The City of Numbered Days

by Francis Lynde

  XV

  The Setting of the Ebb

  Contrary to the most sanguine expectations of the speculators--contrary,perhaps, even to those of Mr. J. Wesley Cortwright--the upward surge inMirapolis values, following the visit of the "distinguished citizens,"proved to be more than a tidal wave: it was a series of them.

  The time was fully ripe for the breaking down of the final barriers ofprudence and common-place sanity. Day after day the "curb" markets werereopened, with prices mounting skyward; and when the news of howfortunes could be made in a day in the Miracle City of the Niquoia gotabroad in the press despatches there was a fresh influx of mad moneyhunters from the East, and the merry game of buying and selling thatwhich, inferentially at least, had no legal existence, went on withever-increasing activity and an utterly reckless disregard of valuesconsidered as a basis for future returns on the investment.

  Now, if never before, the croaker was wrathfully shouted down andsilenced. No one admitted, or seemed to admit, the possibleimpermanence of the city. So far from it, the boast was made openly thatMirapolis had fairly out-stripped the Reclamation Service in the racefor supremacy, and that among the first acts passed by Congress on itsreassembling would be one definitely annulling the Buckskin Desertproject, or, at any rate, so much of it as might be threatening theexistence of the great gold camp in the Niquoia Valley.

  To the observer, anxious or casual, there appeared to be reasonablegrounds for the optimistic assertion. It was an indubitable fact thatBrouillard's force had been cut down, first to one half, and later tobarely enough men to keep the crushers and mixers moving and to addfresh layers of concrete to the huge wall of sufficient quantities toprevent the material--in technical phrase--from "dying."

  True, in the new furor of buying and selling and booming it was notremarked that the discharged government employees uniformly disappearedfrom the city and the valley as soon as they were stricken from the timerolls. True, also, was the fact that Brouillard said nothing forpublication, and little otherwise, regarding the successive reductionsin his working force. But in such periods of insanity it is only thefavorable indications which are marked and emphasized. The work on thegreat dam was languishing visibly, as every one could see. The Navajoshad been sent home to their reservation, the tepees were gone, and twothirds of the camp shacks were empty.

  Past these material facts, plainly to be seen and weighed and measuredby any who would take the time to consider them, there was a strictlyhuman argument which was even more significant. It was known toeverybody in the frenzied marketplace that Brouillard himself was,according to his means, one of the most reckless of the plungers,buying, borrowing, and buying again as if the future held no threat of apossible _debacle_. It was an object-lesson for the timid. Those who didnot themselves know certainly argued that there must be a few who didknow, and among these few the chief of the Reclamation Service must bein the very foremost rank.

  "You just keep your eye on Brouillard and steer your own boataccordingly," was the way Editor Harlan put it to one of the timid ones."He knows it all, backward and forward, and from the middle both ways;you can bet your final dollar on that. And you mustn't expect him totalk. In his position he can't talk; one of the things he is drawing hissalary for is to keep his mouth shut. Besides, what a man may saydoesn't necessarily count for much. It is what he does."

  Thus Harlan, speaking, as it were, in his capacity of a public dispenserof the facts. But for himself he was admitting a growing curiosity aboutthe disappearing workmen, and this curiosity broke ground one eveningwhen he chanced to meet Brouillard at the club.

  "Somebody was telling me that you let out another batch of your Buckskinditch diggers to-day, Brouillard," he began. And then, without any bushbeating, the critical question was fired point-blank: "What becomes ofall these fellows you are dropping? They don't stay in town or go to themines--not one of them."

  "Don't they?" said Brouillard with discouraging brevity.

  "You know mighty well they don't. And they don't even drift out likeother people; they go in bunches."

  "Anything else remarkable up your sleeve?" was the careless query.

  "Yes; Conlan, the railroad ticket agent, started to tell me yesterdaythat they were going out on government transportation--that they didn'tbuy tickets like ordinary folks; started to tell me, I say, because heimmediately took it back and fell all over himself trying to renege."

  "You are a born gossip, Harlan, but I suppose you can't help it. Did noone ever tell you that a part of the government contract with theselaborers includes transportation back to civilization when they aredischarged?"

  "No, not by a jugful!" retorted the newspaper man. "And you're nottelling me so now. For some purpose of your own you are asking me tobelieve it without being told. I refuse. This is the closed season, andthe fish are not biting."

  Brouillard laughed easily.

  "You are trying mighty hard to make a mountain out of a mole-hill. Yousay the men clear out when they are discharged--isn't that about whatyou'd do if you were out of a job?"

  "Not with such unfailing unanimity if there were several hundred of me.Mirapolis isn't such an infernally good place to go away from--not yet."

  Brouillard's smile matched the easy-going laugh which had been itsforerunner.

  "You are a most persistent gadfly, Harlan. If I tell you one small,trifling, and safely uninflammable fact, can I trust you not to turn itinto a house afire in the columns of the _Spot-Light_?"

  "You know well enough you can!" was the eager protest. "When have I everbleated when I should have kept still?"

  "Well, then, the fact is this: the men leaving the Niquoia are notdischarged from the service. They are merely transferred to theEscalante project, which the department is trying to push through tocompletion before the northern winter sets in and freezes the concretein the mixers."

  "Ah!" said Harlan with a quick indrawing of his breath. "That brings onmore talk--about a thousand miles of it, doesn't it?"

  "For example?" suggested the engineer.

  "To put it baldly, is the government really quitting on the Niquoiaproject, or is it merely transferring its force from a job that can waitto one that can't wait?"

  Brouillard smiled again. "You see," he said; "it is second nature foryou pencil-pushers to try to make two facts grow where only one grewbefore. Honestly, now, Harlan, what do you think about it yourself? Youdon't need any kindergartner of a construction man to help you solve alittle problem like that, do you?"

  "I'm doing a little sum in simple equations," was the thoughtfulanswer--"putting this bit of information which you have just given meagainst what I have been believing to be a pretty straight tip fromWashington."

  "What is your tip?"

  "It's this: that Congress does really propose to interfere in behalf ofMirapolis."

  "How can any one predict that when Congress is not in session?"

  "The tip asserts that the string-pulling is all done. It will be a quietbit of special legislation smuggled through, I suppose, like the billsfor private relief. All it will need will be the recommendation andbacking of a handful of Western members and senators. Nobody else isvery vitally interested, outside of your own department, and there arealways plenty of clubs at hand for killing off departmentopposition--threats of cutting down the appropriations and so on.Properly engineered, the Mirapolis bill will go through like a greasedpig under a gate. You know it will."

  "You say nobody else is vitally interested--that's a mistake big enoughto be called a crime," said Brouillard with emphasis. "The reclamationof the Buckskin Desert is a matter of moment to the entire nation. Itsfailure would be a public disaster."

  Harlan laughed derisively.

  "You are talking through your hat now--the salaried governmentengineer's hat. Let your topographers go out and find some other streamto dam up. Let them hunt up some other desert to reclaim. The supply ofarid lands isn't exhausted yet by a good bit."

  Brouillard appeared to be silenced e
ven if he were not fully convinced.After a time, however, he dropped in another query.

  "How straight is your tip, Harlan?"

  "So straight that I'd print it in to-morrow's _Spot-Light_ if I wasn'tafraid of queering the deal by being too previous. The necessary backinghas been secured, and the bill is already prepared. If you don't believeit, ask your own big bosses in Washington."

  "You are certain that your information didn't originate right here inMirapolis--in Mr. Cortwright's office, to locate it more exactly?"

  "It didn't; it came from a purely personal source and direct fromWashington."

  "And the source couldn't possibly have become contaminated by theCortwright germs?"

  Harlan's smile was the face-wrinkling of seasoned wisdom.

  "You are pushing me too hard," he protested. "I know that there arewheels within wheels. You'd say it would be a foxy move to have thelocal newspaper in Mirapolis get such a tip from a strictly unprejudicedsource. I'll have to admit that myself."

  Brouillard looked at his watch and reached for his hat.

  "It's all right, Harlan," he said at the leave-taking. "Believe as muchas you like, but take my advice in just one small matter. Don't buyMirapolis dirt to hold; buy it to sell--and sell the minute you see yourprofit. I told you I'd give you a pointer if I didn't forget; you've gotit."

  For the better part of a fortnight the tidal waves of prosperity, asevinced by increasing speculative values, kept on rolling in, each oneapparently a little higher than its immediate predecessor. Then theflood began to subside, though so slowly that at first it was only by acareful comparison of the daily transfers that the recession could bemeasured.

  Causes and consequences extraneous to the city itself contributed to thealmost imperceptible reactionary tendency. For one, the Buckskin Miningand Milling Company reluctantly abandoned its pastime of ploughingbarren furrows on Jack's Mountain, and a little later went intoliquidation, as the phrase ran, though the Eastern bondholders probablycalled it bankruptcy. About the same time the great cement plant,deprived of the government market by the slackening of the work on thedam, reduced its output to less than one fourth of its full capacity.Most portentous of all, perhaps, was the rumor that the placers atQuadjenai were beginning to show signs of exhaustion. It was evenwhispered about that the two huge gold dredges recently installed werenot paying the expenses of operating them.

  Quite naturally, the pulse of the Wonder City beat sensitive to allthese depressive rumors and incidents, responding slowly at first but alittle later in accelerated throbbings which could no longer be ignoredby the most optimistic bidder at the "curb" exchanges.

  Still there was no panic. As the activities in local sales fell off andthe Mirapolitans themselves were no longer crowding the curbs orstanding in line at the real estate offices for their turn at thelistings, the prudent ones, with Mr. Cortwright and his chosenassociates far in advance of the field, were placing Mirapolis holdingstemptingly on view in distant markets; placing them and selling themwith a blazonry of advertising worthy of the envy of those who havecalled themselves the suburb builders of Greater New York.

  It was after this invasion of the distant market was fully in train thatCortwright once more sent for Brouillard, receiving the engineer thistime in the newest offices of the power company, on themany-times-bought-and-sold corner opposite Bongras's.

  "Hello, Brouillard!" said the magnate jocosely, indicating a chair andthe never-absent open box of cigars in the same gesture. "You're gettingto be as much of a stranger as a man might wish his worst enemy to be.Gene says you are neglecting her shamefully, but she seems to be makinga pretty good Jack-at-a-pinch of the English lord."

  "You sent for me?" Brouillard broke in tersely. More and more he wascoming to acknowledge a dull rage when he heard the call of his master.

  "Yes. What about the dam? Is your work going to start up again? Or is itgoing off for good?"

  Brouillard bit his lip to keep back the exclamation of astoundment thatthe blunt inquiry threatened to evoke. To assume that Mr. Cortwright didnot know all there was to be known was to credit the incredible.

  "I told you a good while ago that I was only the government's hiredman," he replied. "You doubtless have much better information than any Ican give you."

  "You can tell me what your orders are--that's what I want to know."

  The young chief of construction frowned first, then he laughed.

  "What has given you the impression that you own me, Mr. Cortwright? Ihave often wondered."

  "Well, I might say that I have made you what you are, and----"

  "That's true; the truest thing you ever said," snapped Brouillard.

  "And, I was going to add, I can unmake you just as easily. But I don'twant to be savage with you. All I'm asking is a little informationfirst, and a little judicious help afterward. What are your orders fromthe department?"

  Brouillard got up and stood over the stocky man in the office chair,with the black eyes blazing.

  "Mr. Cortwright, I said a moment ago that you have made me what I am,and you have. I am infinitely a worse man than you are, because I knowbetter and you don't. It is no excuse for me that I have had a motivewhich I haven't explained to you, because, as I once told you, youcouldn't understand it in a thousand years. The evil has been done andthe consequences, to you, to me, and to every one in this cursed valleyare certain. Facing them as I am obliged to face them, I am tellingyou--but what's the use? You can't make a tool of me any longer--that'sall. You must cook your meat over your own fire. I'm out of it."

  "I can smash you," said the man in the chair, quite without heat.

  "No, you can't even do that," was the equally cool retort. "No man'sfate is in another man's hands. If you choose to set in motion themachinery which will grind me to a small-sized villain of thecounty-jail variety, it is I myself who will furnish every foot-pound ofthe power that is applied."

  He was moving toward the door, but Cortwright stopped him.

  "One more word before you go, Brouillard. It is to be war between usfrom this on?"

  "I don't say that: It would be awkward for Miss Genevieve. Let it bearmed neutrality if you like. Don't interfere with me and I won'tinterfere with you."

  "Ah!" said the millionaire. "Now you have brought it around to thepoint I was trying to reach. You don't want to have anything more to dowith me, but you are not quite ready to cash in and pull out of thegame. How much money have you got?"

  The cool impudence of the question brought a dull flush to the youngerman's face, but he would give the enemy no advantage in the matter ofsuperior self-control.

  "That is scarcely a fair question--even between armed neutrals," heobjected. "Why do you want to know?"

  "I'm asking because you have just proposed the non-interference policy,and I'd like to know how fairly you mean to live up to it. A littlewhile back you interfered in a small business matter of mine verypointedly. What became of the one hundred thousand dollars you gave oldDavid Massingale?"

  "How do you know I gave him a hundred thousand dollars?"

  "That's dead easy," laughed the man in the pivot chair, once more thegenial buccaneer. "You drew a check for that amount and cashed it, and afew minutes later Massingale, whose account had been drawn down tonothing, bobs up at Schermerhorn's window with exactly the same amountin loose cash. What did he do with it--gamble it?"

  "That is his own affair," Brouillard countered briefly.

  "Well, the future--next month's future--is my affair. If you've gotmoney enough to interfere again--don't. You'll lose it, the same as youdid before. And perhaps I sha'n't take the second interference asgood-naturedly as I did the first."

  "Is that all you have to say?" Brouillard asked impatiently.

  "Not quite. I don't believe you were altogether in earnest a minute agowhen you expressed your desire to call it all off. You don't want theMirapolis well to go dry right now, not one bit more than I do."

  "I have been trying pretty hard to make you u
nderstand that it is amatter of utter indifference to me."

  "But you haven't succeeded very well; it isn't at all a matter ofindifference to you," the magnate insisted persuasively. "As things areshaping themselves up at the present speaking, you stand to lose, notonly the hundred thousand you squandered on old David, but all you'vemade besides. I keep in touch--it's my business to keep in touch.You've been buying bargains and you are holding them--for the simplereason that with the present slowing-down tendency in the saddle youcan't sell and make any money."

  "Well?"

  "I've got a proposition to make that ought to look good to you. What weneed just now in this town is a little more activity--something doing.You can relieve the situation if you feel like it."

  "How?"

  "If I tell you, you mustn't go and use it against me. That would be alow-down welcher's trick. But you won't. See here, your bureau atWashington is pretty well scared up over the prospect here. It is knownin the capital that when Congress convenes there is going to be adead-open-and-shut fight to kill this Buckskin reclamation project. Verywell; the way for you fellows to win out is to hurry--finish your damand finish it quick, before Congress or anybody else can get action."

  For a single instant Brouillard was puzzled. Then he began tounderstand.

  "Go on," he said.

  "What I was going to suggest is this: you prod your people at Washingtonwith a hot wire; tell 'em now's the time to strike and strike hard.They'll see the point, and if you ask for an increase of a thousand menyou'll get it. Make it two thousand, just for the dramatic effect. We'llwork right along with you and make things hum again. We'll start up thecement plant, and I don't know but what we might give the Buckskin M. &M. folks a small hypodermic that would keep 'em alive while we aretaking a few snapshot pictures of Mirapolis on the jump again."

  "Let me get it straight," said Brouillard, putting his back against thedoor. "You fully believe you've got us down; that eventually, and beforethe water is turned on, Congress will pass a bill killing the Niquoiaproject. But in the meantime, to make things lively, you'd like to havethe Reclamation Service go ahead and spend another million or so inwages that can be turned loose in Mirapolis. Is that it?"

  "You've surrounded it very neatly," laughed the promoter. "Once, somelittle time ago, I might have felt the necessity of convincing yourscruples, but you've cut away all that foolishness. It's a little toughon our good old Uncle Samuel, I'll admit, but it'll be only a pin-prickor so in comparison to the money that is thrown away every time Congresspasses an appropriation bill. And, putting it upon the dead practicalbasis, Brouillard, it's your one and only salvation--personally, I mean.You've _got_ to unload or go broke, and you can't unload on a fallingmarket. You think about it and then get quick action with the wire.There is no time to lose."

  Brouillard was looking past Cortwright and out through the plate-glasswindow which commanded a view of the great dam and its network of formsand stagings.

  "It is a gambler's bet and a rather desperate one," he said slowly. "Youstand to win all or to lose all in making it, Mr. Cortwright. The townis balancing on the knife-edge of a panic at this moment. Would it goup, or down, with a sudden resumption of work on the dam?"

  "The careless thinker would say that it would yell 'Fire!' and go upinto the air so far that it could never climb down," was the promptreply. "But we'll have the medicine dropper handy. In the first place,everybody can afford to stay and boost while Uncle Sam is spending hismillion or so right here in the middle of things. Nobody will want topull out and leave that cow unmilked. In the second place, we've got amighty good antidote to use in any sure-enough case of hydrophobia yourquick dam building may start."

  "You could let it leak out that, in spite of all the hurrah and rush onthe dam, Congress is really going to interfere before we are ready toturn the water on," said Brouillard musingly and as if it were only histhought slipping into unconscious speech.

  "Precisely. We could make that prop hold if you were actually puttingthe top course on your wall and making preparations to drop thestop-gate in your spillway."

  "I see," was the rejoinder, and it was made in the same half-absentmonotone. "But while we are still on the knife-blade edge ... a littlepush.... Mr. Cortwright, if there were one solitary righteous man leftin Mirapolis----"

  "There isn't," chuckled the promoter, turning back to his desk while theengineer was groping for the door-knob--"at least, nobody with thatparticular brand of righteousness backed by the needful insideinformation. You go ahead and do your part and we'll do the rest."