The City of Numbered Days

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Epochal

At the other extremity of the trajectory of Grislow's telltale field-glass Brouillard was sunning himself luxuriously on the porch step at the Massingale house and making up for lost time – counting all time lost when it spelled absence from the woman he loved. But Miss Massingale was in a charmingly frivolous frame of mind.

"That is the fourth different excuse you have invented for cutting me out of your visiting list, not counting the repetitions," she gibed, when he had finally fallen back upon the time demands of his work to account for his late neglect of her. "If I wanted to be hateful I might insist that you haven't given the true reason yet."

"Perhaps I will give it before I go," he parried. "But just now I'd much rather talk about something else. Tell me about yourself. What have you been 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 like a 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'm going 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; he is only a 'younger son.' But we call him Lord Falkland because he has no sense 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 Pawcy Grammont Penbawthy Trevawnnion.'" Her mimicry of the Englishman was delicious, and Brouillard laughed like a man without a care in the world.

"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-riders most of the time, I think. It's his ranch, you know, and he is immensely proud of it. He never tires of telling me about the cattle on a thousand hills, or the thousand cattle on one hill, I forget which it is."

"And you flirt with this – this alphabetical monstrosity!" he protested reproachfully.

"Honestly, Victor, I don't; that was only an amiable little figure of speech. You simply can't flirt with a somebody who is almost as brilliant as a lump of Cornish tin ore and, oh, ever so many times as dense."

"Exit Lord Falkland, who isn't Lord Falkland," said Brouillard. "Now tell me about the 'Little Susan'; is the Blue-grass farm looming up comfortably 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 an aerial tramway down to the place where the railroad yard is going to be – 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 the Saturdays."

"I see," he nodded. "All going out and nothing coming in. But the money is all here, safely stacked up in the ore bins. You'll get it all out when 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't coming, after all; or, rather, Tig had heard it and he told me. We were digging for facts when you met us on Chigringo Avenue – trying to find out if the rumor were true."

"Did you find out?" he asked.

"Not positively. That is why I left the note at your office begging you to 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 standing on 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 month father or Stevie would make up a few pack-saddle loads of the richest ore and freight them over the mountains to Red Butte. That was how we got along. But when you sent me word by Tig that the railroad company had 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 big things was come. Mr. Cortwright and some of his associates had been trying to buy an interest in the 'Little Susan.' Father let them in on some sort of a stock arrangement that I don't understand and then made himself 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 was done, and even then father wouldn't explain. He has been like a man out of his mind since Mr. Cortwright got hold of him – everything is rose-colored; we are going to be immensely rich the minute the railroad builds its track to the mine dump. The ore is growing richer every day – which is true – and the railroad will let us into the smelters with train loads of it. He is crazy to build more cribs and put on night shifts of miners. But you see how it all depends upon the railroad."

"Not so much upon the railroad now as upon some other things," said Brouillard enigmatically. "You say your father has borrowed of the bank – 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. All I know is that father is responsible, and that if the railroad doesn't come he will lose everything."

Brouillard gave a low whistle. "I don't wonder that the quitting rumor made you nervous."

"It was, and is, positively terrifying. Father has taken one of the new houses in town and we are to move down next week in spite of all I can do or say. That means more expense and more temptations. I can't tell you how I hate and dread Mirapolis. It isn't like any other place I have ever known; it is cynical, vicious, wicked!"

"It is," he agreed soberly. "It couldn't well be otherwise. You tell a dozen men they've got a certain definite time to live, and the chances are that two or three of them will begin to prepare to get ready to be sorry for their sins. The other nine or ten will speed up and burn the candle right down into the socket. We shall see worse things in Mirapolis before we see better. But I think I can lift one of your burdens. What you heard in town this morning is a fact: the railroad people have stopped work on the Buckskin Extension. Don't faint – they are 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 you that 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 of the bars in the Niquoia, and let me prove for myself that it was tolerably rich placer ground. The threat was a curious one. If I'd say the right thing to President Ford, well and good; if not, your brother would disarrange things for the government by giving away the secret of the gold placers. It was ingenious, and effective. To turn the valley into a placer camp would be to disorganize our working force, temporarily at least, and in the end it might even stop or definitely postpone the building of the dam."

She was listening eagerly, but there was a nameless fear in the steadfast eyes – a shadow which he either missed or disregarded.

"Naturally, I saw, or thought I saw, a good reason why he should hesitate 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 he kept 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 your father than a chance at the placer-diggings. The ore dump with its known values 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 the sand. It pretty nearly turned my head, Amy; would have turned it, I'm afraid, if Steve hadn't explained that the bar, as a whole, wouldn't run as rich as the sample."

"It is dreadful – dreadful!" she murmured. "You believed him, and for that 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 come here?"

"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. I am a free man – or I can be whenever I choose to say the word. You ask me why I pulled for the railroad; I did it for love's sake."

She was pushing him away, and the great horror in her eyes was unmistakable now.