The City of Numbered Days

But Brouillard hurled himself with an oath upon young Cortwright, and it was he, and neither the cattleman nor the fat-armed barkeeper, who wrenched the weapon out of Cortwright's grasp and with it menaced the babbling murderer into silence.

XII

Quicksands

A short week after the Reclamation Service headquarters had been moved from the log-built offices on the government reservation to the commodious and airy suite on the sixth floor of the Niquoia Building Brouillard received the summons which he had been expecting ever since the night of rioting and lawlessness which had marked the close of the railroad celebration.

"Mr. Cortwright would like to see you in his rooms at the Metropole," was the message the office boy brought, and Brouillard closed his desk with a snap and followed the boy to Bongras's.

The shrewd-eyed tyrant of Mirapolis was in his shirt-sleeves, busily dictating to two stenographers alternately, when the engineer entered the third room of the series; but the work was suspended and the stenographers were sent away as soon as Brouillard was announced.

"Well," was the millionaire's greeting, "you waited to be sent for, didn't you?"

"Why not?" said Brouillard shortly. "I have my work to do and you have yours."

"And the two jobs are at opposite ends of the string, you'd say. Never mind; we can't afford to throw each other down, and just now you can tell me a few things that I want to know. How is young Massingale getting along?"

"As well as could be expected. Carruthers – the doctor – says he is out of danger."

"H'm. It has been handed in to me two or three times lately that the old man is out gunning for Van Bruce or for me. Any truth in that?"

"I think not. Massingale is a Kentuckian, and I fancy he is quite capable of potting either one or both of you for the attack on his son. But so far he has done nothing – has hardly left Steve's bedside."

Mr. J. Wesley Cortwright flung himself back in his luxurious swing chair and clasped his pudgy hands over the top of his head where the reddish-gray hair was thinning reluctantly.

"I've been putting it off to see which way the cat was going to jump," he admitted. "If young Massingale is out of danger, it is time to get action. What was the quarrel about, between him and Van Bruce?"

"Why do you ask me?" queried Brouillard.

"Because you are pretty thick with the Massingales, and you probably know," was the blunt accounting for the question.

"It occurs to me that your son would be a better source of information," said Brouillard, still evading.

"Van Bruce has told me all he remembers – which isn't much, owing to his own beastly condition at the time. He says young Massingale was threatening something – something in connection with the Coronida Grant – and that he got the insane idea into his head that the only way to stop the threat was by killing Massingale."

The sandy-gray eyes of the millionaire promoter were shifting while he spoke, but Brouillard fixed and held them before he said: "Why should Massingale threaten your son, Mr. Cortwright?"

"I don't know," denied the promoter, and he said it without flinching a hair's-breadth.

"Then I can tell you," was the equally steady rejoinder. "Some time ago you lent David Massingale, through the bank, a pretty large sum of money for development expenses on the 'Little Susan,' taking a mortgage on everything in sight to cover the loan."

"I did."

"Massingale's obligation was in short-time, bankable paper, which he expected to take up when the railroad should come in and give him a market for the ore which he has already taken out of the mine."

"Yes."

"But when the railroad was an assured fact he learned that the Red Butte smelters wouldn't take his ore, giving some technical reason which he knew to be a mere excuse."

Mr. Cortwright nodded. "So far you might be reading it out of a book."

"In consequence of these successive happenings, David Massingale finds himself in a fair way to become a broken man by the simplest of commercial processes. The bank holds his notes, which will presently have to be paid. If he can't pay, the bank comes back on you as his indorser, and you fall back on your mortgage and take the mine. Isn't that about the size of it?"

"It is exactly the size of it."

Brouillard laughed quietly. "And yet you said a moment ago that you didn't know why young Massingale should threaten your son."

"And I don't know yet," blustered the magnate. "Is it my fault that Massingale can't pay his debts?"

The engineer had stopped laughing when he said definitely and decidedly: "It is."

It was the promoter's turn to laugh.

"What sort of a bug have you got in your cosmos this morning, Brouillard? Why, man, you're crazy!"

Brouillard rose and relighted his cigar.

"If that is your last word, Mr. Cortwright, I may as well go back to my office. You don't need me."

"Oh, hold on; don't go off in a huff. You're too thin-skinned for any common kind of use. I was only trying you to see how far you'd carry it. Let it stand. Assume, for the sake of argument, that I do want the 'Little Susan' and that I've got a good friend or two in the Red Butte smelters who will help me get it. Now, then, does that stand the band-wagon upon its wheels again?"

Brouillard's black eyes were snapping, but his voice was quite steady when he said: "Thank you; now we shall go on better. You want the 'Little Susan,' and Massingale naturally thinks you're taking an unfair advantage of him to get it. Quite as naturally he is going to make reprisals if he can. That brings us down to the mention of the Coronida Grant and Stephen Massingale's threat – which your son can't remember."

"Right-o," said Mr. Cortwright, still with predetermined geniality. "What was the threat?"

"I don't know, but the guessing list is open to everybody. There was once a grant of many square miles of mountain and desert somewhere in this region made to one Don Estacio de Montarriba Coronida. Like those of most of the great Spanish land grants, the boundaries of this one were loosely described and – "

Mr. Cortwright held up a fat hand.

"I know what you're going to say. But we went into all that at Washington before we ever invested a single dollar in this valley. As you may or may not know, the Reclamation Service bureau tried to choke us off. But when it came down to brass tacks, they lacked a witness. We may be in the bed of your proposed lake, but we're safely on Coronida land."

"So you say," said Brouillard quietly, "and on the strength of that you have been guaranteeing titles."

"Oh, no," protested the millionaire. "We have merely referred purchasers to the record. There is a clause in every deed."

"But you have caused it to be believed that your title was good, that the government's claim to the land will not hold."

"It won't hold if we're on Coronida land."

"Ah! Just there is where Massingale comes in, I imagine. He has spent twenty years or more in this region, and he knows every landmark in it. What if he should be able to put a lighted match to your pile of kindling, Mr. Cortwright?"

The promoter pulled himself erect with a grip on either arm of the chair.

"Brouillard, do you know what you are talking about?" he demanded.

"No; it is only a guess. But as matters stand – with your son indictable for an attempted murder … if I were you, Mr. Cortwright, I believe I'd give David Massingale a chance to pay those notes at the bank."

"And let him blackmail me? Not in a month of Sundays, Brouillard! Let him sell his ore and pay the notes if he can. If he can't, I'll take the mine."