The City of Numbered Days

by Francis Lynde

  XVIII

  Love's Crucible

  For half an hour after the motor-cars of the Falkland supper party hadrolled away from the side entrance of the Hotel Metropole, Brouillardsat at his desk in the empty office with the momentous telegram beforehim, searching blindly for some alternative to the final act oftreachery which would be consummated in the sending of the wire.

  Since, by reason of Cortwright's tamperings with the smelter people andthe railroad, the "Little Susan" had become a locked treasure vault, theengineer, acting upon his own initiative, had tried the law. As soon ashe had ascertained that David Massingale had been given sixty dayslonger to live, solely because the buccaneers chose to take his minerather than his money, Brouillard had submitted the facts in the case toa trusted lawyer friend in the East.

  This hope had pulled in two like a frayed cord. Massingale must pay thebank or lose all. Until he had obtained possession of the promissorynotes there would be no crevice in which to drive any legal wedge. Andeven then, unless some pressure could be brought to bear upon thegrafters to make them disgorge, there was no chance of Massingale'srecovering more than his allotted two thirds of the stock; in otherwords, he would still stand committed to the agreement by which he hadbound himself to make the grafters a present, in fee simple, of onethird of his mine.

  Brouillard had written one more letter to the lawyer. In it he had askedhow David Massingale could be unassailably reinstated in his rights asthe sole owner of the "Little Susan." The answer had come promptly andit was explicit. "Only by the repayment of such sums as had beenactually expended in the reorganization and on the betterments--for themodernizing machinery and improvements--and the voluntary surrender, bythe other parties to the agreement, of the stock in dispute," the lawyerhad written; and Brouillard had smiled at the thought of Cortwrightvoluntarily surrendering anything which was once well within the graspof his pudgy hands.

  Failing to start the legal wedge, Brouillard had dipped--also withoutconsulting Massingale--into the matter of land titles. The "LittleSusan" was legally patented under the land laws, and Massingale's title,if the mine were located upon government land, was without a flaw. Buton a former reclamation project Brouillard had been brought in contactwith some of the curious title litigation growing out of the old Spanishgrants; and in at least one instance he had seen a government patentinvalidated thereby.

  As a man in reasonably close touch with his superiors in Washington, thechief of construction knew that there was a Spanish-grant involvementwhich had at one time threatened to at least delay the Niquoia project.How it had been settled finally he did not know; but after the legalfailure he had written to a man--a college classmate of his own--in thebureau of land statistics, asking for data which would enable him tolocate exactly the Niquoia-touching boundaries of the great CoronidaGrant. To this letter no reply had as yet been received. Brouillard hadcause to know with what slowness a simple matter of information can oozeout of a department bureau. The letter--which, after all, might containnothing helpful--lingered on the way, and the crisis, the turning-pointbeyond which there could be no redemption in a revival of thespeculative craze, had arrived.

  Brouillard took up the draught of the Washington telegram and read itover. He was cooler now, and he saw that it was only as it came from thehand of a traitor, who could and would deliberately wreck the train ofevents it might set in motion, that it became a betrayal. Writing as thecommanding officer in the field, he had restated the facts--factsdoubtless well known in the department--the probability that Congresswould intervene and the hold the opposition was gaining by thesuspension of the work on the dam. If the work could be pushedenergetically and at once, there was a possibility that the oppositionwould become discouraged and voluntarily withdraw. Would the departmentplace the men and the means instantly at his disposal?

  "If I were the honest man I am supposed to be, that is precisely themessage I ought to send," he mused reflectively. "It is only as thecrooked devil in possession of me will drive me to nullify the effortand make it of no effect that it becomes a crime; that and the fact thatI can never be sure that the Cortwright gang hasn't the inside track andwill not win out in spite of all efforts. That is the touchstone of thewhole degrading business. I'm afraid Cortwright has the inside track. IfI could only get a little clear-sighted daylight on the damnabletangle!"

  Obeying a sudden impulse, he thrust the two copies of the telegram underthe paper-weight again, sprang up, put on his hat, and left thebuilding. A few minutes later he was on the porch of the stuccoed villain the Quadjenai road and was saying gravely to the young woman who hadbeen reading in the hammock: "You are staying too closely at home. Getyour coat and hat and walk with me up to the 'Little Susan.' It will doyou good."

  The afternoon was waning and the sun, dipping to the horizon, hung likea huge golden ball over the yellow immensities of the distant Buckskinas they topped the final ascent in the steep trail and went to sit onthe steps of the deserted home cabin at the mine.

  For a time neither spoke, and the stillness of the air contributedsomething to the high-mountain silence, which was almost oppressive.Work had been stopped in the mine at the end of the previous week,Massingale declaring, morosely, that until he knew whose ore he wasdigging he would dig no more. Presumably there was a watchman, but if sohe was invisible to the two on the cabin step, and the high view-pointwas theirs alone.

  "How did you know that I have been wanting to come up here once morebefore everything is changed?" said the girl at length, patting theroughly hewn log step as if it were a sentient thing to feel the caress.

  "I didn't know it," Brouillard denied. "I only knew that I wanted to getout of Gomorrah for a little while, to come up here with you and get thereek of the pit out of my nostrils."

  "I know," she rejoined, with the quick comprehension which never failedhim. "It is good to be out of it, to be up here where we can look downupon it and see it in its true perspective--as a mere little impertinentblot on the landscape. It's only that, after all, Victor. See how thegreat dam--your work--overshadows it."

  "That is one of the things I hoped I might be able to see if I came herewith you," he returned slowly. "But I can't get your point of view, Amy.I shall never be able to get it again."

  "You did have it once," she asserted. "Or rather, you had a better oneof your own. Has Gomorrah changed it?"

  "No, not Gomorrah. I could shut the waste-gates and drown the placeto-morrow for all that Mirapolis, or anything in it, means to me. Butsomething has changed the point of view for me past mending, since thatfirst day when we sat here together and looked down upon the beginningsof the Reclamation construction camp--before Gomorrah was ever thoughtof."

  "I know," she said again. "But that dreadful city is responsible. It hasrobbed us all, Victor; but you more than any, I'm afraid."

  "No," he objected. "Mirapolis has been only a means to an end. The thingthat has changed my point of view--my entire life--is love, as I havetold you once before."

  "Oh, no," she protested gently, rising to take her old place, with herback to the porch post and her hands behind her. And then, still moregently: "That is almost like sacrilege, Victor, for love is sacred."

  "I can't help it. Love has made a great scoundrel of me, Amy; acriminal, if man's laws were as closely meshed as God's."

  "I can't believe that," she dissented loyally.

  "It is true. I have betrayed my trust. Cortwright will make good in allof his despicable schemes. Congress will intervene and the Niquoiaproject will be abandoned."

  "No," she insisted. "Take a good, deep breath of this pure, clean,high-mountain air and think again. Mirapolis is dying, even now, thoughnobody dares admit it. But it is. Tig Smith hears everything, and hetold father last night that the rumor about the Quadjenai placers istrue. They are worked out, and already the men have begun to move up theriver in search of new ground. Tig said that in another week therewouldn't be a dozen sluice-boxes working."

  "I have known about the
Quadjenai failure for the past two weeks,"Brouillard put in. "For at least that length of time the two steamdredges have been handling absolutely barren gravel, and the men incharge of them have had orders to go on dredging and say nothing.Mirapolis is no longer a gold camp; but, nevertheless, it will boomagain--long enough to let Mr. J. Wesley Cortwright and his fellowbuccaneers loot it and get away."

  "How can you know that?" she asked curiously.

  "I know it because I am going to bring it to pass."

  "You?"

  "Yes, I. It is the final act in the play. And my part in this act is theJudas part--as it has been in the others."

  She was looking down at him with wide-open eyes.

  "If any one else had said that of you ... but I can't believe it! Iknow you, Victor; I think I must have known you in the other world--theone before this--and there we climbed the heights, in the clearsunlight, together."

  "There was one thing you didn't learn about me--in that other world youspeak of," he said, falling in with her allegory. "You didn't discoverthat I could become a wretched cheat and a traitor for love of you.Perhaps it wasn't necessary--there."

  "Tell me," she begged briefly; and, since he was staring fixedly at thescored slopes of Jack's Mountain, he did not see that she caught her lipbetween her teeth to stop its trembling.

  "Part of it you know: how I did what I could to bring the railroad, andhow your brother's teaspoonful of nuggets was made to work a devil'smiracle to hurry things along when the railroad work was stopped. Butthat wasn't the worst. As you know, I had a debt to pay before I couldsay: 'Come, little girl, let's go and get married.' So I became astockholder in Cortwright's power company, knowing perfectly well when Iconsented that the hundred thousand dollars' worth of stock he gave mewas a bribe--the price of my silence and non-interference with hisgreedy schemes."

  "But you didn't mean to keep it; you knew you _couldn't_ keep it!" shebroke in; and now he did not need to look to know that her lips weretrembling piteously.

  "I did keep it. And when the time was fully ripe I sold it back toCortwright, or, rather, I suppose, sold it through him to some one ofhis wretched gulls. I meant to pay my father's debt with the money. Ihad the letter written and ready to mail. Then the tempter whisperedthat there was no hurry, that I might at least keep the money longenough to make it earn something for myself. Also, it struck me thatthis same devil was laughing at the spectacle of a man so completelylost to a decent sense of the fitness of things as to be planning to payan honor debt with graft money. And so I kept it for a while."

  She dropped quickly on the step beside him and a sympathetic hand creptinto his.

  "You kept it until the unhappy day when you gave it to my father, andhe--and he threw it away." She was crying softly, but his attempt tocomfort her was almost mechanical.

  "Don't cry about the money. It had the devil's thumb-prints on it, andhe merely claimed his own and got it." Then he went on as onedetermined to leave nothing untold. "Cortwright had bought me, and Iserved him as only a man in my position could serve him. I became apromoter, a 'booster,' with the others. There have been times when aword from me would have pricked the bubble. I haven't said the word; Iam not saying it now. If I should say it I'd lose at a single stroke allthat I have been fighting for. And I am not a good loser, Amy."

  For once the keen, apprehending perception failed.

  "I don't understand," she said, speaking as if she were groping in thickdarkness. "I mean I don't understand the motive that could----"

  He turned to her in dumb astonishment.

  "I thought I had been making it plain as I went along. There has beenbut the one motive--a mad passion to give, give, never counting thecost. Love, as it has come to me, seems to have neither conscience norany scruples. Nothing is too precious to be dragged to the sacrifice.You wanted something--you needed it--therefore it must be purchased foryou. And the curious part of the besetment is that I have known allalong that I was killing your love for me. If it wasn't quite deadbefore, it will die now--now that I have told you how I am flinging thelast vestiges of uprightness and honor to the winds."

  "But how?" she queried. "You haven't told me."

  "You said a few minutes ago that Mirapolis is dying. That is true; andit is dying a little too soon to suit the purposes of the Cortwrightgang. It must be revived, and I am to revive it by persuading thedepartment to rush the work on the dam. You would say that this wouldonly hasten the death of the city. But the plot provides for all thecontingencies. Mirapolis needs the money that would be spent here in therushing of the government work. That was the real life-blood of the boomat first, and it could be made to serve again. Am I making it plain?"

  She nodded in speechless disheartenment, and he went on:

  "With the dam completed before Congress could intervene, Mirapoliswould, of course, be quite dead and ready for its funeral. But if theCortwright people industriously insist that the spending of anothermillion or two of government money is only another plum for the city andits merchants and industries, that, notwithstanding the renewedactivities, the work will still stop short of completion and the citywill be saved by legislative enactment, the innocent sheep may be madeto bleed again and the wolves will escape."

  She shuddered and drew a little apart from him on the log step.

  "But your part in this horrible plot, Victor?" she asked.

  "It is as simple as it is despicable. In the first place, I am to setthe situation before the department in such a light as to make itclearly a matter of public policy to take advantage of the presentMirapolitan crisis by pushing the work vigorously to a conclusion. Afterthus turning on the spigot of plenty, I am expected to crowd thepay-rolls and at the same time to hold back on the actual progress ofthe work. That is all--except that I am to keep my mouth shut."

  "But you can't, you _can't_!" she cried. Then, in a passionate outburst:"If you should do such a thing as that, it wouldn't kill my love--Ican't say that any more; but it would kill me--I shouldn't want tolive!"

  He looked around at her curiously, as if he were holding her at arm'slength.

  "Shall I do what you would have me do, Amy? Or shall I do what is bestfor you?" The opposing queries were as impersonal as the arm's-lengthgaze. "Perhaps I might be able to patch up the ideals and stand them ontheir feet again--and you would pay the penalty all your life in povertyand privation, in hopes wrecked and ruined, and I with my hands tied.That is one horn of the dilemma, and the other is ... let me tell you,Amy, it is worse than your worst fears. They will strip your father ofthe last thing he has on earth and bring him out in debt to them. Thereis one chance, and only one, so far as I can see. Let me go on as I havebegun and I can pull him out."

  The tears had burned out of the steadfast eyes which were resting, withthe shining soul looking out through them, upon the crimsoning snowpeaks of the distant Timanyonis.

  "How little you know the real love!" she said slowly. "It neither weighsnor measures, nor needs to; it writes its own law in the heart, and thatlaw can make no compromise with evil. It has but one requirement--thebest good of the beloved. If the way to that end lies throughsacrifice--if it asks for the life itself--so let it be. If you knewthis, Victor, you would know that I would gladly lose all--the mine, myfather's chance of his reward for the years of toil, even my brother'sbetter chance for reformation--and count myself happy in having found alove that was too great to do evil that good might come."

  He got up stiffly and helped her to her feet and together they stoodlooking down upon the city of the plain, lying now under the curved,sunset shadow cast by the mighty, inbending sweep of the great dam.

  "I don't know," he said after a time. "Once, as I told you a few weeksago, the best there was in me would have leaped up to climb the heightswith you. But I've gone far since the going began. I am not sure that Icould find my way back if I should try. Let's go down. I mustn't keepyou out on the mountain after dark. I haven't happened to meet her, butI suppose there is a Mrs. Grundy, even in Go
morrah."

  She acquiesced in silence and they made the descent of the steep trailand walked across in the growing dusk from the foot of Chigringo to thestuccoed villa in the suburb, misers of speech, since there were nodeeper depths to which the spoken word could plunge. But at the villasteps Brouillard took the girl in his arms and kissed her.

  "Put me out of your mind and heart if you can," he said tenderly,repeating the words which he had once sent across the distances to herin another moment of despair, and before she could answer he was gone.

  * * * * *

  Monsieur Poudrecaulx Bongras, rotund, smiling, and roached and waxed toa broad burlesque of Second-Empire fierceness, looked in vain among hisdinner guests that evening for the chief of the Reclamation Service, andBrouillard's absence held a small disappointment for the Frenchman.Rumor, the rumor which was never quiet and which could never be tracedconclusively to its source, was again busy with exciting hints of a newera of prosperity about to dawn, and Bongras had hoped to drop his ownlittle plummet of inquiry into the Reclamation Service chief.

  The chance did not materialize. The lights in a certain upper office inthe Niquoia Building were still turned on long after M. Poudrecaulx hadgiven up the hope of the deep-sea sounding for that night. Some timeafter the lobby crowd had melted, and before the lower avenue had begunto order small-hour suppers of Bongras, the two high windows in theNiquoia Building went dark and a few minutes later the man who had spenthalf the night tramping the floor or sitting with his head in his handsat the desk in the upper room came out of the street archway and walkedbriskly to the telegraph office across the plaza.

  "How is the line to-night, Sanford--pretty clear?" he asked of the nightmanager, killing time while the sleepy night receiving clerk was makinghis third attempt to count the words in the closely written, two-pagegovernment cipher.

  "Nothing doing; a little A. P. stuff drizzling in now and then," saidthe manager; adding: "But that's like the poor--always with us."

  "All right; there is no particular rush about this matter of mine, justso it is sure to be in the secretary's hands at the opening of businessin the morning. But be careful that it goes straight--you'd better haveit checked back before it is put on the through wire from Denver."

  "Sure, Mr. Brouillard. What you say in this little old shack goes as itlays. We'll look out and not bull your message. Good-night."