Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 122, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 May 1916 — The City of Numbercd Days [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The City of Numbercd Days

By Francis Lynde

CtpyricH by durica Scribner’* Sana

SYNOPSIS. 2 Brouillard. chief engineer on the Nlquofa irrigation dam, goes out from camp to investigate a strange light and finds an automobile party camped at the canyon portal. Brouillard meets J. Wesley Cortwright.

CHAPTER ll—Continued. "I was Just telling Van Bruce that his thundering fish cartridge would raise the neighbors,” the trail climber went on with a stout man’s chuckle. And then: “You're one of the reclamation engineers? Great work the government is undertaking here. You are connected with It, aren’t you?” Brouillard’s nod was for the man, but his words were for the young woman whose beauty refused to be quenched by the touring handicaps. "Yes, I am in charge of It,” he said. “Ha!" said the stout man, and this time the exclamation was purely approbative. “Chief engineer, eh? That’s fine, fine! My name is Cortwright— J. Wesley Cortwright of Chicago. And yours is—?” Brouillard named himself in one word. Strangers usually found him bluntly unresponsive to anything like effusiveness, but he was finding it curiously difficult to resist the goodnatured heartiness which seemed to exude from the talkative gentleman, overlaying him like the honeydew on the leaves in a droughty forest. If Mr. J. Wesley Cortwright's surprise on hearing the Brouillard surname was not genuine it was at least an excellent imitation. "Well, well, well —you don’t say! Not of the Brouillards of Knox county, Indiana? —buL of course. you must be.” “Yes," said Brouillard. “Our branch of the family settled near Vincennes, and my father was on the bench, when he wasn’t in politics.” "What? Not Judge Antoine! Why, my dear young man! Do you know that I once had the pleasure of introducing your good father to my bankers in Chicago? It was years ago, at a time when he was Interested in floating a bond issue for some growing industry down on the Wabash. And to think that away out here in this howling wilderness, a thousand miles from nowhere, as you might say, I should meet his son!” Brouillard laughed and fell headlong Unto the pit of triteness. "The world isn’t so very big when you come to surround it properly, Mr. •Cortwright,” he asserted. “You are wondering what fool notion chased us away out here in the desert when we had a comfortable hotel to stop at," he rattled on. “I’ll tell you, Mr. Brouillard —in confidence. It was curiosity—raw, country curiosity. The papers and magazines have been full of this Buckskin reclamation scheme, and we wanted to see the place where all the wonderful miracles were going to get themselves wrought •out. Have you got time to ‘put us next?’ 'L —-- ——7 Brouillard, as the son of the man who had been Introduced to the Chicago money gods in his hour of need, could scarcely do less than to take the time. The project, he explained, contemplated the building of a high dam across the upper end of the Niquoia canyon and the converting of the inland valley above into a great storage reservoir, From this reservoir a series of distributing canals would lead the water out upon the arid lands of the Buckskin and the miracle would be a fact accomplished. “Sure, sure!” said the cheerful querist, feeling In the pockets of the automobile coat for a cigar. At the match-striking instant he remembered a thing neglected. “By George! you’ll have to pardon me, Mr. Brouillard; I’m always forgetting the little social dewdabs. Let me present you to my daughter Genevieve. Gene, shake hands with the son of my good old friend. Judge Antoine Brouillard of Vincennes." . It was rather awkwardly done, and somehow Brouillard could not help fancying that Mr. Cortwright could have done It better. But when the unquenchable beauty stripped her gauntlet and gave him her hand, with a dazzling smile and a word of acknowledgment which was not borrowed from her father’s effusive vocabulary, he straightway fell into another pit of triteness and his saving first impressions of Mr. J. Wesley Cortwright's character began to fade. "Pm Immensely interested," was Miss Cortwright's comment on the outlinlng of the reclamation project. "Do you mean to say that real farms with green things growing on them can be made out of that frightful desert we drove over yesterday afternoon?" . Brouillard smiled and plunged fatu-

ously. "Oh, yes; the farms are already there. Nature made them, you know; she merely forgot to arrange for their watering.” He was going on to tell about the exhaustive experiments the department of agriculture experts had been making upon the Buckskin soils when the gentleman whose name had once figured upon countless thousands of lard packages cut in. “Mr. Brouillard, how far is it up to where you are going to build your dam?” "I’ll be glad to show you the way if you care to try,” Brouillard offered; and the tentative invitation was promptly accepted. The transfer of viewpoints from the lower end of the canyon to the upper was effected without incident, save at its beginning, when the father would have called down to the young man who had waded ashore and was drying himself before the campfire. “Van Bruce won’t care to go," the daughter hastened to say; and Brouillard, whose gift it was to be able to pick out and identify the human derelict at long range, understood perfectly well the reason for the young woman’s hasty interruption. One result of the successfully marketed lard packages was very plainly evident in the dissipated face and hangdog attitude of the marketer’s son. Conversation flagged on the climb from the Buckskin level to that of the reservoir valley; but when they reached the pine tree of the anchored blueprints at the upper portal, Mr. Cortwright recovered his breath sufficiently to gasp his appreciation of the prospect and its possibilities. “Why, good goodness, Mr. Brouillard, it’s practically all done for you!” he wheezed, taking in the level, moun-tain-inclosed valley with an appralsive

eye-sweep. "What will you do? —build your dam right here and take out your canal through the canyon? Is that the plan?” Brouillard nodded and went a little further into details, showing how the inward-arching barrier would be anchored into the two opposing mountain buttresses. “And the structure itself—how high is it to be?” “Two hundred feet above the spillway apron foot; concrete and steel." “Then you are going to need Portland cement —a whole lot of it. Where will you get it? And how will you get it here?” Brouillard smiled inwardly at the pork packer’s suddenly awakened interest in the technical ways and means. His four years in the desert had taken him out of touch with a money-making world, and this momentary contact with one of its successful devotees was illuminating.

I CHAPTER 111 I No Easy Mark

“We are in luck on the cement proposition,” Brouillard told the eager money-maker. “We shall probably manufacture our own supply right here on the ground." “H’m,” said the millionaire; “a cement plant, eh? The materials have all been tested, I suppose?" “Oh, yes; we’ve had experts in here for more than a year. The material is all right.’’ "And your labor?” “On the dam, you mean? We shall work all the Indians we can get from the Navajo reservation, forty-odd miles south of here; for the‘remainder we shall import men from the States." Mr. Cortwright’s calculating eye roved once more over the attractive prospect. "Fuel for your power plant?—wood, 1 take it?" be surmised; and then: "Oh, I forgot; you say you ha to coal."

"Yes; there Is coai, of a sort; good enough for the cement kilns. For power we shall utilize the river There is another small canyon at the head of the valley where a temporary dam can be built which will deliver power enough to run anything—an entire manufacturing city, if we had one.” “No chance for a man to get the thin edge of a wedge in anywhere,” lamented the money-maker despairingly. Then his eye lighted upon the graybeard dump of a solitary mine high up on tbs face of Mount Chigringo. “What's that up there?” he demanded. “It is a mine," said Brouillard, showing Miss Cortwright how to adjust the fieldglass for the shorter distance. “Two men named Massingale, father and son, are working it, I’m told.” And then again to Miss Genevieve: “That is their cabin —on the trail a little to the right of the tunnel opening.” “I see it quite plainly,” she returned. “Two people are just leaving it to ride down the path—a man and a woman, I think, though the woman —if it is a woman—is riding on a man’s saddle." Brouillard’s eyebrows went up in a little arch of surprise. Harding, the topographical engineer who had made all the preliminary surveys and had spent the better part of the former summer in the Niquoia, had reported on the Massingales, father and son, and his report had conveyed a hint of possible antagonism on the part of the mine owners to the government project. But there had been no mention of a woman. “The Massingale mine, eh?” broke in the appraiser of values crisply. “They showed us some ore specimens from that property while we were stopping oyer in Red Butte. It’s rich — good and plenty rich —if they have the quantity. And somebody told me they had the quantity, too; only it was too far from the railroad —couldn’t jackfreight it profitably over the Timanyonis.” “In which case it is one of many," Brouillard said, taking refuge in the generalities. But Mr. Cortwright was not to be so easily diverted from the pointed particulars —the particulars having to do with the pursuit of the market trail. ‘Tm beginning to get my feet on bottom, Brouillard," he said, dropping the courtesy prefix and shoving his fat hands deep into the pockets of the dust-coat. “There’s a business proposition here, and it looks mighty good to me. I tell you, I can smell money in this valley of yours—scads of it.” Brouillard laughed. "It is only the fragrance of future reclamation-serv-ice appropriations," he suggested. "There will be a good bit of money spent here before the Bucksktn desert gets its maiden wetting.” “I don’t mean that at all," was the impatient rejoinder. “Let me show you: you are going to have a population of some sort. That’s the basis. Then you’re going to need cement, lumber and steel. It can be manufactured right here on the spot." “The cement and the lumber can be produced here, but not the steel,” Brouillard corrected. “That’s where you’re off,” snapped the millionaire. “There are fine ore beds in the Hophras and a pretty good quality of coking coal. Ten or twelve miles of a narrow-gauge railroad would dump the pig metal into the upper end of your valley, and there you are. With a small reduction plant you could tell the big steel people to go hang." "Unquestionably. But this is a case of can’t-help-it," Brouillard argued. “You couldn’t begin to interest private capital in any of those industries you speak of.” “Why not?” was the curt demand. "Because when the dam is completed and the spillway gates are closed, the Niqoyastcadje and everything in it will go down under two hundred feet of water.” “The —what?” queried Miss Cortwright. * “The Niqoyastcadje ‘Place-where-they-came-up’ ” said Brouillard, elucidating for her. "That is the Navajo name for this valley. Our map makers shortened it to 'Niquoia' and the cowmen of the Buckskin foothills have cut that to ‘Nick-wire.’” This bit of explanatory place lore was entirely lost upon Mr. J. Wesley Cortwright. “Say, Brouillard,'ike cut in, "you get me the right to build that power dam, and give me the contracts for what material you’d rather buy than make, and I’ll be switched if I don’t take a shot at this drowning proposition myself. I tell you, it looks pretty good to me. What do you say?” p-r— “I say,” laughed the young chief of construction, “that I’m only a hired man. You’ll have to go a good few rounds higher up on the authority ladder to close a deal like that. I’m not sure it wouldn’t require an act of congress.” "Well, by George, we might get even that if we had to,” was the optimistic assertion. "You think about it.” "I guess it isn’t my think," said Brouillard, Inclined to take the retired pork packer’s suggestion as the mere ravings of a money-mad promoter. "As the government engineer in charge of this work, I couldn't afford to be identified even as a friendly intermediary in any such scheme as the one you are proposing.” "Of course, I suppose not.” agreed the would-be promoter, sucking his under lip in a way ominously familiar to his antagonists tn the whea£_PiLThen he glanced at his watch and changed the subject abruptly. "We’ll have to be straggling back to the chug-wagon. Much obliged to you, Mr. Brouillard. Will you come down and see us off?” At the final descent in the trail, with the Buckskin blanknesses showing ]

hotly beyond the curtaining pfflM, they passed at a step from romance to the crude realities. The realities were basing themselves upon the advent of two newcomers, riding down the Chigringo trail to the ford which had been the scene of the fish slaughtering-! a sunburnt young man in goatskin "chaps,’’ flannel shirt and a flapping Stetson, and a girl whose face reminded Brouillard of one of the Madonnas, whose name and painter he strove vainly to recall. Ten seconds farther along the horses of the pair were sniffing suspiciously at the automobile, and the young man under the flapping hat was telling Van Bruce Cortwrlght what he thought of cartridge fishermen in general, and of this present cartridge fisherman in particular. "Which the same, being translated into Buckskin English, hollers like this,” he concluded. "Don’t you tote

any more fish ca’tridges into this here rese’vation; not no more, whatsoever. Who says so? Well, if anybody should ask, you might say it was Tig Smith, foreman o’ the Tri’-Circ’ outfit. No, I ain’t no game warden, but what I say goes as she lays. Savez?” Brouillard walked his companion down to the car and helped her to a seat in the tonneau. She repaid him with a nod and a smile, and when he saw that the crudities were not troubling her he stepped aside and unconsciously fell to comparing the two —the girl on horseback and his walking mate of the canyon passage. They had little enough in common, apart from their descent from Eve, he decided —and the decision itself was subconscious. The millionaire’s daugh-, ter was a warm blonde, beautiful, queenly, a finished product of civilization and high-priced culture; a woman of the world. And the girl on horseback? A rather slight figure, a face winsome, masses of copper-brown hair, eyes . . . He caught himself wondering if her cowboy lover —he had already jumped to the sentimental conclusion —had ever been able to look into those steadfast eyes and trifle with the truth. When the fish-slaughtering matter was finally settled —not by the tender of money that Mr. Cortwrlght had made—the man Smith and his pretty riding mate galloped through the ford and disappeared among the barren hills. “Au revoir, Mr. Brouillard,” said the princess, as the big car righted itself for the southward flight into the desert. “If I were you I shouldn’t fall in love with the calm-eyed goddess who rides like a man. Mr. Tri’-Circ’ Smith might object, you know." There was something almost heartwarming in the bit of parting badinage; but the warmth might have given place to a disconcerting chill if he could have heard Mr. J. Wesley Cortwright’s remark to his seat companion. “He isn’t going to be the dead easy mark I hoped to find in the son of the old bankrupt hair-splitter, Genie, girl. But he’ll come down and hook himself all right if the bait is well covered with his particular brand of sugar. Don’t you forget it”

CHAPTER IV Sands of Pactolus

If Victor Brouillard had been disposed to speculate curiously upon the possibilities suggested by Mr. J. Wesley Cortwright on the occasion of the capitalist’s brief visit to the Niquoia, there was little leisure for it. Fairly confronting his problem, Brouillard did not find himself hampered by departmental Inertia. While he was rapidly organizing his force for the constructive attack, the equipment and preliminary material for the upbuilding of the great dam were piling up by the trainload on the sidetracks at Quesado, and at once the man and beast killing task of rushing the excavating outfit of machinery, teams, scrapers, rock-drilling Installations, steam shovels, and the like, over the War Arrow trail was begun.

Which Is the more guilty, the rich man who bribes one who needs money or the man who takes It? If trouble comes, the man who takes the money usually goes to prison. Should the rich brlbe-glver—the tempterspend Just as much time behind the bare?

„ WhatwUL be-lha .fimatep Brouillard takes to thwart the great efforts of Cortwright and congressional politicians in their concession-grabbing scheme? Watch for developments in the next Installment.

(TO BE CONTINUED.)

“Chief Engineer, eh? That’s Fine, Fine!”

“I See It Quite Plainly," She Returned.