V
"FIRE IN THE ROCK!"
Bromley was on hand to meet his new chief when Ballard dropped from thestep of the halted engine. A few years older, and browned to a tendermahogany by the sun of the altitudes and the winds of the desert, he wasstill the Bromley of Ballard's college memories: compact, alert,boyishly smiling, neat, and well-groomed. With Anglo-Saxon ancestry onboth sides, the meeting could not be demonstrative.
"Same little old 'Beau Bromley,'" was Ballard's greeting to go with thehearty hand-grip; and Bromley's reply was in keeping. After which theyclimbed the slope to the mesa and the headquarters office in comradelysilence, not because there was nothing to be said, but because thegreater part of it would keep.
Having picked up the engine "special" with his field-glass as it camedown the final zigzag in the descent from the pass, Bromley had supperwaiting in the adobe-walled shack which served as the engineers'quarters; and until the pipes were lighted after the meal there waslittle talk save of the golden past. But when the camp cook had clearedthe table, Ballard reluctantly closed the book of reminiscence and gavethe business affair its due.
"How are you coming on with the work, Loudon?" he asked. "Don't need achief, do you?"
"Don't you believe it!" said the substitute, with such heartfeltemphasis that Ballard smiled. "I'm telling you right now, Breckenridge,I never was so glad to shift a responsibility since I was born. Anothermonth of it alone would have turned me gray."
"And yet, in my hearing, people are always saying that you are nothingless than a genius when it comes to handling workingmen. Isn't it so?"
"Oh, that part of it is all right. It's the hoodoo that is making an oldman of me before my time."
"The what?"
Bromley moved uneasily in his chair, and Ballard could have sworn thathe gave a quick glance into the dark corners of the room before he said:"I'm giving you the men's name for it. But with or without a name, ithangs over this job like the shadow of a devil-bat's wings. The men sitaround and smoke and talk about it till bedtime, and the next day somefellow makes a bad hitch on a stone, or a team runs away, or a blasthangs fire in the quarry, and we have a dead man for supper.Breckenridge, it is simply _hell_!"
Ballard shook his head incredulously.
"You've let a few ill-natured coincidences rattle you," was his comment."What is it? Or, rather, what is at the bottom of it?"
"I don't know; nobody knows. The 'coincidences,' as you call them, werehere when I came; handed down from Braithwaite's drowning, I suppose.Then Sanderson got tangled up with Manuel's woman--as clear a case ofsuperinduced insanity as ever existed--and in less than two months heand Manuel jumped in with Winchesters, and poor Billy passed out. Thatgot on everybody's nerves, of course; and then Macpherson came. You knowwhat he was--a hard-headed, sarcastic old Scotchman, with the bitteresttongue that was ever hung in the middle and adjusted to wag both ways.He tried ridicule; and when that didn't stop the crazy happenings, hetook to bullyragging. The day the derrick fell on him he was swearinghorribly at the hoister engineer; and he died with an oath in hismouth."
The Kentuckian sat back in his chair with his hands clasped behind hishead.
"Let me get one thing straight before you go on. Mr. Pelham told me of ascrap between the company and an old fellow up here who claimseverything in sight. Has this emotional insanity you are talking aboutanything to do with the old cattle king's objection to being syndicatedout of existence?"
"No; only incidentally in Sanderson's affair--which, after all, was apurely personal quarrel between two men over a woman. And I wouldn'tcare to say that Manuel was wholly to blame in that."
"Who is this Manuel?" queried Ballard.
"Oh, I thought you knew. He is the colonel's manager and ranch foreman.He is a Mexican and an all-round scoundrel, with one lonesome goodquality--absolute and unimpeachable loyalty to his master. The colonelturns the entire business of the cattle raising and selling over to him;doesn't go near the ranch once a month himself."
"'The colonel,'" repeated Ballard. "You call him 'the colonel,' and Mr.Pelham calls him the 'King of Arcadia.' I assume that he has a name,like other men?"
"Sure!" said Bromley. "Hadn't you heard it? It's Craigmiles."
"What!" exclaimed Ballard, holding the match with which he was about torelight his pipe until the flame crept up and scorched his fingers.
"That's it--Craigmiles; Colonel Adam Craigmiles--the King of Arcadia.Didn't Mr. Pelham tell you----"
"Hold on a minute," Ballard cut in; and he got out of his chair to paceback and forth on his side of the table while he was gathering up thepieces scattered broadcast by this explosive petard of a name.
At first he saw only the clearing up of the little mysteries shroudingMiss Elsa's suddenly changed plans for the summer; how they wereinstantly resolved into the commonplace and the obvious. She had merelydecided to come home and play hostess to her father's guests. And sinceshe knew about the war for the possession of Arcadia, and would quitenaturally be sorry to have her friend pitted against her father, itseemed unnecessary to look further for the origin of Lassley's curiouslyworded telegram. "Lassley's," Ballard called it; but if Lassley hadsigned it, it was fairly certain now that Miss Craigmiles had dictatedit.
Ballard thought her use of the fatalities as an argument in the warningmessage was a purely feminine touch. None the less he held her as farabove the influences of the superstitions as he held himself, and it wasa deeper and more reflective second thought that turned a fresh leaf inthe book of mysteries.
Was it possible that the three violent deaths were not merecoincidences, after all? And, admitting design, could it be remotelyconceivable that Adam Craigmiles's daughter was implicated, even to theguiltless degree of suspecting it? Ballard stopped short in his pacingsentry beat and began to investigate, not without certain misgivings.
"Loudon, what manner of man is this Colonel Craigmiles?"
Bromley's reply was characteristic. "The finest ever--type of theAmerican country gentleman; suave, courteous, a little inclined to begrandiloquent; does the paternal with you till you catch yourself on theedge of saying 'sir' to him; and has the biggest, deepest, sweetestvoice that ever drawled the Southern 'r.'"
"Humph! That isn't exactly the portrait of a fire-eater."
"Don't you make any mistake. I've described the man you'll meetsocially. On the other side, he's a fighter from away back; the kind ofman who makes no account of the odds against him, and who doesn't knowwhen he is licked. He has told us openly and repeatedly that he will dous up if we swamp his house and mine; that he will make it pinch us forthe entire value of our investment in the dam. I believe he'll do it,too; but President Pelham won't back down an inch. So there youare--irresistible moving body; immovable fixed body: the collisionimminent; and we poor devils in between."
Ballard drew back his chair and sat down again. "You are miles beyond mydepth now," he asserted. "I had less than an hour with Mr. Pelham inDenver, and what he didn't tell me would make a good-sized library.Begin at the front, and let me have the story of this feud between thecompany and Colonel Craigmiles."
Again Bromley said: "I supposed, of course, that you knew all aboutit"--after which he supplied the missing details.
"It was Braithwaite who was primarily to blame. When the company's planswere made public, the colonel did not oppose them, though he knew thatthe irrigation scheme spelled death to the cattle industry. The fightbegan when Braithwaite located the dam here at Elbow Canyon in thefoothill hogback. There is a better site farther down the river; asecond depression where an earthwork dike might have taken the place ofall this costly rockwork."
"I saw it as we came up this evening."
"Yes. Well, the colonel argued for the lower site; offered to donatethree or four homesteads in it which he had taken up through hisemployees; offered further to take stock in the company; but Braithwaitewas pig-headed about it. He had been a Government man, and was a crankon permanent structures and things monumental;
wherefore he wasdetermined on building masonry. He ignored the colonel, reported on thepresent site, and the work was begun."
"Go on," said Ballard.
"Naturally, the colonel took this as a flat declaration of war. He has amagnificent country house in the upper valley, which must have cost him,at this distance from a base of supplies, a round half-million or more.When we fill our reservoir, this house will stand on an island of lessthan a half-dozen acres in extent, with its orchards, lawns, andornamental grounds all under water. Which the same is tough."
Ballard was Elsa Craigmiles's lover, and he agreed in a single forcibleexpletive. Bromley acquiesced in the expletive, and went on.
"The colonel refused to sell his country-house holding, as a matter ofcourse; and the company decided to take chances on the suit for damageswhich will naturally follow the flooding of the property. Meanwhile,Braithwaite had organised his camp, and the foundations were going in. Amonth or so later, he and the colonel had a personal collision, and,although Craigmiles was old enough to be his father, Braithwaite struckhim. There was blood on the moon, right there and then, as you'dimagine. The colonel was unarmed, and he went home to get a gun.Braithwaite, who was always a cold-blooded brute, got out hisfishing-tackle and sauntered off down the river to catch a mess oftrout. He never came back alive."
"Good heavens! But the colonel couldn't have had any hand inBraithwaite's drowning!" Ballard burst out, thinking altogether ofColonel Craigmiles's daughter.
"Oh, no. At the time of the accident, the colonel was back here at thecamp, looking high and low for Braithwaite with fire in his eye. Theysay he went crazy mad with disappointment when he found that the riverhad robbed him of his right to kill the man who had struck him."
Ballard was silent for a time. Then he said: "You spoke of a mine thatwould also be flooded by our reservoir. What about that?"
"That came in after Braithwaite's death and Sanderson's appointment aschief engineer. When Braithwaite made his location here, there was anold prospect tunnel in the hill across the canyon. It was boarded up andapparently abandoned, and no one seemed to know who owned it. Later onit transpired that the colonel was the owner, and that the mining claim,which was properly patented and secured, actually covers the ground uponwhich our dam stands. While Sanderson was busy brewing trouble forhimself with Manuel, the colonel put three Mexicans at work in thetunnel; and they have been digging away there ever since."
"Gold?" asked Ballard.
Bromley laughed quietly.
"Maybe you can find out--nobody else has been able to. But it isn'tgold; it must be something infinitely more valuable. The tunnel isfortified like a fortress, and one or another of the Mexicans is onguard day and night. The mouth of the tunnel is lower than the proposedlevel of the dam, and the colonel threatens all kinds of things, tellingus frankly that it will break the Arcadia Company financially when weflood that mine. I have heard him tell Mr. Pelham to his face that thewater should never flow over any dam the company might build here; thathe would stick at nothing to defend his property. Mr. Pelham says allthis is only bluff; that the mine is worthless. But the fact remainsthat the colonel is immensely rich--and is apparently growing richer."
"Has nobody ever seen the inside of this Golconda of a mine?" queriedBallard.
"Nobody from our side of the fence. As I've said, it is guarded like thesultan's seraglio; and the Mexicans might as well be deaf and dumb forall you can get out of them. Macpherson, who was loyal to the company,first, last, and all the time, had an assay made from some of the stuffspilled out on the dump; but there was nothing doing, so far as the bestanalytical chemist in Denver could find out."
For the first time since the strenuous day of plan-changing in Boston,Ballard was almost sorry he had given up the Cuban undertaking.
"It's a beautiful tangle!" he snapped, thinking, one would say, of thebreach that must be opened between the company's chief engineer and thedaughter of the militant old cattle king. Then he changed the subjectabruptly.
"What do you know about the colonel's house-hold, Loudon?"
"All there is to know, I guess. He lives in state in his big countrymansion that looks like a World's Fair Forest Products Exhibit on theoutside, and is fitted and furnished regardless of expense in itsinteriors. He is a widower with one daughter--who comes and goes as shepleases--and a sister-in-law who is the dearest, finest piece of fragileold china you ever read about."
"You've been in the country house, then?"
"Oh, yes. The colonel hasn't made it a personal fight on the workingforce since Braithwaite's time."
"Perhaps you have met Miss--er--the daughter who comes and goes?"
"Sure I have! If you'll promise not to discipline me for hobnobbing withthe enemy, I'll confess that I've even played duets with her. Shediscovered my weakness for music when she was home last summer."
"Do you happen to know where she is now?"
"On her way to Europe, I believe. At least, that is what MissCauffrey--she's the fragile-china aunt--was telling me."
"I think not," said Ballard, after a pause. "I think she changed hermind and decided to spend the summer at home. When we stopped atAckerman's to take water this evening, I saw three loaded buckboardsdriving in this direction."
"That doesn't prove anything," asserted Bromley. "The old colonel has ahouse-party every little while. He's no anchorite, if he does live inthe desert."
Ballard was musing again. "Adam Craigmiles," he said, thoughtfully. "Iwonder what there is in that name to set some sort of bee buzzing in myhead. If I believed in transmigration, I should say that I had knownthat name, and known it well, in some other existence."
"Oh, I don't know," said Bromley. "It's not such an unusual name."
"No; if it were, I might trace it. How long did you say the colonel hadlived in Arcadia?"
"I didn't say. But it must be something over twenty years. Miss Elsa wasborn here."
"And the family is Southern--from what section?"
"I don't know that--Virginia, perhaps, measuring by the colonel'saccent, pride, hot-headedness, and reckless hospitality."
The clue, if any there were, appeared to be lost; and again Ballardsmoked on in silence. When the pipe burned out he refilled it, and atthe match-striking instant a sing-song cry of "Fire in the rock!"floated down from the hill crags above the adobe, and the jar of anear-by explosion shook the air and rattled the windows.
"What was that?" he queried.
"It's our quarry gang getting out stone," was Bromley's reply. "We wererunning short of headers for the tie courses, and I put on anight-shift."
"Whereabouts is your quarry?"
"Just around the shoulder of the hill, and a hundred feet, or such amatter, above us. It is far enough to be out of range."
A second explosion punctuated the explanation. Then there was a thirdand still heavier shock, a rattling of pebbles on the sheet-iron roof ofthe adobe, and a scant half-second later a fragment of stone the size ofa man's head crashed through roof and ceiling and made kindling-wood ofthe light pine table at which the two men were sitting. Ballard sprangto his feet, and said something under his breath; but Bromley sat still,with a faint yellow tint discolouring the sunburn on his face.
"Which brings us back to our starting-point--the hoodoo," he saidquietly. "To-morrow morning, when you go around the hill and see wherethat stone came from, you'll say that it was a sheer impossibility. Yetthe impossible thing has happened. It is reaching for you now,Breckenridge; and a foot or two farther that way would have--" Hestopped, swallowed hard, and rose unsteadily. "For God's sake, old man,throw up this cursed job and get out of here, while you can do italive!"
"Not much!" said the new chief contemptuously. And then he asked whichof the two bunks in the adjoining sleeping-room was his.
The King of Arcadia Page 5