The City of Numbered Days

by Francis Lynde

  THE CITY OF NUMBERED DAYS

  by

  FRANCIS LYNDE

  Illustrated by Arthur E. Becher

  Charles Scribner's SonsNew York 1914

  Copyright, 1914, byCharles Scribner's Sons

  Published August, 1914

  TO MY WIFE

  "What would I do? A number of things." _Page 91_]

  CONTENTS

  I. THE HEPTADERM 1

  II. J. WESLEY CROESUS 19

  III. SANDS OF PACTOLUS 48

  IV. A FIRE OF LITTLE STICKS 66

  V. SYMPTOMATIC 79

  VI. MIRAPOLIS 104

  VII. THE SPEEDWAY 119

  VIII. TABLE STAKES 130

  IX. BEDLAM 145

  X. EPOCHAL 151

  XI. THE FEAST OF HURRAHS 178

  XII. QUICKSANDS 196

  XIII. FLOOD TIDE 208

  XIV. THE ABYSS 232

  XV. THE SETTING OF THE EBB 244

  XVI. THE MAN ON THE BANK 263

  XVII. THE CIRCEAN CUP 273

  XVIII. LOVE'S CRUCIBLE 284

  XIX. THE SUNSET GUN 301

  XX. THE TERROR 322

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  "What would I do? A number of things" _Frontispiece_

  Brouillard had to look twice before he could attempt to classify her, and even then she baffled him 46

  "It's all gone, little girl; it's all gone!" 242

  Brouillard got between 342

  The City of Numbered Days

  I

  The Heptaderm

  It was not characteristic of Brouillard--the Brouillard Grislow knewbest--that he should suffer the purely technical talk of dams andreservoirs, bed-rock anchorages, and the latest word in concretestructural processes to languish and should drift into personalreminiscences over their first evening camp-fire in the Niquoia.

  Because the personalities were gratefully varying the monotonies, andalso because he had a jocose respect for the unusual, Grislow wascareful not to discourage the drift. There had been a benumbing surfeitof the technical talk dating from the day and hour when the orders hadcome from Washington giving Brouillard his step up and directing him toadvance with his squad of Reclamation-Service pioneers upon the new workin the western Timanyonis. But, apart from this, the reminiscences hadan experimental value. Grislow's one unamiable leaning manifesteditself in a zest for cleverly turning the hidden facets of the humanpolygon up to the light; and if the facets chose to turn themselves oftheir own accord, as in Brouillard's case, why, so much the better.

  "As you were saying?" he prompted, stretching himself luxuriously uponthe fragrant banking of freshly clipped spruce tips, with his feet tothe blaze and his hands locked under his head. He felt that Brouillardwas merely responding to the subtle influences of time, place, andencompassments and took no shame for being an analytical rather than asympathetic listener. The hundred-odd men of the pioneer party, relaxingafter the day-long march over the mountains, were smoking, yarning, orplaying cards around the dozen or more camp-fires. The evening, with ahalf-grown moon silvering the inverted bowl of a firmament which seemedto shut down, lid-like, upon the mountain rim of the high-walled valley,was witchingly enchanting; and, to add the final touch, there wascomradely isolation, Anson, Griffith, and Leshington, the three othermembers of the engineering staff, having gone to burn candles in theheadquarters tent over blue-prints and field-notes.

  "I was saying that the present-day world slant is sanely skeptical--asit should be," Brouillard went on at the end of the thoughtful pause."Being modern and reasonably sophisticated, we can smile at the signsand omens of the ages that had to get along without laboratories andtesting plants. Just the same, every man has his little atavisticstreak, if you can hit upon it. For example, you may throw flip-flapsand call it rank superstition if you like, but I have neverbeen able to get rid of the notion that birthdays are like theequinoxes--turning-points in the small, self-centred system which wecall life."

  "Poodle-dogs!" snorted the one whose attitude was both jocose andanalytical, stuffing more of the spruce branches under his head to keepthe pipe ashes from falling into his eyes.

  "I know; being my peculiar weakness instead of your own, it's tommy-rotto you," Brouillard rejoined good-naturedly. "As I said a few minutesago, I am only burbling to hear the sound of my own voice. But thebottoming fact remains. You give a screw twist to a child's mind, and ifthe mind of the man doesn't exhibit the same helical curve----"

  "Suppose you climb down out of the high-browed altitudes and give it aplain, every-day name?" grumbled the staff authority on watersheds.

  "It's casting pearls before swine, but you're a pretty good sort ofswine, Grizzy. If you'll promise to keep your feet out of the trough,I'll tell you. Away back in the porringer period, in which we are alllike the pin-feathered dicky-birds, open-mouthed for anything anybodymay drop into us, some one fed me with the number seven."

  "Succulent morsel!" chuckled Grislow. "Did it agree with you?"

  Brouillard sat back from the fire and clasped his hands over his bentknees. He was of a type rare enough to be noteworthy in a race which hasdrawn so heavily upon the Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic stocks for its buildand coloring: a well-knit figure of a man, rather under than over thenormal stature, but bulging athletically in the loose-fitting khaki ofthe engineer; dark of skin, even where the sun had not burned its richmahogany into the olive, and owning a face which, with the upcurledmustaches, the brooding black eyes, and the pure Gallic outline of browand jaw, might have served as a model for a Vierge study of a fighting_franc-tireur_.

  "I don't remember how early in the game the thing began," he resumed,ignoring Grislow's joking interruption, "but away back in the dimmestdawnings the number seven began to have a curious significance for me.From my earliest recollections things have been constantly associatingthemselves with seven or some multiple of it. You don't believe it, ofcourse; but it is true."

  "Which means that you have been sitting up and taking notice when thecoincidences hit, and have forgotten the millions of times when theydidn't," scoffed the listener.

  "Probably," was the ready admission. "We all do that. But there is oneset of 'coincidences,' as you call them, that can't be so easily turneddown. Back in the pin-feather time that I mentioned somebody handed me afact--the discovery of the physiologists about the waste and replacementthat goes on in the human organism, bringing around a complete cellularchange about once in every seven years. Are you asleep?"

  "Not yet; go on," said the hydrographer.

  "It was a long time ago, and I was only a little tad; but I surroundedthe idea and took it in literally, in the sense of a sudden and sort ofmagical change coming at the end of each seven-year period and bound tooccur at those particular fixed times. The notion stuck to me like acockle-bur, and sometimes I wonder if it isn't still sticking."

  "Bugs!" ranted Grislow, in good-natured ridicule, and Brouillardlaughed.

  "That is what I say to myself, Murray, every time the fatal period rollsaround. And yet----"

  "There isn't any 'and yet,'" cut in the scoffer derisively. "This ismerely your night for being batty. 'Fatal period'--suffering humanity!"

  "No, hold on: le
t me tell you, Murray--I'd like to get it out of mysystem if I can. Up to my seventh birthday I was a sickly child, punyand only about half alive. I recollect, as if it were only yesterday,how the neighbor women used to come in and condole with my mother,ignoring me, of course, as if I hadn't any ears. I can remember old AuntHetty Parsons saying, time and again: 'No, Mis' Brouillard; you'll neverraise that boy the longest day you live!'"

  "I'm waiting for the 'and yet,'" put in Grislow, sitting up to relighthis pipe with a blazing splinter from the fire.

  "It came--the change, I mean--when I was seven years old. That was theyear of our removal to Vincennes from the country village where I wasborn. Since that time I haven't known what it means to be sick or evenailing."

  "Bully old change!" applauded Grislow. "Is that all?"

  "No. What the second period spent on my body it took out of my mind. Igrew stouter and stronger every year and became more and more thestupidest blockhead that ever thumbed a school-book. I simply couldn'tlearn, Murray. My mother made excuses for me, as mothers will, but myfather was in despair. He was an educated man, and I can imagine that myunconquerable doltishness went near to breaking his heart."

  "You are safely over that stage of it now, at all events," said thehydrographer in exaggerated sarcasm. "Any man who can stare into thefire and think out fetching little imaginations like these you arehanding me----"

  "Sometimes I wish they were only imaginings, Grizzy. But let me finish.I was fourteen to a day when I squeezed through the final grammar grade;think of it--fourteen years old and still with the women teachers! Ifound out afterward that I got my dubiously given passport to the highschool chiefly because my father was one of the best-known andbest-loved men in the old home town. Perhaps it wasn't the magic seventhat built me all over new that summer; perhaps it was only the changein schools and teachers. But from that year on, all the hard thingswere too easy. It was as if somebody or something had suddenly opened aclosed door in my brain and let the daylight into all the dark cornersat once."

  Grislow sat up and finished for him.

  "Yes; and since that time you have staved your way through theuniversity, and butted into the Reclamation Service, and played skittleswith every other man's chances of promotion until you have come out atthe top of the heap in the Construction Division, all of which you'remuch too modest to brag about. But, say; we've skipped one of theseven-year flag-stations. What happened when you were twenty-one--orwere you too busy just then chasing the elusive engineering degree totake notice?"

  Brouillard was staring out over the loom of the dozen camp-fires--outand across the valley at the massive bulk of Mount Chigringo rising likea huge barrier dark to the sky-line save for a single pin-prick ofyellow light fixing the position of a solitary miner's cabin half-waybetween the valley level and the summit. When he spoke again thehydrographer had been given time to shave another pipe charge of tobaccofrom his pocket plug and to fill and light the brier.

  "When I was twenty-one my father died, and"--he stopped short and thenwent on in a tone which was more than half apologetic--"I don't mindtelling you, Grislow; you're not the kind to pass it on where it wouldhurt. At twenty-one I was left with a back load that I am carrying tothis good day; that I shall probably go on carrying through life."

  Grislow walked around the fire, kicked two or three of the charred logends into the blaze, and growled when the resulting smoke rose up tochoke and blind him.

  "Forget it, Victor," he said in blunt retraction. "I thought it wasmerely a little splashing match and I didn't mean to back you out intodeep water. I know something about the load business myself; I'm tryingto put a couple of kid brothers through college, right now."

  "Are you?" said Brouillard half-absently; and then, as one who would notbe selfishly indifferent: "That is fine. I wish I were going to havesomething as substantial as that to show for my wood sawing."

  "Won't you?"

  "Not in a thousand years, Murray."

  "In less than a hundredth part of that time you'll be at the top of theReclamation-Service pay-roll--won't that help out?"

  "No; not appreciably."

  Grislow gave it up at that and went back to the original contention.

  "We're dodging the main issue," he said. "What is the active principleof your 'sevens'--or haven't you figured it out?"

  "Change," was the prompt rejoinder; "always somethingdifferent--radically different."

  "And what started you off into the memory woods, particularly,to-night?"

  "A small recurrence of the coincidences. It began with that hopelesslyunreliable little clock that Anson persists in carrying around with himwherever he goes. While you were up on the hill cutting your spruce tipsAnson pulled out and said he was going to unpack his camp kit. He wentover to his tent and lighted up, and a few minutes afterward I heard theclock strike--seven. I looked at my watch and saw that it lacked a fewminutes of eight, and the inference was that Anson had set the clockwrong, as he commonly does. Just as I was comfortably forgetting thesignificant reminder the clock went off again, striking slowly, as ifthe mechanism were nearly run down."

  "Another seven?" queried Grislow, growing interested in spite of a keendesire to lapse into ridicule again.

  "No; it struck four. I didn't imagine it, Murray; I counted:one--two--three--four."

  "Well?" was the bantering comment. "You couldn't conjure an omen out ofthat, could you? You say there was a light in the tent--I suppose Ansonwas there tinkering with his little tin god of a timepiece. It's a habitof his."

  "That was the natural inference; but I was curious enough to go andlook. When I lifted the flap the tent was empty. The clock was tickingaway on Anson's soap-box dressing-case, with a lighted candle beside it,and for a crazy half second I had a shock, Murray--the minute-hand waspointing to four and the hour-hand to seven!"

  "Still I don't see the miraculous significance," said the hydrographer.

  "Don't you? It was only another of the coincidences, of course. While Istood staring at the clock Anson came in with Griffith's tool kit. 'I'vegot to tinker her again,' he said. 'She's got so she keeps Pacific timewith one hand and Eastern with the other.' Then I understood that he hadbeen tinkering it and had merely gone over to Griffith's tent for thetools."

  "Well," said Grislow again, "what of it? The clock struck seven, yousay; but it also struck four."

  Brouillard's smile tilted his curling mustaches to the sardonic angle.

  "The combination was what called the turn, Grizzy. To-day happens to bemy twenty-eighth birthday--the end of the fourth cycle of seven."

  "By George!" ejaculated the hydrographer in mock perturbation, sittingup so suddenly that he dropped his pipe into the ashes of the fire. "Inthat case, according to what seems to be the well-established custom,something is due to fall in right now!"

  "I have been looking for it all day," returned Brouillard calmly, "whichis considerably more ridiculous than anything else I have owned to, youwill say. Let it go at that. We'll talk about something real if you'drather--that auxiliary reservoir supply from the Apache Basin, forexample. Were the field-notes in when you left Washington?" And from theabrupt break, the technicalities came to their own again; were stillholding the centre of the stage after the groups around the mess fireshad melted away into the bunk shelters and tents, and the firesthemselves had died down into chastened pools of incandescence edgedeach with its beach line of silvered ashes.

  It was Murray Grislow who finally rang the curtain call on the prolongedshop-talk.

  "Say, man! do you know that it is after ten o'clock?" he demanded,holding the face of his watch down to the glow of the dying embers. "Youmay sit here all night, if you like, but it's me for the blankets and afew lines of 'tired Nature's sweet restorer, balmy'--Now, what in thename of a guilty conscience is _that_?"

  As it chanced, they were both facing toward the lower end of the valleywhen the quotation-breaking apparition flashed into view. In the deepestof the shadows at the mouth of the gorge, wher
e the torrenting Niquoiastraightened itself momentarily before entering upon its plunging racethrough the mountain barrier, a beam of white light flickered unsteadilyfor a fraction of a second. Then it became a luminous pencil to trace azigzag line up the winding course of the river, across to the foot-hillspur where the camp of the Reclamation-Service vanguard was pitched, andso on around to the base of Chigringo. For certain other seconds itremained quiescent, glowing balefully like the eye of some fabledmonster searching for its prey. Then it was gone.

  Grislow's comment took the form of a half-startled exclamation.

  "By Jove! wouldn't that give you a fit of the creepies?--this far fromcivilization and a dynamo?"

  "It wasn't an electric," returned Brouillard thoughtfully, apparentlytaking Grislow's suggestion literally. "It was an acetylene."

  "Supposing it was--what's the difference? Aren't we just as far from acarbide shop as we are from the dynamo? What are you calling it?"

  "Your guess is as good as mine," was the half-absent reply. Brouillardwas still staring fixedly at the distant gulf of blackness where themysterious light had appeared and disappeared.

  "Then I'll make it and go to bed," said the hydrographer, rising andstretching his arms over his head. "If it had come a couple of hours agowe should have called it the 'spot-light,' turned on to mark the end ofyour fourth act and the beginning, auspicious or otherwise, of thefifth. Maybe it is, anyway; maybe the property-man was asleep or drunkand forgot to turn it on at the spectacular instant. How will that do?"

  Brouillard had got upon his feet and was buttoning his many-pocketedshooting-coat.

  "It will do to put you into the Balaam saddle-beast class, Grizzy," hesaid, almost morosely. Then he added: "I'm going to take a little hikedown yonder for investigative purposes. Want to come along?"

  But the mapper of watersheds was yawning sleepily. "Not on yourtintype," he refused. "I'm going to 'cork it orf in me 'ammick.' Wake meup when you come back and tell me what the fifth act is going to do toyou. The more I think of it the more I'm convinced that it _was_ thespot-light, a little overdue, after all." And he turned away chuckling.

  It was only a short mile from the camp on the inward slopes of theeastern foot-hills to the mouth of the outlet gorge, across whichBrouillard could already see, in mental prevision, the great gray wallof the projected Niquoia dam--his future work--curving majestically fromthe broken shoulder of Chigringo to the opposing steeps of Jack'sMountain. The half-grown moon, tilting now toward the sky-line of thewestern barrier, was leaving the canyon portal in deepest gloom. AsBrouillard swung along he kept a watchful eye upon the gorge shadows,half expecting a return of the mysterious apparition. But when hefinally reached the canyon portal and began to seek for the trail whichroughly paralleled the left bank of the stream the mystery was stillunexplained.

  From its upper portal in the valley's throat to the point where theriver debouches among the low sand-hills of the Buckskin Desert thecanyon of the Niquoia measures little more than a mile as the birdflies, though its crookings through the barrier mountains fairly doublethe distance. Beginning as a broken ravine at the valley outlet, thegorge narrows in its lower third to a cliff-walled raceway for thetorrent, and the trail, leaving the bank of the stream, climbs theforested slope of a boundary spur to descend abruptly to the water'sedge again at the desert gateway, where the Niquoia, leaping joyouslyfrom the last of its many hamperings, becomes a placid river of theplain.

  Picking his way judiciously because the trail was new to him, Brouillardcame in due time to the descending path among the spruces andscrub-pines leading to the western outlook upon the desert swales andsand-hills. At the canyon portal, where the forest thinned away and lefthim standing at the head of the final descending plunge in the trail, hefound himself looking down upon the explanation of the curiousapparition.

  None the less, what he saw was in itself rather inexplicable. In thefirst desert looping of the river a camp-fire of pinyon knots was blazingcheerfully, and beside it, with a picnic hamper for a table, sat asupper party of three--two men and a woman--in enveloping dust-coats,and a third man in chauffeur leather serving the sitters. Back of thegroup, and with its detachable search-light missing, stood a hugetouring-car to account for the picnic hamper, the dust-coats, the man inleather, and, doubtless, for the apparitional eye which had appeared anddisappeared at the mouth of the upper gorge. Also it accounted, in apurely physical sense, for the presence of the picnickers, though thewhim which had led them to cross the desolate Buckskin Desert for thedubious pleasure of making an all-night bivouac on its eastern edge wasnot so readily apparent.

  Being himself a Bedouin of the desert, Brouillard's first impulse washospitable. But when he remarked the ample proportions of the greattouring-car and remembered the newness and rawness of his temporary camphe quickly decided that the young woman member of the party wouldprobably fare better where she was.

  This being the case, the young engineer saw no reason why he shouldintrude upon the group at the cheerful camp-fire. On the contrary, hebegan speedily to find good and sufficient reasons why he should not.That the real restraining motive was a sudden attack of desert shynesshe would not have admitted. But the fact remained. Good red blood withits quickenings of courage and self-reliance, and a manful ability to doand dare, are the desert's gifts; but the penalty the desert exacts inreturn for them is evenly proportioned. Four years in the ReclamationService had made the good-looking young chief of construction aman-queller of quality. But each year of isolation had done somethingtoward weakening the social ties.

  A loosened pebble turned the scale. When a bit of the coarse-grainedsandstone of the trail rolled under Brouillard's foot and wentclattering down to plunge into the stream the man in chauffeur leatherreached for the search-light lantern and directed its beam upon thecanyon portal. But by that time Brouillard had sought the shelter of thescrub-pines and was retracing his steps up the shoulder of themountain.