The City of Numbered Days, Page 4

  IV

  A Fire of Little Sticks

  Two days after the arrival of the letter from Washington announcing theapproaching invasion of private capital, Brouillard, returning from ahorseback trip into the Buckskin, where Anson and Griffith were settinggrade stakes for the canal diggers, found a visitor awaiting him in thecamp headquarters office.

  One glance at the thick-bodied, heavy-faced man chewing an extinct cigarwhile he made himself comfortable in the only approach to a loungingchair that the office afforded was sufficient to awaken an alertantagonism. Quick to found friendships or enmities upon the intuitivefirst impression, Brouillard's acknowledgment was curt andbusiness-brusque when the big man introduced himself without taking thetrouble to get out of his chair.

  "My name is Hosford and I represent the Niquoia Improvement Company asits manager and resident engineer," said the lounger, shifting the deadcigar from one corner of his hard-bitted mouth to the other. "You'reBrillard, the government man, I take it?"

  "Brouillard, if you please," was the crisp correction. And then with acareful effacement of the final saving trace of hospitality in tone ormanner: "What can we do for you, Mr. Hosford?"

  "A good many things, first and last. I'm two or three days ahead of myoutfit, and you can put me up somewhere until I get a camp of my own.You've got some sort of an engineers' mess, I take it?"

  "We have," said Brouillard briefly. With Anson and Griffith absent onthe field-work, there were two vacancies in the staff mess. Moreover,the law of the desert prescribes that not even an enemy shall be refusedbread and bed. "You'll make yourself at home with us, of course," headded, and he tried to say it without making it sound too much like achallenge.

  "All right; so much for that part of it," said the self-invited guest."Now for the business end of the deal--why don't you sit down?"

  Brouillard planted himself behind his desk and began to fill hisblackened office pipe, coldly refusing Hosford's tender of a cigar.

  "You were speaking of the business matter," he suggested bluntly.

  "Yes. I'd like to go over your plans for the power dam in the uppercanyon. If they look good to me I'll adopt them."

  Brouillard paused to light his pipe before he replied.

  "Perhaps we'd better clear away the underbrush before we begin on thestanding timber, Mr. Hosford," he said, when the tobacco was glowingmilitantly in the pipe bowl. "Have you been given to understand thatthis office is in any sense a tail to your Improvement Company's kite?"

  "I haven't been 'given to understand' anything," was the gruffrejoinder. "Our company has acquired certain rights in this valley, andI'm taking it for granted that you've had the situation doped out toyou. It won't be worth your while to quarrel with us, Mr. Brouillard."

  "I am very far from wishing to quarrel with anybody," said Brouillard,but his tone belied the words. "At the same time, if you think that weare going to do your engineering work, or any part of it, for you, youare pretty severely mistaken. Our own job is fully big enough to keep usbusy."

  "You're off," said the big man coolly. "Somebody has bungled in givingyou the dope. You want to keep your job, don't you?"

  "That is neither here nor there. What we are discussing at present isthe department's attitude toward your enterprise. I shall be exceedingmy instructions if I make that attitude friendly to the detriment of myown work."

  The new resident manager sat back in his chair and chewed his cigarreflectively, staring up at the log beaming of the office ceiling. Whenhe began again he did not seem to think it worth while to shift his gazefrom the abstractions.

  "You're just like all the other government men I've ever had to dobusiness with, Brouillard; pig-headed, obstinate, blind as bats to theirown interests. I didn't especially want to begin by knocking you intoline, but I guess it'll have to be done. In the first place, let me tellyou that there are all kinds of big money behind this little sky-rocketof ours here in the Niquoia: ten millions, twenty millions, thirtymillions, if they're needed."

  Brouillard shook his head. "I can't count beyond a hundred, Mr.Hosford."

  "All right; then I'll get you on the other side. Suppose I should tellyou that practically all of your bosses are in with us; what then?"

  "Your stockholders' listings concern me even less than yourcapitalization. We are miles apart yet."

  Again the representative of Niquoia Improvement took time to shift theextinct cigar.

  "I guess the best way to get you is to send a little wire toWashington," he said reflectively. "How does that strike you?"

  "I haven't the slightest interest in what you may do or fail to do,"said Brouillard. "At the same time, as I have already said, I don't wishto quarrel with you or with your company."

  "Ah! that touched you, didn't it?"

  "Not in the sense you are imagining; no. Send your wire if you like. Youmay have the use of the government telegraph. The office is in thesecond shack north of this."

  "Still you say you don't want to scrap?"

  "Certainly not. As you have intimated, we shall have to do businesstogether as buyer and seller. I merely wished to make it plain that theReclamation Service doesn't put its engineering department at thedisposal of the Niquoia Improvement Company."

  "But you have made the plans for this power plant, haven't you?"

  "Yes; and they are the property of the department. If you want them,I'll turn them over to you upon a proper order from headquarters."

  "That's a little more like it. Where did you say I'd find your wireoffice?"

  Brouillard gave the information a second time, and as Hosford went out,Grislow came in and took his place at the mapping table.

  "Glad you got back in time to save my life," he remarked pointedly, witha sly glance at his chief. "He's been ploughing furrows up and down mylittle potato patch all day."

  "Humph! Digging for information, I suppose?" grunted Brouillard.

  "Just that; and he's been getting it, too. Not out of me, particularly,but out of everybody. Also, he was willing to impart a little. We're infor the time of our lives, Victor."

  "I know it," was the crabbed rejoinder.

  "You don't know the tenth part of it," asserted the hydrographer slowly."It's a modest name, 'The Niquoia Improvement Company,' but it is goingto be like charity--covering a multitude of sins. Do you know what thatplank-faced organizer has got up his sleeve? He is going to build us aneat, up-to-date little city right here in the middle of our midst. If Ihadn't made him believe that I was only a draughtsman, he would havehad me out with a transit, running the lines for the streets."

  "A city?--in this reservoir bottom? I guess not. He was only stringingyou to kill time, Grizzy."

  "Don't you fool yourself!" exclaimed the map-maker. "He's got the plansin his grip. We're going to be on a little reservation set apart for usby the grace of God and the kindness of these promoters. The remainderof the valley is laid off into cute little squares and streets, witheverything named and numbered, ready to be listed in the brokers'offices. You may not be aware of it, but this palatial office buildingof ours fronts on Chigringo Avenue."

  "Stuff!" said Brouillard. "What has all this bubble blowing got to dowith the building of a temporary power dam and the setting up of acouple of cement kilns?"

  Grislow laid his pen aside and whirled around on his working-stool.

  "Don't you make any easy-going mistake, Victor," he said earnestly. "Thecement and power proposition is only a side issue. These new people aregoing to take over the sawmills, open up quarries, build a stub railroadto the Hophra mines, grade a practicable stage road over the range toQuesado, and put on a fast-mule freight line to serve until the railroadbuilds in. Wouldn't that set your teeth on edge?"

  "I can't believe it, Murray. It's a leaf out of the book of Bedlam! Takea fair shot at it and see where the bullet lands: this entire crazy fakeis built upon one solitary, lonesome fact--the fact that we're here,with a job on our hands big enough to create an active, present-momentmarket for la
bor and material. There is absolutely nothing else behindthe bubble blowing; if we were not here the Niquoia Improvement Companywould never have been heard of!"

  Grislow laughed. "Your arguing that twice two makes four doesn't changethe iridescent hue of the bubble," he volunteered. "If big money hasseen a chance to skin somebody, the mere fact that the end of the worldis due to come along down the pike some day isn't going to cut anyobstructing figure. We'll all be buying and selling corner lots inHosford's new city before we're a month older. Don't you believe it?"

  "I'll believe it when I see it," was Brouillard's reply; and with thisthe matter rested for the moment.

  It was later in the day, an hour or so after the serving of the heartysupper in the engineers' mess tent, that Brouillard was given to seeanother and still less tolerable side of his temporary guest. Hosfordhad come into the office to plant himself solidly in the makeshifteasy-chair for the smoking of a big, black, after-supper cigar.

  "I've been looking over your rules and regulations, Brouillard," hebegan, after an interval of silence which Brouillard had been carefulnot to break. "You're making a capital mistake in trying to transplantthe old Connecticut blue laws out here. Your working-men ought to havethe right to spend their money in any way that suits 'em."

  Brouillard was pointedly occupying himself at his desk, but he looked uplong enough to say: "Whiskey, you mean?"

  "That and other things. They tell me that you don't allow any opengambling, or any women here outside of the families of the workmen."

  "We don't," was the short rejoinder.

  "That won't hold water after we get things fairly in motion."

  "It will have to hold water, so far as we are concerned, if I have tobuild a stockade around the camp," snapped Brouillard.

  Hosford's heavy face wrinkled itself in a mirthless smile. "You'renutty," he remarked. "When I find a man bearing down hard on all thelittle vices, it always makes me wonder what's the name of the corkingbig one he is trying to cover up."

  Since there was obviously no peaceful reply to be made to this,Brouillard bent lower over his work and said nothing. At every freshstep in the forced acquaintance the new-comer was painstakinglydeveloping new antagonisms. Sooner or later, Brouillard knew, it wouldcome to an open rupture, but he was hoping that the actual hostilitiescould be postponed until after Hosford had worn out his temporarywelcome as a guest in the engineers' mess.

  For a time the big man in the easy-chair smoked on in silence. Then hebegan again:

  "Say, Brouillard, I saw one little girl to-day that didn't belongto your workmen's-family outfit, and she's a peach; came ridingdown the trail with her brother from that mine up on the southmountain--Massingale's, isn't it? By Jove! she fairly made my mouthwater!"

  Inasmuch as no man can read field-notes when the page has suddenlybecome a red blur, Brouillard looked up.

  "You are my guest, in a way, Mr. Hosford; for that reason I can't verywell tell you what I think of you." So much he was able to say quietly.Then the control mechanism burned out in a flash of fiery rage and hecursed the guest fluently and comprehensively, winding up with a crudeand savage threat of dissection and dismemberment if he should everventure so much as to name Miss Massingale again in the threatener'shearing.

  Hosford sat up slowly, and his big face turned darkly red.

  "Well, I'll be damned!" he broke out. "So you're _that_ kind of afire-eater, are you? Lord, Lord! I didn't suppose anything like thatever happened outside of the ten-cent shockers. Wake up, man; this isthe twentieth century we're living in. Don't look at me that way!"

  But the wave of insane wrath was already subsiding, and Brouillard, halfashamed of the momentary lapse into savagery, was once more scowlingdown at the pages of his note-book. Further along, when the succeedingsilence had been undisturbed for five full minutes, he began to realizethat the hot Brouillard temper, which he had heretofore been able tokeep within prudent bounds, had latterly been growing more and morerebellious. He could no longer be sure of what he would say or do undersudden provocation. True, he argued, the provocation in the presentinstance had been sufficiently maddening; but there had been otherupflashings of the murderous inner fire with less to excuse them.

  Hosford finished his cigar, and when he tossed the butt out through theopened window, Brouillard hoped he was going. But the promoter-managermade no move other than to take a fresh cigar from his pocket case andlight it. Brouillard worked on silently, ignoring the big figure in theeasy-chair by the window, and striving to regain his lost equilibrium.To have shown Hosford the weakness of the control barriers was badenough, but to have pointed out the exact spot at which they were mosteasily assailable was worse. He thought it would be singular if Hosfordshould not remember how and where to strike when the real conflictshould begin, and he was properly humiliated by the reflection that hehad rashly given the enemy an advantage.

  He was calling Hosford "the enemy" now and making no amelioratingreservations. That the plans of the boomers would speedily breed chaos,and bring the blight of disorder and lawlessness upon the Niquoiaproject and everything connected with it, he made no manner of doubt.How was he to hold a camp of several hundred men in decent subjectionif the temptations and allurements of a boomers' city were to be broughtin and set down within arm's reach of the work on the dam? It seemedblankly incredible that the department heads in Washington shouldsanction such an invasion if they knew the full meaning of it.

  The "if" gave him an idea. What if the boomers were taking anunauthorized ell for their authorized inch? He had taken a telegraph padfrom the desk stationery rack and was composing his message of inquirywhen the door opened and Quinlan, the operator, came in with acommunication fresh from the Washington wire. The message was anindirect reply to Hosford's telegraphed appeal to the higher powers.Brouillard read it, stuck it upon the file, and took a roll ofblue-prints from the bottom drawer of his desk.

  "Here are the drawings for your power installation, Mr. Hosford," hesaid, handing the roll to the man in the chair. And a little later hewent out to smoke a pipe in the open air, leaving the message of inquiryunwritten.