The City of Numbered Days

"I didn't know it. You never tell me anything about yourself."

Again the mood shutter clicked and her smile was the calm mask of discerning wisdom.

"Persons with well-developed egos don't care to listen to folk-stories," she rejoined, evading the tentative invitation openly. "But tell me, what would you do with your pot of rainbow gold – if you should find it?"

Brouillard rose and straightened himself with his arms over his head like an athlete testing his muscles for the record-breaking event.

"What would I do? A number of things. But first of all, I think, I'd buy the privilege of telling some woman that I love her."

This time her laugh was frankly disparaging. "As if you could!" she said, with a lip curl that set his blood afire – "as if any woman worth while would care two pins for your wretched pot of gold!"

"Oh, I didn't mean it quite that way," he hastened to explain. "I said: 'Buy the privilege.' If you knew the conditions you would understand me when I say that the money must come first."

She was silent for so long a time that he looked at his watch and thought of going. But at the deciding instant she held him with a low-spoken question.

"Does it date back to the handicap? You needn't tell me if you don't want to."

"It does. And there is no reason why I shouldn't tell you the simple fact. When my father died he left me a debt – a debt of honor; and it must be paid. Until it is paid – but I am sure you understand."

"Quite fully," she responded quickly, and now there was no trace of levity in the sweetly serious tone. "Is it much? – so much that you can't – "

He nodded and sat down again on the porch step. "Yes, it is big enough to go in a class by itself – in round numbers, a hundred thousand dollars."

"Horrors!" she gasped. "And you are carrying that millstone? Must you carry it?"

"If you knew the circumstances you would be the first to say that I must carry it, and go on carrying it to the end of the chapter."

"But – but you'll never be free!"

"Not on a government salary," he admitted. "As a matter of fact, it takes more than half of the salary to pay the premiums on – pshaw! I'm boring you shamelessly for the sake of proving up on my definition of the eternal ego. You ought not to have encouraged me. It's quite hopeless – the handicap business – unless some good angel should come along with a miracle or two. Let's drop it."

She was looking beyond him and her voice was quick with womanly sympathy when she said: "If you could drop it – but you can't. And it changes everything for you, distorts everything, colors your entire life. It's heart-breaking!"

This was dangerous ground for him and he knew it. Sympathy applied to a rankling wound may figure either as the healing oil or the maddening wine. It was the one thing he had hitherto avoided, resolutely, half-fearfully, as a good general going into battle marches around a kennel of sleeping dogs. But now the under-depths were stirring to a new awakening. In the ardor of young manhood he had taken up the vicarious burden dutifully, and at that time his renunciation of the things that other men strove for seemed the lightest of the many fetterings. But now love for a woman was threatening to make the renunciation too grievous to be borne.

"How did you know?" he queried curiously. "It does change things; it has changed them fiercely in the past few weeks. We smile at the old fable of a man selling his soul for a ready-money consideration, but there are times when I'd sell anything I've got, save one, for a chance at the freedom that other men have – and don't value."

"What is the one thing you wouldn't sell?" she questioned, and Brouillard chose to discover a gently quickened interest in the clear-seeing eyes.

"My love for the – for some woman. I'm saving that, you know. It is the only capital I'll have when the big debt is paid."

"Do you want me to be frivolous or serious?" she asked, looking down at him with the grimacing little smile that always reminded him of a caress. "A little while ago you said 'some woman,' and now you say it again, making it cautiously impersonal. That is nice of you – not to particularize; but I have been wondering whether she is or isn't worth the effort – and the reservation you make. Because it is all in that, you know. You can do and be what you want to do and be if you only want to hard enough."

He looked up quickly.

"Do you really believe that? What about a man's natural limitations?"

"Poof!" she said, blowing the word away as if it were a bit of thistle-down. "It is only the woman's limitations that count, not the man's. The only question is this: Is the one only and incomparable she worth the effort? Would you give a hundred thousand dollars for the privilege of being able to say to her: 'Come, dear, let's go and get married'?"

He was looking down, chiefly because he dared not look up, when he answered soberly: "She is worth it many times over; her price is above rubies. Money, much or little, wouldn't be in it."

"That is better – much better. Now we may go on to the ways and means; they are all in the man, not in the things, 'not none whatsoever,' as Tig would say. Let me show you what I mean. Three times within my recollection my father has been worth considerably more than you owe, and three time she has – well, it's gone. And now he is going to make good again when the railroad comes."

Brouillard got up, thrust his hands into the pockets of his working-coat, and faced about as if he had suddenly remembered that he was wasting the government's time.

"I must be going back down the hill," he said. And then, without warning: "What if I should tell you that the railroad is not coming to the Niquoia, Amy?"

To his utter amazement the blue eyes filled suddenly. But the owner of the eyes was winking the tears away and laughing before he could put the amazement into words.

"You shouldn't hit out like that when one isn't looking; it's wicked," she protested. "Besides, the railroad is coming; it's got to come."

"It is still undecided," he told her mechanically. "Mr. Ford is coming over with the engineers to have a conference on the ground with – with the Cortwright people. I am expecting him any day."

"The Cortwright people want the road, don't they?" she asked.

"Yes, indeed; they are turning heaven and earth over to get it."

"And the government?"

"The department is holding entirely aloof, as it should. Every one in the Reclamation Service knows that no good can possibly come of any effort to force the region ahead of its normal and natural development. And, besides, none of us here in the valley want to help blow the Cortwright bubble any bigger than it has to be."

"Then you will advise against the building of the Extension?"

Instead of answering her question he asked one of his own.

"What does it mean to you – to you, personally, and apart from the money your father might make out of it, Amy?"

She hesitated a moment and then met the shrewd scrutiny of his gaze with open candor.

"The money is only a means to an end – as yours will be. You know very well what I meant when I told you that three times we have been obliged to come back to the mountains to – to try again. I dreaded the coming of your camp; I dread a thousand times more the other changes that are coming – the temptations that a mushroom city will offer. This time father has promised me that when he can make his stake he will go back to Kentucky and settle down; and he will keep his promise. More than that, Stevie has promised me that he will go, too, if he can have a stock-farm and raise fine horses – his one healthy ambition. Now you know it all."

He reached up from the lower step where he was standing and took her hand.

"Yes; and I know more than that: I know that you are a mighty brave little girl and that your load is heavier than mine – worlds heavier. But you're going to win out; if not to-day or to-morrow, why, then, the day after. It's written in the book."

She returned his hand-grip of encouragement impulsively and smiled down upon him through quick-springing tears.

"You'll win out, too, Victor, because it's in you to do it. I'm sure of it – I know it. There is only one thing that scares me."

"Name it," he said. "I'm taking everything that comes to-day – from you."

"You are a strong man; you have a reserve of strength that is greater than most men's full gift; you can cut and slash your way to the thing you really want, and nothing can stop you. But – you'll forgive me for being plain, won't you? – there is a little, just the least little, bit of desperation in the present point of view, and – "

"Say it," he commanded when she hesitated.

"I hardly know how to say it. It's just a little shudder – inside, you know – as you might have when you see a railroad train rushing down the mountain and think what would happen if one single, inconsequent wheel should climb the rail. There were ideals in the beginning; you admitted it, didn't you? And they are not as distinct now as they used to be. You didn't say that, but I know… Stand them up again, Victor; don't let them fall down in the dust or in the – in the mud. It's got to be clean money, you know; the money that is going to give you the chance to say: 'Come, girl, let's go and get married.' You won't forget that, will you?"

He relinquished the hand of encouragement because he dared not hold it any longer, and turned away to stare absently at the timbered tunnel mouth whence a faint clinking of hammer upon steel issued with monotonous regularity.