moment there willnever be another real-estate transfer in the Niquoia valley."
The promoter rose slowly out of his chair and stood leaning heavily withhis fat hands, palms downward, on the flat-topped desk. His cheeks werepuffed out and the bitten mustaches bristled like the whiskers of a grayold leader of the timber-wolves.
"Brouillard," he grated huskily, "does this mean that you're breakingwith us, once for all?"
"It means more than that; it means that I have reached a point at whichI am ashamed to admit that there was ever anything to break."
"Then listen: you've helped this thing along as much as, or more than,anybody else in this town; and there are men right here inMirapolis--plenty of 'em--who will kill you like a rat in a hole if yougo back on them as you are threatening to. Don't you know that?"
The younger man was balancing the paper-cutter across his finger.
"That is the least of my worries," he answered, speaking slowly. "I amall sorts of a moral coward, I suppose; I've proved that often enough inthe past few months, God knows. But I'm not the other kind, Mr.Cortwright."
"Then I'll take a hand!" snarled the tyrant at bay. "I'll spend amillion dollars, if I have to, blacklisting you from one end of thiscountry to the other! I'll fix it so you'll never build anything biggerthan a hog-pen again as long as you live! I'll publish your recordwherever there is a newspaper to print it!" He pounded on the desk withhis fist--"I'll do it--money can do it! More than that, you'll neverget a smell of that Chigringo mine--you nor Dave Massingale!"
Brouillard tossed the paper-knife into a half-opened drawer and squaredhimself at the blotting-pad.
"That is your challenge, is it?" he said curtly. "So be it. Start yourmachinery. You will doubtless get me, not because you have money, butbecause for a time I was weak enough and wicked enough to climb down andstand on your level. But if you don't hurry, Mr. Cortwright, I'll getyou first. Are you going? One thing more--and it's a kindness; get yourson out of town before this Massingale matter comes up for adjustment.It will be safer."
"Is that all you have to say?"
"Pretty nearly all, except to tell you that your time is growing short,and you and those who are in with you had better begin to set yourhouses in order. If you'll come over here at eight o'clock to-morrownight prepared to do the square thing by David Massingale, I'll withholdthe publication of that letter which will stamp you and your associatesas criminals before the law; but that is the only concession I shallmake."
"You've got to make at least one more!" stormed the outgoing magnate."You don't have to set any dates or anything of that kind for yourdamned drowning act!"
"In justice to a good many people who are measurably innocent, I shallhave to do that very thing," returned the engineer firmly. "The noticewill appear in to-morrow's _Spot-Light_."
It was the final straw in the stocky promoter's crushing wrath burden.His fat face turned purple, and for a second or two he clawed the air,gasping for breath. Brouillard sat back in his chair, waiting for thevolcanic upheaval. But it did not come. When he had regained a measureof self-control, Mr. Cortwright turned slowly and went out without aword, stumbling over the threshold and slamming the door heavily as hedisappeared.
For a time after the promoter's wordless departure Brouillard sat at hisdesk writing steadily. When the last of the memorandum sheets was filledhe found his hat and street coat and left the office. Ten minutes laterhe had penetrated to the dusty den on the second floor of the_Spot-Light_ office where Harlan was grinding copy for his paper.Brouillard took a chair at the desk end and laid the sheets of pencilledgovernment paper under the editor's eyes.
Harlan's lean, fine-lined face was a study in changing emotions as heread. But at the end there was an aggrieved look in his eyes, mirroringthe poignant regret of a newsman who has found a priceless story whichhe dares not use.
"It's ripping," he sighed, "the biggest piece of fireworks a poor devilof a newspaper man ever had a chance to touch off. But, of course, Ican't print it."
"Why 'of course'?"
"For the same reason that a sane man doesn't peek down the muzzle of aloaded gun when he is monkeying with the trigger. I want to live alittle while longer."
Brouillard looked relieved.
"I thought, perhaps, it was on account of your investments," he said.
"Not at the present writing," amended Harlan with a grin. "I got a caseof cold feet when we had that little let-up a w
hile back, and when themarket opened I cleaned up and sent the sure-enough little round dollarshome to Ohio."
"And still you won't print this?"
"I'd like to; you don't know how much I'd like to. But they'd hang meand sack the shop. I shouldn't blame 'em. If what you have said hereever gets into cold type, it's good-by Mirapolis. Why, Brouillard, thewhole United States would rise up and tell us to get off the map.You've made us look like thirty cents trying to block the wheels of amillion dollars--and that is about the real size of it, I guess."
"Then it is your opinion that if this were printed it would do thebusiness?"
"There isn't the slightest doubt about it."
"Thank you, Harlan, that is what I wanted to find out--if I had made itstrong enough. It'll be printed. I'll put it on the wires to theAssociated Press. I was merely giving you the first hack at it."
"Gee--gosh! hold on a minute!" exclaimed the newsman, jumping up andsnapping his fingers. "If I weren't such a dod-gasted coward! Let me runin a few 'It is alleged's', and I'll chance it."
"No; it goes as it lies. There are no allegations. It is merely a stringof cold facts, as you very well know. Print it if you like, and I'll seeto it that they don't hang you or loot the office. I have two hundred ofthe safest men on my force under arms to-night, and we'll take care ofyou. I'm in this thing for blood, Harlan, and when I get through, thislittle obstruction in the way of progress that Cortwright and his crowdplanned, and that you and I and a lot of other fools and knaves helpedto build, will be cooling itself under two hundred feet of water."
"Good Lord!" said the editor, still unable to compass the barbaricsuddenness of it. Then he ran his eye over the scratch sheets again."Does this formal notice that the waste-gates will be closed three weeksfrom to-morrow go as it stands?" he inquired.
"It does. I have the department's authority. You know as well as I dothat unless a fixed day is set there will be no move made. We are alltrespassers here, and we've been warned off. That's all there is to it.And if we can't get our little belongings up into the hills in threeweeks it's our loss; we had no business bringing them here."
The editor looked up with the light of a new discovery in his eyes. "Yousay 'we' and 'our.' That reminds me; Garner told me no longer ago thanthis afternoon that you are on record for something like a hundredthousand dollars' worth of choice Mirapolis front feet. How about that?"
Brouillard's smile was quite heart-whole.
"I've kept my salary in a separate pocket, Harlan. Besides that--well, Icame here with nothing and I shall go away with nothing. The rest of itwas all stage money."
"Say--by hen!" ejaculated the owner of the _Spot-Light_. Then, smitingthe desk: "You ought to let me print that. I'd run it in red head-linesacross the top of the front page. But, of course, you won't.... Well,here goes for the fireworks and a chance of a soaped rope." And hepushed the bell button for the copy boy.
Late as it was when he left the _Spot-Light_ office, Brouillard waitedon the corner for a Quadjenai car, and, catching one, he was presentlywhisked out to the ornate villa in the eastern suburb. There was a lightin the hall and another in a room to the rear, and it was Amy whoanswered his touch of the bell-push.
"No, I can't stay," he said, when she asked him in. "But I had to come,if it was only for a minute. The deed is done. I've had mynext-to-the-last round-up with Mr. J. Wesley Cortwright, and to-morrow's_Spot-Light_ will fire the sunset gun for Mirapolis. Is your fatherhere?"
"No. He and Stevie are up at the mine. I am looking for them on everycar."
"When they come, tell your father it's time to hike. Are you allpacked?"
She nodded. "Everything is ready."
"All right. Three of my teams will be here by midnight, at the latest.The drivers and helpers will be good men and you can trust them. Don'tlet anything interfere with your getting safely up to the mountainto-night. There'll be warm times in Gomorrah from this on and I want afree hand--which I shouldn't have with you here."
"Oh, I'm glad, glad!--and I'm just as scared as I can be!" she gaspedwith true feminine inconsistency. "They will single you out first; whatif I am sending you to your death, Victor! Oh, please don't go and breakmy heart the other way across by getting killed!"
He drew a deep breath and laughed.
"You don't know how good it sounds to hear you say that--and say it inthat way. I sha'n't be reckless. But I'm going to bring J. Wesley andhis crowd to book--they've got to go, and they've got to turn the'Little Susan' loose."
"They will never do that," she said sadly.
"I'll make them; you wait and see."
She looked up with the violet eyes kindling.
"I told you once that you could do anything you wanted to--if you onlywanted to hard enough. I believed it then; I believe it now."
"No," he denied with a smile that was half sorrowful, "I can't make twohills without a valley between them. I've chased down the back tracklike a little man,--for love's sake, Amy,--and I've burned all thebridges behind me as I ran; namely, the sham deeds to the pieces ofreservoir bottom I'd been buying. But when it is all over I shall bejust where I was when we began--exactly one hundred thousand dollarsshort of being able to say: 'Come, girl, let's go and get married.'"
"But father owes you a hundred thousand dollars," she said quickly.
"Not in a hundred thousand years, O most inconsistent of women! Didn'twe agree that that money was poisoned? It was the purchase price of animmortal soul, and I wouldn't touch it with a pair of tongs. That is whyyour father couldn't use it; it belonged to the devil and the devilwanted it back."
"Father won't take that view of it," she protested.
"Then you'll have to help me to bully him, that's all. But I must go andrelieve Grizzy, who is doing guard duty at the mixers.... Tell yourfather--no, that isn't what I meant to say, it's this--" and his armswent suddenly across the hundred-thousand-dollar chasm.
* * * * *
A little deeper in the night, when he was tramping back through thesleeping town and up to the mixers on the high bench of Jack'sMountain, Brouillard knew well enough that he was walking over athin-crusted crater of volcanic possibilities. But to a man in theseventh heaven of love acknowledged without shame, and equally withoutshame returned,--nay, with the first passionate kiss of the love stilltingling on his lips,--volcanic possibilities, or even the volcanoesthemselves, figure lightly, indeed.
XX
The Terror
In the Yellowstone National Park there is an apparently bottomless pitwhich can be instantly transformed into a spouting, roaring Vesuvius ofboiling water by the simple expedient of dropping a bar of soap into it.
The _Spot-Light_ went to press at three o'clock. By the earliest grayingof dawn, and long before the sun had shown itself above the easternTimanyonis, Brouillard's bar of soap was melting and the Mirapolitanunder-depths were beginning to heave. Like wild-fire, the news spreadfrom lip to lip and street to street, and by sunrise the geyser wasretching and vomiting, belching debris of cries and maledictions, andpouring excited and riotous crowds into Chigringo Avenue.
Most naturally, the _Spot-Light_ office was the first point of attack,and Harlan suffered loss, though it was inconsiderable. At the batteringdown of the doors the angry mob found itself confronting the youngReclamation Service chief and four members of his staff, all armed.Brouillard spoke briefly and to the point.
"I am the man who wrote that article you've been reading, and Mr. Harlanprinted it as a matter of news. If you have anything to say to me youknow where to find me. Now, move on and let Mr. Harlan's property aloneor somebody will get hurt."
Nobody stayed to press the argument at the moment. An early-morning mobis proverbially incoherent and incohesive; and, besides, loadedWinchesters in the hands of five determined men are apt to have aneloquence which is more or less convincing.
But with the opening of business the geyser spouted again. The exchangeswere mobbed by eager sellers, each frenzied strugg
ler hoping againsthope that he might find some one simple enough to buy. At ten o'clockthe bank closed--"Temporarily," the placard notice said. But there wereplenty to believe that it would never open again.
By noon the trading panic had exhausted itself a little, though thelobby and cafe of the Metropole were crowded, and anxious groups quicklyformed around any nucleus of rumor or gossip in the streets.
Between one and two o'clock, while Brouillard, Leshington, and Ansonwere hastily eating a luncheon sent over to the mapping room fromBongras's, Harlan drifted in.
"Spill your news," commanded Leshington gruffly. "What's doing, andwho's doing it?"
"Nobody, and nothing much," said Harlan, answering the two queries asone. "The town is falling apart like a bunch of sand and the get-awayhas set in. Two full trains went east this forenoon, and two more arescheduled for this afternoon if the railroad people can get the carshere."
"'Good-by, little girl, good-by,'" hummed Grislow, entering in time tohear the report of the flight.
But Leshington was shaking his big head moodily. "Laugh about it if youcan, but it's no joke," he growled. "When the froth is blown away andthe bubbles quit rising, there are going to be some mighty bittersettlings left in the bottom of the stein."
"You're right, Leshington," said Harlan, gravely. "What we're seeing nowis only the shocked surprise of it--as when a man says 'Ouch!' before herealizes that the dog which has bitten him has a well-developed case ofrabies. We'll come to the hydrophobic stage later on."
By nightfall of this first day the editor's ominous prophecy seemedabout to reach its fulfilment. The Avenue was crowded again and the dinand clamor was the roar of a mob infuriated. Brouillard and Leshingtonhad just returned from posting a company of the workmen guard at themixers and crushers, when Grislow, who had been scouting on the Avenue,came in.
"Harmless enough, yet," he reported. "It's only some more of theget-away that Harlan was describing. Just the same, it's somethingawful. People are fairly climbing over one another on the road up thehill to the station--with no possible hope of getting a train beforesome time to-morrow. Teamsters are charging twenty-five dollars a loadfor moving stuff that won't find cars for a week, and they're scarce atthe price."
Leshington, who was not normally a profane man, opened his mouth andsaid things.
"If the Cortwright crowd had one man in it with a single idea beyondsaving his own miserable stake!" he stormed. "What are the spellbindersdoing, Grizzy?"
The hydrographer grinned. "Cortwright and a chosen few left thisafternoon, hotfoot, for Washington, to get the government to interfere.That's the story they'd like to have the people believe. But the factis, they ran away from Judge Lynch."
"Yes; I think I see 'em coming back--not!" snorted the first assistant.Then to Brouillard: "That puts it up to us from this out. Is thereanything we can do?"
Brouillard shook his head. "I don't want to stop the retreat. I've heardfrom President Ford. The entire Western Division will hustle thebusiness of emptying the town, and the quicker it is done the sooner itwill be over."
For a tumultuous week the flight from the doomed city went on, and theovertaxed single-track railroad wrought miracles of transportation. Notuntil the second week did the idea of material salvage take root, but,once started, it grew like Jonah's gourd. Hundreds of wrecking crewswere formed. Plants were emptied, and the machinery was shipped as itstood. Houses and business blocks were gutted of everything that couldbe carried off and crowded into freight-cars. And, most wonderful ofall, cars were found and furnished almost as fast as they could beloaded.
But the second week was not without incidents of another sort. TwiceBrouillard had been shot at--once in the dark as he was entering themapping room, and again in broad day when he was crossing the Avenue toBongras's. The second attempt was made by the broker Garner, whomexcitement or loss, or both, had driven crazy. The young engineer didnothing in either case save to see to it that Garner was sent to hisfriends in Kansas City. But when, two nights later, an attempt was madeto dynamite the great dam, he covered the bill-boards with warningposters. Outsiders found within the Reclamation Service picket-linesafter dark would be held as intentional criminals and dealt withaccordingly.
"It begins to look a little better," said Anson on the day in the thirdweek when the army of government laborers began to strip the final formsfrom the top of the great wall which now united the two mountainshoulders and completely overshadowed and dominated the dismantled town."If the Avenue would only take its hunch and go, the agony would beover."
But Brouillard was dubious. The Avenue, more particularly the lowerAvenue, constituted the dregs. Bongras, whom Brouillard had promised toindemnify, stayed; some of the shopkeepers stayed for the chance ofsqueezing the final trading dollar out of the government employees; thesaloon-keepers stayed to a man, and the dives were still running fullblast--chiefly now on the wages of the government force.
"It will be worse before it is better," was the young chiefs prediction,and the foreboding verified itself that night. Looting of a more or lessbrazen sort had been going on from the first, and by nine o'clock of thenight of prediction a loosely organized mob of drink-maddened terroristswas drifting from street to street, and there were violence andincendiarism to follow.
Though the property destruction mattered little, the anarchy it wasbreeding had to be controlled. Brouillard and Leshington got out theirreserve force and did what they could to restore some semblance oforder. It was little enough; and by ten o'clock the amateur policing ofthe city had reduced itself to a double guarding of the dam and themachinery, and a cordoning of the Metropole, the Reclamation Servicebuildings, and the _Spot-Light_ office. For Harlan, the dash of sportingblood in his veins asserting itself, still stayed on and continued toissue his paper.
"I said I wanted to be in at the death, and for a few minutes to-night Ithought I was going to be," he told Brouillard, when the engineer hadposted his guards and had climbed the stair to the editorial office.Then he asked a question: "When is this little hell-on-earth going tobe finally extinguished, Victor?"
Instead of answering, Brouillard put a question of his own: "Did youknow that Cortwright and Schermerhorn and Judge Williams came back thisevening, Harlan?"
"I did," said the newspaper man. "They are registered at the Metropoleas large as life. And Miss Genevieve and Lord Falkland and Cortwright'sugly duckling of a son came with them. What's up?"
"That is what I'd like to know. There's a bunch of strangers at theMetropole, too, a sheriff's posse, Poodles thinks; at least, there is adeputy from Red Butte with the crowd."
Harlan tilted back in his chair and scanned the ceiling reflectively."This thing is getting on my nerve, old man. I wish we could clean theslate and all go home."
"It is going to be cleaned. Notices will be posted to-morrow warningeverybody that the waste-gates will be closed promptly on the dateadvertised."
"When is it? Things have been revolving too rapidly to let me remembersuch a trivial item as a date."
"It is the day after to-morrow, at noon."
The owner of the _Spot-Light_ nodded. "Let her go, Gallagher. I've goteverything on skids, even the presses. _Au revoir_--or perhaps oneshould say, _Au reservoir_."
Fresh shoutings and a crackling of pistols arose in the direction of theplaza, and Brouillard got up and went to a window. The red glow of otherhouse burnings loomed against the sombre background of Jack's Mountain.
"Senseless savages!" he muttered, and then went back to the editor. "Idon't like this Cortwright reappearance, Harlan. I wish I knew what itmeans."
"Let's see," said the newsman thoughtfully; "what is there worth takingthat they didn't take in the _sauve qui peut_? By Jove--say! Did oldDavid Massingale get out of J. Wesley's clutches before the lightningstruck?"
"I wish I could say 'Yes', and be sure of it," was the sober reply. "Youknew about the thieving stock deal, or what you didn't know I told you.Well, I had Massingale, as president, call a meeting o
f directors--whichnever met. Afterward, acting under legal advice, he went on working themine, and he's been working it ever since, shipping a good bit of orenow and then, when he could squeeze it in between the get-away trains.Of course, there is bound to be a future of some sort; but that is thepresent condition of affairs."
"How about those notes in the bank? Wasn't Massingale personallyinvolved in some way?"
Brouillard bounded out of his chair as if the question had been apoint-blank pistol-shot.
"Great Heavens!" he exclaimed. "To-day's the day! In the hustle I hadforgotten it, and I'll bet old David has--if he hasn't simply ignoredit. That accounts for the reunion at the Metropole!"
"Don't worry," said Harlan easily. "The bank has gone, vanished, shut upshop. At the end of the ends, I suppose, they can make David pay; butthey can't very well cinch him for not meeting his notes on the dot."
"Massingale doesn't really owe them anything that he can't pay,"Brouillard asserted. "By wiring and writing and digging up figures, wefound that the capitalizing stockholders, otherwise J. WesleyCortwright, and possibly Schermerhorn, have actually invested fifty-twothousand dollars, or, rather, that amount of Massingale's loan has beenexpended in equipment and pay-rolls. Three weeks ago the old man got thesmelter superintendent over here from Red Butte, and arranged for anadvance of fifty-two thousand dollars on the ore in stock, the money tobe paid when the first train of ore-cars should be on the way in. It waspaid promptly in New York exchange, and Massingale indorsed the draftover to me to be used in the directors' meeting, which was never held."
"Well?" said the editor.
Brouillard took a pacing turn up the long, narrow room, and when he cameback he said: "I guess I'm only half reformed, after all, Harlan. I'dgive a year or so out of my natural life if I had a grip on Cortwrightthat would enable me to go across to Bongras's and choke a littlejustice out of him."
"Go over and flash Massingale's fifty-two thousand dollars at 'em.They'll turn loose. I'll bet a yellow cur worth fifteen cents thatthey're wishing there was a train out of this little section of Sheolright now. Hear that!"
The crash of an explosion rattled the windows, and the red loom on theJack's Mountain side of the town leaped up and became a momentary glare.The fell spirit of destruction, of objectless wreck and ruin, wasabroad, and Brouillard turned to the stairway door.
"I'll have to be making the rounds again," he said. "The Greeks andItalians are too excitable to stand much of this. Take care of yourself;I'll leave Grif and a dozen of the trusties to look after the shop."
When he reached the sidewalk the upper Avenue was practically deserted.But in the eastern residence district, and well around to the north, newstorm-centres were marked by the increasing number of fires. Brouillardstopped and faced toward the distant and invisible Timanyonis. A chillautumn breeze was sweeping down from the heights and the blockading wallof the great dam turned it into eddies and dust-pillared whirls dancingin the empty street.
Young Griffith sauntered up with his Winchester in the hollow of hisarm.
"Anything new?" he asked.
"No," said Brouillard. "I was just thinking that a little wind would goa long way to-night, with these crazy house-burners loose on the town."Then he turned and walked rapidly to the government headquarters, passedthe sentry at the door of the mapping room; and out of the fire-proofvault where the drawings and blue-print duplicates were kept took asmall tin despatch-box.
He had opened the box and had transferred a slip of paper from it tothe leather-covered pocket field book which served him for a wallet,when there was a stir at the door and Castner hurried in, looking lessthe clergyman than the hard-working peace-officer.
"More bedlam," he announced. "I want Gassman or Handley and twenty orthirty good men. The mob has gone from wrecking and burning tomurdering. 'Pegleg' John was beaten to death in front of his saloon afew minutes ago. It is working this way. There were three fires in theplaza as I came through."
"See Grislow at the commissary and tell him I sent you," said the chief."I'd go with you, but I'm due at the Metropole."
"Good. Then Miss Amy got word to you? I was just about to deliver hermessage."
"Miss Massingale? Where is she, and what was the message?" demandedBrouillard.
"Then you haven't heard? The 'Little Susan' is in the hands of asheriff's posse, and David Massingale is under arrest on some trumped-upcharge--selling ore for his individual account, or something of thatsort. Miss Amy didn't go into particulars, but she told me that she hadheard the sheriff say it was a penitentiary offence."
"But where is she now?" stormed Brouillard.
"Over at the hotel. I supposed you knew; you said you were going there."
Brouillard snatched up the despatch-box and flung it into thefire-proof. While he was locking the door Castner went in search ofGrislow, and when Brouillard faced about, another man stood in themissionary's place by the mapping table. It was Mr. J. WesleyCortwright.
The gray-faced promoter had lost something of his old-time jauntyassurance, and he was evidently well shaken and unnerved by the sightsand sounds of the night of terror. The sandy-gray eyes advertised it aswell as the fat hands, which would not keep still.
"I didn't think I'd have to ask a favor of you again, Brouillard, butneeds must when the devil drives," he began, with an attemptedassumption of the former manner. "We didn't know--the newspapers didn'ttell us anything about this frightful state of affairs, and----"
Brouillard had suddenly lost his desire to hurry.
"Sit down, Mr. Cortwright," he said. "I was just coming over to seeyou--to congratulate you and Mr. Schermerhorn on your return toMirapolis. We have certainly missed the mayor, not to mention thepresident of the common council."
"Of course--yes," was the hurried rejoinder. "But that's all over. Yousaid you'd get us, and you did. I don't bear malice. If you had given meone more day I'd have got you; the stuff that would have broken yourneck with the Washington people was all written and ready to put on thewires. But that's past and gone, and the next thing is something else.There is a lot of money and securities locked up in the Niquoia Bankvault. We've come to clean up, and we brought a few peace officers alongfrom Red Butte for a guard. The miserable scoundrels are scared stiff;they won't stir out of the hotel. Bongras tells me you've got your forceorganized and armed--can't you lend us fifty or a hundred huskies tokeep the mob off while we open that bank vault?"
Brouillard's black eyes snapped, and the blood danced in his veins. Theopportunity for which he would have bartered Ormus treasure had come tohim--was begging him to use it.
"I certainly can," he admitted, answering the eager question andemphasizing the potentiality.
"But will you? that's the point. We'll make it worth your while. ForGod's sake, don't say no, Brouillard! There's pretty well up to amillion in that vault, counting odds and ends and left-overs.Schermerhorn oughtn't to have left it. I thought he had sense enough tostay and see it taken care of. But now----"
"But now the mob is very likely to wreck the building and dynamite thevault, you were going to say. I think it is more than likely, Mr.Cortwright, and I wonder that it hasn't been done before this. It wouldhave been done if the rioters had had any idea that you'd left anythingworth taking. And it would probably wreck you and Mr. Schermerhorn if itshould get hold of you; you've both been burned in effigy half a dozentimes since you ran away."
"Oh, good Lord!" shuddered the magnate. "Make it two hundred of yourmen, and let's hurry. You won't turn us down on this, Brouillard?"
"No. It is no part of our duty to go and keep the mob off while you saveyour stealings, but we'll do it. And from the noise they are making downthat way, I think you are wise in suggesting haste. But first there is aquestion of common justice to be settled. An hour ago, or such a matter,you sent a part of your sheriff's posse up to seize the 'Little Susan'and to arrest David Massingale----"
"It's--it's a lie!" stammered Cortwright. "Somebody has been trying tobackcap me t
o you!"
Brouillard looked up, frowning.
"You are a good bit older man than I am, Mr. Cortwright, and I sha'n'tpunch your head. But you'll know why I ought to when I tell you that myinformant is Miss Amy Massingale. What have you done with old David?"
The man who had lost his knack of bluffing came down and stayed down.
"He--he's over at the hotel," he stammered.
"Under guard?"
"Well--y-yes."
Brouillard pointed to the telephone on the wall.
"Go and call up your crowd and get it here. Tell Judge Williams to bringthe stock he is holding, and Schermerhorn to bring the Massingale notes,and your man Jackson to bring the stock-book. We'll have that directors'meeting that was called, and wasn't held, three weeks ago."
"Oh, good Heavens!" protested the millionaire, "put it off--for God'ssake, put it off! It will be wasting time that may be worth a thousanddollars a minute!"
"You are wasting some of the thousand-dollar minutes right now," was thecool reply, and the engineer turned to his desk and squared himself asif he were going to work on a bunch of foremen's reports.
It was a crude little expedient, but it sufficed. Cortwright tramped tothe 'phone and cursed and swore at it until he had his man at the otherend of the wire. The man was the lawyer, as it appeared, and Cortwrightabused him spitefully.
"You've balled it--balled it beautifully!" he shouted. "Come over hereto Brouillard's office and bring Schermerhorn and the stock and thenotes and Jackson and the secretary's books and Massingale and yourinfernal self! Get a move, and get it quick! We stand to lose the wholeloaf because you had to butt in and sweep up the crumbs first!"
When the procession arrived, as it did in an incredibly short time,Brouillard laid down the law.
"We don't need these," he said curtly, indicating the two deputies whocame to bring David Massingale. And when they were gone: "Now,gentlemen, get to work and do business, and the less time you waste thebetter chance there will be for your bank salvage. Three requirements Imake: you will turn over the stock, putting Mr. Massingale in possessionof his mine, without encumbrance; you will cancel and surrender hisnotes to the bank; and you will give him a document, signed by all ofyou, acknowledging the payment in full of all claims, past or pending.While you are straightening things out, I'll ring up the yards and rallyyour guard."
Cortwright turned on the lawyer. "You hear what Brouillard says; fix it,and do it suddenly."
It was done almost before Brouillard had made Leshington, in charge atthe yards, understand what was wanted.
"Now a note to your man at the mine to make him let go without puttingus to the trouble of throwing him over the dump," said the engineer,when he had looked over the stock transfers, examined the cancellednotes, and read and witnessed the signatures on the receipt in full.
Cortwright nodded to the lawyer, and when Williams began to write againthe king of the promoters turned upon Brouillard with a savage sneer.
"Once more you've had your price," he snarled bitterly. "You and the oldman have bilked us out of what we spent on the mine. But we'll call itan even break if you'll hurry that gang of huskies."
"We'll call it an even break when it is one," retorted Brouillard; andafter he had gathered up the papers he took the New York check from hispocketbook, indorsed it, and handed it to Cortwright. "That is what wasspent out of the hundred thousand dollars you had Mr. Massingale chargedwith, as nearly as we can ascertain. Take it and take care of it; it'sreal money."
He had turned again to the telephone to hurry Leshington, had rung thecall, and was chuckling grimly over the collapse of the four men at theend of the mapping table as they fingered the slip of money paper.Suddenly it was borne in upon him that there was trouble of some sort atthe door--there were curses, a blow, a mad rush; then.... It was StephenMassingale who had fought his way past the door-guarding sentry andstood blinking at the group at the far end of the mapping board.
"You're the houn' dog I'm lookin' for!" he raged, singling outCortwright when the dazzle of the electrics permitted him to see."You'll rob an old man first, and then call him a thief and set thesheriff on him, will you----?"
Massingale's pistol was dropping to the firing level when Brouillardflung away the telephone ear-piece and got between. Afterward there wasa crash like a collision of worlds, a whirling, dancing medley ofcolored lights fading to gray and then to darkness, and the engineerwent down with the avenger of wrongs tightly locked in his arms.
* * * * *
After the period of darkness had passed and Brouillard opened his eyesagain upon the world of things as they are, he had a confused idea thathe had overslept shamefully and that the indulgence had given him a badheadache.
The next thought was that the headache was responsible for a set ofsingular hallucinations. His blanket bunk in the sleeping shack seemedto have transformed itself into a white bed with pillows and snowysheets, and the bed was drawn up beside an open window through which hecould look out, or seem to look out, upon a vast sea dimpling in thebreeze and reflecting the sunshine so brightly that it made his headachea darting agony.
When he turned his face to escape the blinding glare of the sun on thesea the hallucinations became soothingly comforting, not to sayecstatic. Some one was sitting on the edge of the bed; a cool hand waslaid on his forehead; and when he could again see straight he foundhimself looking up into a pair of violet eyes in which the tears weretrembling.
Brouillard got between.]
"You are Amy--and this is that other world you used to talk about, isn'tit?" he asked feebly.
The cool hand slipped from his forehead to his lips, as if to warn himthat he must not talk, and he went through the motions of kissing it.When it was withdrawn he broke the silent prohibition promptly.
"The way to keep me from talking is to do it all yourself; what happenedto me last night?"
She shook her head sorrowfully.
"The 'last night' you mean was three weeks ago. Stevie was trying toshoot Mr. Cortwright in your office and you got between them. Do youremember that?"
"Perfectly," he said. "But it still seems as if it were only last night.Where am I now?--not that it makes any difference, so long as I'm withyou."
"You are at home--our home; at the 'Little Susan.' Mr. Leshington hadthe men carry you up here, and Mr. Ford ran a special train all the wayfrom Denver with the doctors. Stevie's bullet struck you in the head,and--and we all thought you were going to die."
"I'm not," he asserted, in feebly desperate determination. "I'm going tolive and get to work and earn a hundred thousand dollars, so I can say:'Come, little girl----'"
Again the restraining hand was laid upon his lips, and again he wentthrough the motions of kissing it.
"You _mustn't_ talk!" she insisted. "You said you'd let me." And when hemade the sign of acquiescence, she went on: "At first the doctorswouldn't give us any hope at all; they said you might live, butyou'd--you'd never--never remember--never have your reason again. Butyesterday----"
"Please!" he pleaded. "That's more than enough about me. I want to knowwhat happened."
"That night, you mean? All the things that you had planned for. Fathergot the mine back, and Mr. Leshington and the others got the riotquelled after about half of the city was burned."
"But Cortwright and Schermerhorn--I promised them----"
"Mr. Leshington carried out your promise and helped them get the moneyout of the bank vault before the mob sacked the Niquoia Building anddynamited it. But at the hotel they were arrested on the order of thebank examiner, and everything was taken away from them. We haven'theard yet what is going to be done with them."
"And Gomorrah?" he asked.
She slipped an arm under his shoulders and raised him so he could lookout upon the mountain-girt sea dimpling under the morning breeze.
"There is where it was," she said soberly, "where it was, and is not,and never will be again, thank God! Mr. Leshington wai
ted untileverybody had escaped, and then he shut the waste-way gates."
Brouillard sank back upon the pillows of comfort and closed his eyes.
"Then it's all up to me and the hundred thousand," he whispered. "AndI'll get it ... honestly, this time."
The violet eyes were smiling when he looked into them again.
"Is she--the one incomparable she--worth it, Victor?"
"Her price is above rubies, as I told you once a long time ago."
"You wouldn't let pride--a false pride--stand in the way of herhappiness?"
"I haven't any; her love has made me very humble and--and good, Amy,dear. Don't laugh: it's the only word; I'm just hungering and thirstingafter righteousness enough to be half-way worthy of her."
"Then I'll tell you something else that has happened. Father and Steviehave reorganized the 'Little Susan' Mining Company, dividing the stockinto four equal parts--one for each of us. You must take your share,Victor. It will break father's heart if you don't. He says you got itback for him after it was hopelessly lost, and that is true."
He had closed his eyes again, and what he said seemed totallyirrelevant.
"'And after the man had climbed the fourth mountain through all itsseven stages, he saw a bright light, and it blinded him so that hestumbled and fell, and a great darkness rose up to make the light seemfar beyond his reach. Then the light came near, and he saw that it wasLove, and that the darkness was in his own soul.' ... Kiss me, Amy,girl, and then go and tell your father that he is a simple-hearted oldspendthrift, and I love him. And if you could wire Castner, and tell himto bring a license along----"
"O boy--foolish boy!" she said. "Wait: when you are well and strongagain...."
But she did not make him wait for the first of the askings; and after ahealing silence had fallen to show the needlessness of speech betweenthose who have come through darkness into light, he fell asleep again,perhaps to dream that the quieting hand upon his forehead was the touchof Love, angel of the bright and shining way, summoning him to rise upand go forward as a soul set free to meet the dawning day of fruition.
THE END
* * * * *
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