X
Epochal
At the other extremity of the trajectory of Grislow's telltalefield-glass Brouillard was sunning himself luxuriously on the porch stepat the Massingale house and making up for lost time--counting all timelost when it spelled absence from the woman he loved. But MissMassingale was in a charmingly frivolous frame of mind.
"That is the fourth different excuse you have invented for cutting meout of your visiting list, not counting the repetitions," she gibed,when he had finally fallen back upon the time demands of his work toaccount for his late neglect of her. "If I wanted to be hateful I mightinsist that you haven't given the true reason yet."
"Perhaps I will give it before I go," he parried. "But just now I'd muchrather talk about something else. Tell me about yourself. What have youbeen doing all these days when I haven't been able to keep tab on you?"
"Flirting--flirting desperately with Tig, with Lord Falkland, with Mr.Anson, and Mr. Grislow, and that nice boy of yours, Herbert Griffith,and with--no, _not_ with Mr. Leshington; he scares me--makes a face likea wooden image and says: 'Little girl, you need a mother--or a husband;I haven't made up my mind which.' When he _does_ make up his mind I'mgoing to shriek and run away."
"Who is Lord Falkland?" demanded Brouillard, ignoring the rank and file.
"O-o-h! Haven't you met him? He is Tig's boss. He isn't a real lord; heis only a 'younger son.' But we call him Lord Falkland because he has nosense of humor and is always trying to explain. 'Beg pawdon, my _deah_Miss Massingale, but I'm _not_ Lord Falkland, don't y' know.The--er--title goes with the--er--entail. I'm only the Honorable PawcyGrammont Penbawthy Trevawnnion.'" Her mimicry of the Englishman wasdelicious, and Brouillard laughed like a man without a care in theworld.
"Where does the Honorable All-the-rest keep himself?" he wished to know.
"He stays out at the ranch in the Buckskin with Tig and the range-ridersmost of the time, I think. It's his ranch, you know, and he isimmensely proud of it. He never tires of telling me about the cattle ona thousand hills, or the thousand cattle on one hill, I forget which itis."
"And you flirt with this--this alphabetical monstrosity!" he protestedreproachfully.
"Honestly, Victor, I don't; that was only an amiable little figure ofspeech. You simply _can't_ flirt with a somebody who is almost asbrilliant as a lump of Cornish tin ore and, oh, ever so many times asdense."
"Exit Lord Falkland, who isn't Lord Falkland," said Brouillard. "Nowtell me about the 'Little Susan'; is the Blue-grass farm looming upcomfortably on the eastern edge of things?"
In a twinkling her frivolous mood vanished.
"Oh, we are prosperous, desperately prosperous. We have power drills,and electric ore-cars, and a crib, and a chute, and a hoist, and anaerial tramway down to the place where the railroad yard is going tobe--all the improvements you can see and a lot more that you can't see.And our pay-roll--it fairly frightens me when I make it up on theSaturdays."
"I see," he nodded. "All going out and nothing coming in. But the moneyis all here, safely stacked up in the ore bins. You'll get it all outwhen the railroad comes."
"That is another thing--a thing I haven't dared tell father and Stevie.When I was in Mirapolis this morning I heard that the railroad wasn'tcoming, after all; or, rather, Tig had heard it and he told me. We weredigging for facts when you met us on Chigringo Avenue--trying to findout if the rumor were true."
"Did you find out?" he asked.
"Not positively. That is why I left the note at your office begging youto come up if you could spare the time. I felt sure you would know."
"It means a great deal to you, doesn't it?" he said evasively.
"It means everything--a thousand times more now than it did before."
His quick glance up into the suddenly sobered eyes of the girl standingon the step above him was a voiceless query and she answered it.
"We had no working capital, as I think you must have known. Once a monthfather or Stevie would make up a few pack-saddle loads of the richestore and freight them over the mountains to Red Butte. That was how wegot along. But when you sent me word by Tig that the railroad companyhad decided to build the Extension, there was--there was--a chance----"
"Yes," he encouraged.
"A chance that the day of little things was past and the day of bigthings was come. Mr. Cortwright and some of his associates had beentrying to buy an interest in the 'Little Susan.' Father let them in onsome sort of a stock arrangement that I don't understand and then madehimself personally responsible for a dreadful lot of borrowed money."
"Borrowed of Mr. Cortwright?" queried Brouillard.
"No; of the bank. Neither Stevie nor I knew about it until after it wasdone, and even then father wouldn't explain. He has been like a man outof his mind since Mr. Cortwright got hold of him--everything isrose-colored; we are going to be immensely rich the minute the railroadbuilds its track to the mine dump. The ore is growing richer everyday--which is true--and the railroad will let us into the smelters withtrain loads of it. He is crazy to build more cribs and put on nightshifts of miners. But you see how it all depends upon the railroad."
"Not so much upon the railroad now as upon some other things," saidBrouillard enigmatically. "You say your father has borrowed of thebank--is Mr. Cortwright mixed up in the loan in any way?"
"Yes; he arranged it in some way for father--I don't know just how. AllI know is that father is responsible, and that if the railroad doesn'tcome he will lose everything."
Brouillard gave a low whistle. "I don't wonder that the quitting rumormade you nervous."
"It was, and is, positively terrifying. Father has taken one of the newhouses in town and we are to move down next week in spite of all I cando or say. That means more expense and more temptations. I can't tellyou how I hate and dread Mirapolis. It isn't like any other place I haveever known; it is cynical, vicious, wicked!"
"It is," he agreed soberly. "It couldn't well be otherwise. You tell adozen men they've got a certain definite time to live, and the chancesare that two or three of them will begin to prepare to get ready to besorry for their sins. The other nine or ten will speed up and burn thecandle right down into the socket. We shall see worse things inMirapolis before we see better. But I think I can lift one of yourburdens. What you heard in town this morning is a fact: the railroadpeople have stopped work on the Buckskin Extension. Don't faint--theyare going to begin again right away."
"Oh!" she gasped. "Are you sure? How _can_ you be sure?"
"I've given the order," he said gravely. "An order they can't disregard.Let's go back a bit and I'll explain. Do you remember my telling youthat your brother had tried to bribe me to use my influence with Mr.Ford?"
"As if I should ever be able to forget it!" she protested.
"Well, that wasn't all that he did--he threatened me--took me to one ofthe bars in the Niquoia, and let me prove for myself that it wastolerably rich placer ground. The threat was a curious one. If I'd saythe right thing to President Ford, well and good; if not, your brotherwould disarrange things for the government by giving away the secret ofthe gold placers. It was ingenious, and effective. To turn the valleyinto a placer camp would be to disorganize our working force,temporarily at least, and in the end it might even stop or definitelypostpone the building of the dam."
She was listening eagerly, but there was a nameless fear in thesteadfast eyes--a shadow which he either missed or disregarded.
"Naturally, I saw, or thought I saw, a good reason why he shouldhesitate to carry out his threat," Brouillard went on. "The placer find,with whatever profit might be got out of it, was his only so long as hekept the secret. But he covered that point at once; he said that the'Little Susan'--with the railroad--was worth more to him and to yourfather than a chance at the placer-diggings. The ore dump with its knownvalues was a sure thing, while the sluice mining was always a gamble."
"And you--you believed all this?" she asked faintly.
"I was compelled to believe it.
He let me pan out the proof for myself;a heaping spoonful of nuggets and grain gold in a few panfuls of thesand. It pretty nearly turned my head, Amy; would have turned it, I'mafraid, if Steve hadn't explained that the bar, as a whole, wouldn't runas rich as the sample."
"It is dreadful--dreadful!" she murmured. "You believed him, and forthat reason you used your influence with Mr. Ford?"
"No."
"But you did advise Mr. Ford to build the Extension?"
"Yes."
"Believing that it was for the best interests of the railroad to comehere?"
"No; doubting it very much, indeed."
"Then why did you do it? I _must_ know; it is my right to know."
He got up and took her in his arms, and she suffered him.
"A few days ago, little girl, I couldn't have told you. But now I can. Iam a free man--or I can be whenever I choose to say the word. You ask mewhy I pulled for the railroad; I did it for love's sake."
She was pushing him away, and the great horror in her eyes wasunmistakable now.
"Oh!" she panted, "is love a thing to be cheapened like that--to besinned for?"
"Why, Amy, girl! What do you mean? I don't understand----"
"That is it, Victor; _you don't understand_. You deliberately sacrificedyour convictions; you have admitted it. And you did it in the sacredname of love! And your freedom--how have you made a hundred thousanddollars in these few weeks? Oh, Victor, is it clean money?"
He was abashed, confounded; and at the bottom of the tangle ofconflicting emotions there was a dull glow of resentment.
"The 'sacrifice,' as you call it, was made for you," he said, ignoringher question about the money. "I merely told Mr. Ford what I should doif the decision lay wholly with me. That is what he asked for--mypersonal opinion. And he got it."
"Yes; but when you gave it ... did you say: 'Mr. Ford, there is a girlup at the "Little Susan" mine on Chigringo Mountain who needs yourrailroad to help her out of her troubles. Because I love the girl'----"
"Of course I didn't say any such suicidal thing as that! But it is toolate to raise the question of culpability in the matter of giving Fordwhat he asked for. I did it, as I say--for love of you, Amy; and now Ihave done a much more serious thing--for the same good reason."
"Tell me," she said, with a quick catching of her breath.
"Your brother put a weapon in my hands, and I have used it. There wasone sure way to make the railroad people get busy again. They couldn'tsit still if all the world were trying to get to a new gold camp, towhich they already have a line graded and nearly ready for the steel."
"And you have----?"
He nodded.
"I had Levy put the spoonful of nuggets in his window, with a placardstating that it was taken out of a bar in the Niquoia. When I left theoffice to come up here the whole town was blocking the street in frontof Levy's."
She had retreated to take her former position, leaning against theporch post, with her hands behind her, and she had grown suddenly calm.
"You did this deliberately, Victor, weighing all the consequences?Mirapolis is already a city of frenzied knaves and dupes; did yourealize that you were taking the chance of turning it into a wickedpandemonium? Oh, I can't believe you did!"
"Don't look at me that way, Amy," he pleaded. Then he went on, withcurious little pauses between the words: "Perhaps I didn't think--didn'tcare; you wanted something--and I wanted to give it to you. That wasall--as God hears me, it was all. There was another thing that mighthave weighed, but I didn't let it weigh; I stood to lose the money thatwill set me free--I could have lost it without wincing--I toldCortwright so. You believe that, Amy? It will break my heart if youdon't believe it."
She shook her head sadly.
"You have thrown down another of the ideals, and this time it was mine.You don't understand, and I can't make you understand--that is the keenmisery of it. If this ruthless thing you tried to do had succeeded, Ishould be the most wretched woman in the world."
"If it had succeeded? It has succeeded. Didn't I say just now that thetown was crazy with excitement when I left to come up here?"
The girl was shaking her head again.
"God sometimes saves us in spite of ourselves," she said gravely. "Theexcitement will die out. There are no placers in the Niquoia. The barshave been prospected again and again."
"They have been?----"
Brouillard turned on his heel and choked back the sudden maledictionthat rose to his lips. She had called Mirapolis a city of knaves anddupes; surely, he himself was the simplest of the dupes.
"I see--after so long a time," he went on. "Your brother merely 'salted'a few shovelfuls of sand for my especial benefit. Great Heavens, but Iwas an easy mark!"
"Don't!" she cried, and the tears in her voice cut him to theheart--"don't make it harder for me than it has to be. I have told youonly what I've heard my father say, time and again: that there is nogold in the Niquoia River. And you mustn't ask me to despise my brother.He fights his way to his ends without caring much for the consequencesto others; but tell me--haven't you been doing the same thing?"
"I have," he confessed stubbornly. "My love isn't measured by a fear ofconsequences--to myself or others."
"That is the hopeless part of it," she returned drearily.
"Yet you condone in your brother what you condemn in me," he complained.
"My brother is my brother; and you are--Let me tell you something,Victor: God helping me, I shall be no man's evil genius, and yours leastof all. You broke down the barriers a few minutes ago and you know whatis in my heart. But I can take it out of my heart if the man who put itthere is not true to himself."
Brouillard was silent for a little space, and when he spoke again it wasas one awaking from a troubled dream.
"I know what you would do and say; you would take me by the hand andtell me to come up higher.... There was a time, Amy, when you wouldn'thave had to say it twice--a time when the best there was in me wouldhave leaped to climb to any height you pointed to. The time is past, andI can't recall it, try as I may; there is a change; it goes back to thatday when I first saw you--down at the lower ford in the desert's edge. Iloved you then, though I wouldn't admit it even to myself. But thatwasn't the change; it was something different. Do you believe inFreiborg's theory of the multiple personality? I saw his book in yourhammock one day when I was up here."
"No," she said quite definitely. "I am I, and I am always I. For thepurposes of the comedy we call life, we play many parts, perhaps; butback of the part-playing there is always the same soul person, Ithink--and believe."
"I know; that is common sense and sanity. And yet Freiborg'sspeculations are most plausible. He merely carries the idea of the dualpersonality--the Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde notion--a step fartheralong. You may remember how he compares the human being to a shipchanging commanders at every port. One captain makes her a merchantman;another makes her a tramp; a third turns her into a slaver or a pirate;under a fourth she becomes a derelict."
"That is a terribly dangerous theory, if you take it seriously," was hercomment.
"I don't want to take it seriously. But facts are stubborn things. I amnot the same man I was a few years or even a few months ago. I have lostsomething; I have not the same promptings; things that I used to loatheno longer shock me. New and unsuspected pitfalls open for me every day.For example, I am not naturally hot-headed--or rather, I should say, Iam quick-tempered but have always been able to control myself. Yet inthe past few months I have learned what it means to fly into a rage thatfairly makes me see red. And there is no cause. Nothing different hasbroken into my life save the best of all things--a great love. And youtell me that the love is unworthy."
"No, I didn't say that; I only meant that you had misconceived it. Loveis the truest, finest thing we know. It can never be the tool of evil,much less the hand that guides the tool. Given a free field, it alwaysmakes for the wider horizons, the higher planes of thought and action;it may even breathe new life
into the benumbed conscience. I don't saythat it can't be dragged down and trampled in the dust and the mire; itcan be, and then there is nothing more pitiful in a world ofmisconceptions."
Again a silence came and sat between them; and, as before, it was theman who broke it.
"You lead me to a conclusion that I refuse to accept, Amy; that I amdominated by some influence which is stronger than love."
"You are," she said simply.
"What is it?"
"Environment."
"That is the most humiliating thing you have said to-day. Is a man amere bit of driftwood, to be tossed about in the froth of any wave thathappens to come along, as Freiborg says he is?"
"Not always; perhaps not often. And never, I think, in the best part ofhim--the soul ego. Yet there is a mighty power in the wave, in the meredrift. However much others may be deluded, I am sure you can seeMirapolis in its true light. It is frankly, baldly, the money-makingscheme of a few unscrupulous men. It has no future--it can have none.And because it is what it is, the very air you breathe down there ispoisoned. The taint is in the blood. Mr. Cortwright and his fellowbandits call it the 'Miracle City,' but the poor wretches on lowerChigringo Avenue laugh and call it Gomorrah."
"Just at the present moment it is a city of fools--and I, the king ofthe fools, have made it so," said Brouillard gloomily. From his seat onthe porch step he was frowning down upon the outspread scene in thevalley, where the triangular shadow of Jack's Mountain was creepingslowly across to the foot of Chigringo. Something in the measuredeye-sweep brought him to his feet with a hasty exclamation:
"Good Lord! the machinery has stopped! They've knocked off work on thedam!"
"Why not?" she said. "Did you imagine that your workmen were any lesshuman than other people?"
"No, of course not; that is, I--but I haven't any time to go into thatnow. Is your telephone line up here in operation?"
"No, not yet."
"Then I must burn the wind getting down there. By Jove! if thoseunspeakable idiots have gone off and left the concrete to freezewherever it happens to be----"
"One moment," she pleaded, while he was reaching for his hat. "This newmadness will have spent itself by nightfall--it must. And yet I have thequeerest shivery feeling, as if something dreadful were going to happen.Can't you contrive to get word to me, some way--after it is all over? Iwish you could."
"I'll do it," he promised. "I'll come up after supper."
"No, don't do that. You will be needed at the dam. There will betrouble, with a town full of disappointed gold-hunters, and liquor to behad. Wait a minute." She ran into the house and came out with two littlepaper-covered cylinders with fuses projecting. "Take these, they areBengal lights--some of the fireworks that Tig bought in Red Butte forthe Fourth. Light the blue one when you are ready to send me my messageof cheer. I shall be watching for it."
"And the other?" he asked.
"It is a red light, the signal of war and tumults and danger. If youlight it, I shall know----"
He nodded, dropped the paper cylinders into his pocket, and a momentlater was racing down the trail to take his place at the helm of theabandoned ship of the industries.
There was need for a commander; for a cool head to bring order out ofchaos, and for the rare faculty which is able to accomplish Herculeantasks with whatever means lie at hand. Brouillard descended upon hisdisheartened subordinates like a whirlwind of invincible energy,electrifying everybody into instant action. Gassman was told off tobring the Indians, who alone were loyally indifferent to the gold craze,down from the crushers. Anson was despatched to impress the waiters andbell-boys from the Metropole; Leshington was sent to the shops and thebank to turn out the clerks; Grislow and Handley were ordered to takecharge of the makeshift concrete handlers as fast as they materialized,squadding them and driving the work of wreck clearing for every man andminute they could command, with Gassman and Bender to act as foremen.
For himself, Brouillard reserved the most hazardous of the recruitingexpedients. The lower Avenue had already become a double rank of dives,saloons, and gambling dens; here, if anywhere in the craze-depopulatedtown, men might be found, and for once in their lives they should beshown how other men earned money.
"Shove it for every minute of daylight there is left," he ordered,snapping out his commands to his staff while he was filling the magazineof his Winchester. "Puddle what material there is in the forms, dump thetelpher buckets where they stand, and clean out the mixers; that's thesize of the job, and it's got to be done. Jump to it, Grizzy, you andHandley, and we'll try to fill your gangs the best way we can.Leshington, don't you take any refusal from the shopkeepers and the bankpeople; if they kick, you tell them that not another dollar ofgovernment money will be spent in this town--we'll run a free commissaryfirst. Anson, you make Bongras turn out every man in his feeding place;he'll do it. Griffith, you chase Mr. Cortwright, and don't quit till youfind him. Tell him from me that we've got to have every man he can giveus, at whatever cost."
"You'll be up on the stagings yourself, won't you?" asked Grislow,struggling into his working-coat.
"After a bit. I'm going down to the lower Avenue to turn out the crooksand diamond wearers. It's time they were learning how to earn an honestdollar."
"You'll get yourself killed up," grumbled Leshington. "Work is the onething you won't get out of that crowd."
"Watch me," rasped the chief, and he was gone as soon as he had said it.
Strange things and strenuous happened in the lower end of the Niquoiavalley during the few hours of daylight that remained. First, climbingnervously to the puddlers' staging on the great dam, and led bynear-Napoleon Poodles himself, came the Metropole quota of waiters,scullions, cooks, and porters, willing but skilless. After them, andherded by Leshington, came a dapper crew of office men and clerks tosnatch up the puddling spades and to soil their clothes and blistertheir hands in emptying the concrete buckets. Mr. Cortwright'scontribution came as a dropping fire; a handful of tree-cutters fromthe sawmills, a few men picked up here and there in the deserted town,an automobile load of power-company employees shot down from thegenerating plant at racing speed.
Last, but by no means least in numbers, came the human derelicts fromthe lower Avenue; men in frock-coats; men in cow-boy jeans taking it asa huge joke; men with foreign faces and lowering brows and with strangeoaths in their mouths; and behind the motley throng and marshalling itto a quickstep, Brouillard and Tig Smith.
It was hot work and heavy for the strangely assorted crew, andBrouillard drove it to the limit, bribing, cajoling, or threatening,patrolling the long line of staging to encourage the awkward puddlers,or side-stepping swiftly to the mixers to bring back a detachment ofskulkers at the rifle's muzzle. And by nightfall the thing was done,with the loss reduced to a minimum and the makeshift laborers droppingout in squads and groups, some laughing, some swearing, and all tooweary and toil-worn to be dangerous. "Give us a job if we come backto-morrow, Mr. Brouillard?" called out the king of the gamblers inpassing; and the cry was taken up by others in grim jest.
"Thus endeth the first lesson," said Grislow, when the engineering corpswas reassembling at the headquarters preparatory to a descent upon thesupper-table. But Brouillard was dumb and haggard, and when he had hungrifle and cartridge-belt on their pegs behind his desk, he went out,leaving unbroken the silence which had greeted his entrance.
"The boss is taking it pretty hard," said young Griffith to no one inparticular, and it was Leshington who took him up savagely and invitedhim to hold his tongue.
"The least said is the soonest mended--at a funeral," was the form thefirst assistant's rebuke took. "You take my advice and don't mess ormeddle with the chief until he's had time to work this thing out of hissystem."
Brouillard was working it out in his own way, tramping the streets,hanging on the outskirts of arguing groups of newsmongers, or listeningto the bonanza talk of the loungers in the Metropole lobby. Soon afterdark the gold-seekers began to drop in, by two
s and threes and insquads, all with the same story of disappointment. By nine o'clock thetown was full of them, and since the liquor was flowing freely acrossmany bars, the mutterings of disappointment soon swelled to a thunderroar of drunken rage, with the unknown exhibitor of the specimen nuggetsfor its object. From threats of vengeance upon the man who had hoaxed anentire town to a frenzied search for the man was but a step, and whenBrouillard finally left the Metropole and crossed over to his officequarters, the mob was hunting riotously for the jeweller Levy andpromising to hang him--when found--to the nearest wire pole if he shouldnot confess the name and standing of his gold-bug.
The shouts of the mob were ringing in Brouillard's ears when he strodedejectedly into the deserted map room, and the cries were rising with anew note and in fresher frenzies a little later when Grislow came in.The hydrographer's blue eyes were hard and his voice had a tang ofbitterness in it when he said: "Well, you've done it. Three men havejust come in with a double handful of nuggets, and Mirapolis makes itsbow to the world at large as the newest and richest of the gold camps."
Brouillard had been humped over his desk, and he sprang up with a crylike that of a wounded animal.
"It can't be; Grizzy, I tell you it can't be! Steve Massingale plantedthat gold that I washed out--played me for a fool to get me to work forthe railroad. I didn't know it until--until----"
"Until Amy Massingale told you about it this afternoon," cut in themap-maker shrewdly. "That's all right. The bar Steve took you to wasbarren enough; they tell me that every cubic foot of it has been washedover in dish pans and skillets in the past few hours. But you know thebig bend opposite the Quadjenai Hills; the river has built that bend outof its own washings, and the bulletin over at the _Spot-Light_ officesays that the entire peninsula is one huge bank of gold-bearing gravel."
At the word Brouillard staggered as from the impact of a bullet. Then hecrossed the room slowly, groping his way toward the peg where the coathe had worn in the afternoon was hanging. Grislow saw him take somethingout of the pocket of the coat, and the next moment the door opened andclosed and the hydrographer was left alone.
Having been planned before there was a city to be considered, thegovernment buildings enclosed three sides of a small open square, facingtoward the great dam. In the middle of this open space Brouillardstopped, kicked up a little mound of earth, and stood the two papercylinders on it, side by side.
The tempered glow from the city electrics made a soft twilight in thelittle plaza; he could see the wrapper colors of the two signal-firesquite well. A sharp attack of indecision had prompted him to place bothof them on the tiny mound. With the match in his hand, he was stillundecided. Amy Massingale's words came back to him as he hesitated:"Light the blue one when you are ready to send me my message ofcheer...." On the lips of another woman the words might have taken amaterialistic meaning; the miraculous gold discovery would bring therailroad, and the railroad would rescue the Massingale mine and restorethe Massingale fortunes.
He looked up at the dark bulk of Chigringo, unrelieved even by the tinyfleck of lamplight which he had so often called his guiding star. "Takeme out of your mind and heart and say which you will have, little girl,"he whispered, sending the words out into the void of night. But only thedin and clamor of a city gone wild with enthusiasm came to answer him.Somewhere on the Avenue a band was playing; men were shouting themselveshoarse in excitement, and above the shouting came the staccato cracklingof pistols and guns fired in air.
He struck the match and stooped over the blue cylinder. "This is yourmessage of cheer, whether you take it that way or not," he went on,whispering again to the silent void. But when the fuse of the blue lightwas fairly fizzing, he suddenly pinched it out and held the match to theother.
* * * * *
Up on the high bench of the great mountain Amy Massingale was pacing toand fro on the puncheon-floored porch of the home cabin. Her father hadgone to bed, and somewhere down among the electric lights starring thevalley her brother was mingling with the excited mobs whose shoutingsand gun-firings floated up, distance-softened, on the still, thin air ofthe summer night.
Though there was no pause in the monotonous pacing back and forth, thegirl's gaze never wandered far from a dark area in the western edge ofthe town--the semicircle cut into the dotting lights and marking thesite of the government reservation. It was when a tiny stream of sparksshot up in the centre of the dark area that she stopped and held herbreath. Then, when a blinding flare followed to prick out theheadquarters, the commissary, and the mess house, she sank in adespairing little heap on the floor, with her face hidden in her handsand the quick sobs shaking her like an ague chill. It was Brouillard'ssignal, but it was not the signal of peace; it was the blood-red tokenof revolution and strife and turmoil.
The City of Numbered Days Page 10