IX
THE BRINK OF HAZARD
The summer night was perfect, and the after-dinner gathering under thegreat portico became rather a dispersal. The company fell apart intocouples and groups when the coffee was served; and while Miss Craigmilesand the playwright were still fraying the worn threads of the dramaticunities, Ballard consoled himself with the older of the Cantrell girls,talking commonplace nothings until his heart ached.
Later on, when young Bigelow had relieved him, and he had given up allhope of breaking into the dramatic duet, he rose to go and make hisparting acknowledgments to Miss Cauffrey and the colonel. It was at thatmoment that Miss Elsa confronted him.
"You are not leaving?" she said. "The evening is still young--even forcountry folk."
"Measuring by the hours I've been neglected, the evening is old, veryold," he retorted reproachfully.
"Which is another way of saying that we have bored you until you aresleepy?" she countered. "But you mustn't go yet--I want to talk to you."And she wheeled a great wicker lounging-chair into a quiet corner, andbeat up the pillows in a near-by hammock, and bade him smoke his pipe ifhe preferred it to the Castle 'Cadia cigars.
"I don't care to smoke anything if you will stay and talk to me," hesaid, love quickly blotting out the disappointments foregone.
"For this one time you may have both--your pipe and me. Are you obligedto go back to your camp to-night?"
"Yes, indeed. I ran away, as it was. Bromley will have it in for me fordodging him this way."
"Is Mr. Bromley your boss?"
"He is something much better--he is my friend."
Her hammock was swung diagonally across the quiet corner, and shearranged her pillows so that the shadow of a spreading potted palm camebetween her eyes and the nearest electric globe.
"Am I not your friend, too?" she asked.
Jerry Blacklock and the younger Miss Cantrell were pacing a slow sentrymarch up and down the open space in front of the lounging-chairs; andBallard waited until they had made the turn and were safely out ofear-shot before he said: "There are times when I have to admit it,reluctantly."
"How ridiculous!" she scoffed. "What is finer than true friendship?"
"Love," he said simply.
"Cousin Janet will hear you," she warned. Then she mocked him, as washer custom. "Does that mean that you would like to have me tell youabout Mr. Wingfield?"
He played trumps again.
"Yes. When is it to be?"
"How crudely elemental you are to-night! Suppose you ask him?"
"He hasn't given me the right."
"Oh. And I have?"
"You are trying to give it to me, aren't you?"
She was swinging gently in the hammock, one daintily booted foottouching the floor.
"You are so painfully direct at times," she complained. "It's like acold shower-bath; invigorating, but shivery. Do you think Mr. Wingfieldreally cares anything for me? I don't. I think he regards me merely asso much literary material. He lives from moment to moment in the hope ofdiscovering 'situations.'"
"Well,"--assentingly. "I am sure he has chosen a most promisingsubject--and surroundings. The kingdom of Arcadia reeks with dramaticpossibilities, I should say."
Her face was still in the shadow of the branching palm, but the changedtone betrayed her changed mood.
"I have often accused you of having no insight--no intuition," she saidmusingly. "Yet you have a way of groping blindly to the very heart ofthings. How could you know that it has come to be the chief object of mylife to keep Mr. Wingfield from becoming interested in what youflippantly call 'the dramatic possibilities'?"
"I didn't know it," he returned.
"Of course you didn't. Yet it is true. It is one of the reasons why Igave up going with the Herbert Lassleys after my passage was actuallybooked on the _Carania_. Cousin Janet's party was made up. Dosia andJerry Blacklock came down to the steamer to see us off. Dosia told methat Mr. Wingfield was included. You have often said that I have thecourage of a man--I hadn't, then. I was horribly afraid."
"Of what?" he queried.
"Of many things. You would not understand if I should try to explainthem."
"I do understand," he hastened to say. "But you have nothing to fear.Castle 'Cadia will merely gain an ally when Wingfield hears the story ofthe little war. Besides, I was not including your father's controversywith the Arcadia Company in the dramatic material; I was thinking moreparticularly of the curious and unaccountable happenings that arecontinually occurring on the work--the accidents."
"There is no connection between the two--in your mind?" she asked. Shewas looking away from him, and he could not see her face. But thequestion was eager, almost pathetically eager.
"Assuredly not," he denied promptly. "Otherwise----"
"Otherwise you wouldn't be here to-night as my father's guest, you wouldsay. But others are not as charitable. Mr. Macpherson was one of them.He charged all the trouble to us, though he could prove nothing. He saidthat if all the circumstances were made public--" She faced him quickly,and he saw that the beautiful eyes were full of trouble. "Can't you seewhat would happen--what is likely to happen if Mr. Wingfield sees fit tomake literary material out of all these mysteries?"
The Kentuckian nodded. "The unthinking, newspaper-reading public wouldprobably make one morsel of the accidents and your father's knownantagonism to the company. But Wingfield would be something less than aman and a lover if he could bring himself to the point of makingliterary capital out of anything that might remotely involve you or yourfather."
She shook her head doubtfully.
"You don't understand the artistic temperament. It's a passion. I onceheard Mr. Wingfield say that a true artist would make copy out of hisgrandmother."
Ballard scowled. It was quite credible that the Lester Wingfields werelost to all sense of the common decencies, but that Elsa Craigmilesshould be in love with the sheik of the caddish tribe was quite beyondbelief.
"I'll choke him off for you," he said; and his tone took its colour fromthe contemptuous under-thought. "But I'm afraid I've already made a messof it. To tell the truth, I suggested to Miss Van Bryck at dinner thatour camp might be a good hunting-ground for Wingfield."
"_You said that to Dosia?_" There was something like suppressed horrorin the low-spoken query.
"Not knowing any better, I did. She was speaking of Wingfield, and ofthe literary barrenness of house-parties in general. I mentioned thecamp as an alternative--told her to bring him down, and I'd--Goodheavens! what have I done?"
Even in the softened light of the electric globes he saw that her facehad become a pallid mask of terror; that she was swaying in the hammock.He was beside her instantly; and when she hid her face in her hands, hisarm went about her for her comforting--this, though Wingfield waschatting amiably with Mrs. Van Bryck no more than three chairs away.
"Don't!" he begged. "I'll get out of it some way--lie out of it, fightout of it, if needful. I didn't know it meant anything to you. If Ihad--Elsa, dear, I love you; you've known it from the first. You canmake believe with other men as you please, but in the end I shall claimyou. Now tell me what it is that you want me to do."
Impulsively she caught at the caressing hand on her shoulder, kissed it,and pushed him away with resolute strength.
"You must never forget yourself again, dear friend--or make me forget,"she said steadily. "And you must help me as you can. There istrouble--deeper trouble than you know or suspect. I tried to keep youout of it--away from it; and now you are here in Arcadia, to make itworse, infinitely worse. You have seen me laugh and talk with theothers, playing the part of the woman you know. Yet there is never awaking moment when the burden of anxiety is lifted."
He mistook her meaning.
"You needn't be anxious about Wingfield's material hunt," he interposed."If Miss Dosia takes him to the camp, I'll see to it that he doesn'thear any of the ghost stories."
"That is only one of the anxieties," she went on hurr
iedly. "Thegreatest of them is--for you."
"For me? Because----"
"Because your way to Arcadia lay over three graves. That means nothingto you--does it also mean nothing that your life was imperilled withinan hour of your arrival at your camp?"
He drew the big chair nearer to the hammock and sat down again.
"Now you are letting Bromley's imagination run away with yours. Thatrock came from our quarry. There was a night gang getting out stone forthe dam."
She laid her hand softly on his knee.
"Do you want to know how much I trust you? That stone was thrown by aman who was standing upon the high bluff back of your headquarters. Hethought you were alone in the office, and he meant to kill you. Don'task me who it was, or how I know--I _do_ know."
Ballard started involuntarily. It was not in human nature to take suchan announcement calmly.
"Do you mean to say that I was coolly ambushed before I could----"
She silenced him with a quick little gesture. Blacklock and MissCantrell were still pacing their sentry beat, and the major's "H'm--ha!"rose in irascible contradiction above the hum of voices.
"I have said all that I dare to say; more than I should have said if youwere not so rashly determined to make light of things you do notunderstand," she rejoined evenly.
"They are things which I should understand--which I must understand if Iam to deal intelligently with them," he insisted. "I have been callingthem one part accident and three parts superstition or imagination. Butif there is design----"
Again she stopped him with the imperative little gesture.
"I did not say there was design," she denied.
It was an _impasse_, and the silence which followed emphasised it. Whenhe rose to take his leave, love prompted an offer of service, and hemade it.
"I cannot help believing that you are mistaken," he qualified. "But Irespect your anxiety so much that I would willingly share it if I could.What do you want me to do?"
She turned to look away down the maple-shadowed avenue and her answerhad tears in it.
"I want you to be watchful--always watchful. I wish you to believe thatyour life is in peril, and to act accordingly. And, lastly, I beg you tohelp me to keep Mr. Wingfield away from Elbow Canyon."
"I shall be heedful," he promised. "And if Mr. Wingfield comesmaterial-hunting, I shall be as inhospitable as possible. May I comeagain to Castle 'Cadia?"
The invitation was given instantly, almost eagerly.
"Yes; come as often as you can spare the time. Must you go now? Shall Ihave Otto bring the car and drive you around to your camp?"
Ballard promptly refused to put the chauffeur to the trouble. It wasonly a little more than a mile in the direct line from the house on theknoll to the point where the river broke through the foothill hogback,and the night was fine and starlit. After the day of hard riding heshould enjoy the walk.
Elsa did not go with him when he went to say good-night to Miss Cauffreyand to his host. He left her sitting in the hammock, and found her stillthere a few minutes later when he came back to say that he must make hisacknowledgments to her father through her. "I can't find him, and no oneseems to know where he is," he explained.
She rose quickly and went to the end of the portico to look down asecond tree-shadowed avenue skirting the mountainward slope of theknoll.
"He must have gone to the laboratory; the lights are on," she said; andthen with a smile that thrilled him ecstatically: "You see what yourfooting is to be at Castle 'Cadia. Father will not make company of you;he expects you to come and go as one of us."
With this heart-warming word for his leave-taking Ballard sought out thepath to which she directed him and swung off down the hill to find thetrail, half bridle-path and half waggon road, which led by way of theriver's windings to the outlet canyon and the camp on the outer mesa.
When he was but a little distance from the house he heard the _pad pad_of soft footfalls behind him, and presently a great dog of the St.Bernard breed overtook him and walked sedately at his side. Ballardloved a good dog only less than he loved a good horse, and he stopped topat the St. Bernard, talking to it as he might have talked to a humanbeing.
Afterward, when he went on, the dog kept even pace with him, and wouldnot go back, though Ballard tried to send him, coaxing first and thencommanding. To the blandishments the big retriever made his return inkind, wagging his tail and thrusting his huge head between Ballard'sknees in token of affection and loyal fealty. To the commands he wasentirely deaf, and when Ballard desisted, the dog took his place at oneside and one step in advance, as if half impatient at his temporarymaster's waste of time.
At the foot-bridge crossing the river the dog ran ahead and came backagain, much as if he were a scout pioneering the way; and at Ballard's"Good dog! Fine old fellow!" he padded along with still graver dignity,once more catching the step in advance and looking neither to right norleft.
At another time Ballard might have wondered why the great St. Bernard,most sagacious of his tribe, should thus attach himself to a strangerand refuse to be shaken off. But at the moment the young man had aheartful of other and more insistent queryings. Gained ground with theloved one is always the lover's most heady cup of intoxication; but thelees at the bottom of the present cup were sharply tonic, if not bitter.
What was the mystery so evidently enshrouding the tragedies at ElbowCanyon? That they were tragedies rather than accidents there seemed nolonger any reasonable doubt. But with the doubt removed the mysterycloud grew instantly thicker and more impenetrable. If the tragedieswere growing out of the fight for the possession of Arcadia Park, whatmanner of man could Colonel Craigmiles be to play the kindly, courteoushost at one moment and the backer and instigator of murderers at thenext? And if the charge against the colonel be allowed to stand, itimmediately dragged in a sequent which was clearly inadmissible: theunavoidable inference being that Elsa Craigmiles was in no uncertainsense her father's accessory.
Ballard was a man and a lover; and his first definition of love wasunquestioning loyalty. He was prepared to doubt the evidence of hissenses, if need be, but not the perfections of the ideal he had set upin the inner chamber of his heart, naming it Elsa Craigmiles.
These communings and queryings, leading always into the samemetaphysical labyrinth, brought the young engineer far on the down-rivertrail; were still with him when the trail narrowed to a steep one-manpath and began to climb the hogback, with one side buttressed by a lowcliff and the other falling sheer into the Boiling Water on the left. Onthis narrow ledge the dog went soberly ahead; and at one of the turns inthe path Ballard came upon him standing solidly across the way andeffectually blocking it.
"What is it, old boy?" was the man's query; and the dog's answer was awag of the tail and a low whine. "Go on, old fellow," said Ballard; butthe big St. Bernard merely braced himself and whined again. It was quitedark on the high ledge, a fringe of scrub pines on the upper side of thecutting blotting out a fair half of the starlight. Ballard struck amatch and looked beyond the dog; looked and drew back with a startledexclamation. Where the continuation of the path should have been therewas a gaping chasm pitching steeply down into the Boiling Water.
More lighted matches served to show the extent of the hazard and thetrap-like peril of it. A considerable section of the path had slid awayin a land- or rock-slide, and Ballard saw how he might easily havewalked into the gulf if the dog had not stopped on the brink of it.
"I owe you one, good old boy," he said, stooping to pat the words out onthe St. Bernard's head. "I'll pay it when I can; to you, to yourmistress, or possibly even to your master. Come on, old fellow, andwe'll find another way with less risk in it," and he turned back toclimb over the mesa hill under the stone quarries, approaching theheadquarters camp from the rear.
When the hill was surmounted and the electric mast lights of the camplay below, the great dog stopped, sniffing the air suspiciously.
"Don't like the looks of it, do you?" said Ballard. "Wel
l, I guess you'dbetter go back home. It isn't a very comfortable place down there forlittle dogs--or big ones. Good-night, old fellow." And, quite as if heunderstood, the St. Bernard faced about and trotted away toward Castle'Cadia.
There was a light in the adobe shack when Ballard descended the hill,and he found Bromley sitting up for him. The first assistant engineerwas killing time by working on the current estimate for the quarrysubcontractor, and he looked up quizzically when his chief came in.
"Been bearding the lion in his den, have you?" he said, cheerfully."That's right; there's nothing like being neighbourly, even with ourfriend the enemy. Didn't you find him all the things I said he was--andthen some?"
"Yes," returned Ballard, gravely. Then, abruptly: "Loudon, who uses thepath that goes up on our side of the canyon and over into the Castle'Cadia valley?"
"Who?--why, anybody having occasion to. It's the easiest way to reachthe wing dam that Sanderson built at the canyon inlet to turn thecurrent against the right bank. Fitzpatrick sends a man over now andthen to clear the driftwood from the dam."
"Anybody been over to-day?"
"No."
"How about the cow-puncher--Grigsby--who brought my horse over and gotmy bag?"
"He was riding, and he came and went by way of our bridge below the dam.You couldn't ride a horse over that hill path."
"You certainly could not," said Ballard grimly. "There is a chunk aboutthe size of this shack gone out of it--dropped into the river, Isuppose."
Bromley was frowning reflectively.
"More accidents?" he suggested.
"One more--apparently."
Bromley jumped up, sudden realization grappling him.
"Why, Breckenridge!--you've just come over that path--alone, and in thedark!"
"Part way over it, and in the dark, yes; but not alone, luckily. TheCraigmiles's dog--the big St. Bernard--was with me, and he stopped onthe edge of the break. Otherwise I might have walked into it--mostprobably should have walked into it."
Bromley began to tramp the floor with his hands in his pockets.
"I can't remember," he said; and again, "I can't remember. I was overthere yesterday, or the day before. It was all right then. It was a goodtrail. Why, Breckenridge"--with sudden emphasis--"it would have taken acharge of dynamite to blow it down!"
Ballard dropped lazily into a chair and locked his hands at the back ofhis head. "And you say that the hoodoo hasn't got around to using highexplosives yet, eh? By the way, have there been any more visitationssince I went out on the line last Tuesday?"
Bromley was shaking his head in the negative when the door opened with ajerk and Bessinger, the telegraph operator whose wire was in therailroad yard office, tumbled in, white faced.
"Hoskins and the Two!" he gasped. "They're piled up under a materialtrain three miles down the track! Fitzpatrick is turning out a wreckingcrew from the bunk shanties, and he sent me up to call you!"
Bromley's quick glance aside for Ballard was acutely significant.
"I guess I'd better change that 'No' of mine to a qualified 'Yes,'" hecorrected. "The visitation seems to have come." Then to Bessinger: "Getyour breath, Billy, and then chase back to Fitzpatrick. Tell him we'llbe with him as soon as Mr. Ballard can change his clothes."
The King of Arcadia Page 9