Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 128, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 May 1916 — Page 2

The City of Numbered Days

•YNOPBIB. “““ Broulllard. ohlef engineer of the NI quote Irrigation dam, goe* out from camp to Investigate a strange light and finds an automobile party camped at the canyon portal. He meets J. Wesley Cortwrlght and his daughter, Genevieve, of the auto party, and explains the reclamation work to them. Cortwrlght sees In the project a big chance to make money. Broulllard is Impervious to hints from the financier, who tells Genevieve that the engineer •‘Will come down and hook himself If the bait is well covered.” Cortwrlght organises a company and obtains government oontr&cts to furnish power and material for the dam construction. A busy city springs up about the site. Steve Masslnnle threatens to start a gold rush If Broulllard does not influence President Ford to build a railroad branch to the place, thus opening an easy market for the ore from the "Little Susan” mine. Broulllard and the company’s promoter clash.

If you were in love with a girl and a beast of a man, who had the power to get you fired from your Job, made a smirking remark about her to you, would you smash him in the jaw and kick him out of your office — even If the act caused an indefinite postponement of your wedding?

CHAPTER V—Continued. “I cant believe It, Murray. It’s a leaf out of the book of Bedlam! Take a fair shot at It and see where the bullet lands: this entire crazy fake is built upon one solitary, lonesome sact —the fact that we’re here, with a Job on our hands big enough to create an active, present-moment market for labor and material. There Is absolutely nothing else behind the bubble Mowing; If we were not here the Niquoia Improvement company would never have, been heard of!” Grlslow laughed. "Your arguing that twice two makes four doesn’t change the iridescent hue of the bubble,” he volunteered. "If big money has seen a chance to skin somebody, the mere fact that the end of the world Is due to come along down the pike some day Isn’t going to cut any obstructing figure. We'll all be buying and selling corner lots In Hosford’s new city before we’re a month older. Don’t you believe It?” ‘Til believe It when I see It," was Broulllard’s reply; and with this the matter rested for the moment. It was later in the day, an hour or so after the serving of the hearty supper in the engineers' mess tent, that Broulllard was given to see another and still less tolerable side of bis temporary guest. Hosford had come .Into the office to plant himself solidly In the makeshift easy chair for the smoking of a big, black after-Bup-per cigar. "I’ve been looking over your rules and regulations, Broulllard," he began, after an interval of silence which Broulllard had been careful not to break. "You’re making a capital mistake in trying to transplant the old Connecticut blue laws out here. Your workingmen ought to have the right to

“I Can't Believe It, Murray. It’s a Leaf Out of the Book of Bedlam!"

spend their money in any way that suits ’em." Brouillard was pointedly occupying himself at his desk, but he looked up long enough to say: "Whisky, you mean?” "That and other things. They tell me you don’t allow any open gambling or any women here outside of the families of the workmen." "We don’t,” was the short rejoinder. "I'hat won’t hold water after we get things fairly in motion." "It will hare to hold water as far as we are concerned, if I have to build a stockade around the camp," snapped Brouillard. Hosford’s heavy face wrinkled itself tln a mirthless smile. “You’re nutty," be remarked. "When I find a man bearing down bard on all the little vices, it always makes me wonder what’s the name of the corking big one he is trying to cover up." otMg there was obviously no peace-

By Francis Lynde

CsmUkkr Ckarki Sartkaa’i Sms

ful reply to be made to this, Broulllard bent lower over his work and said nothing. At every fresh step in the forced acquaintance the newcomer was painstakingly developing new antagonisms. Sooner or later, Broulllard knew, it would come to an open rupture, but he was hoping that the actual hostilities could be postponed until after Hosford had worn out his temporary welcome as a guest in the engineers’ mess. For a time the big man In the easy chair smoked on in silence. Then he began again: "Say, Broulllard, I saw one little girl today that didn’t belong to your work-men’s-famlly outfit, and she’s a peach; came riding down the trail with her brother from that mine up on the south mountain —Massingale, isn’t It? By Jove! she fairly made my mouth water!”

Inasmuch as no man can read fieldnotes when the page has suddenly become a red blur, Broulllard looked up, "You are my guest, in a way, Mr. Hosford; for that reason I can’t very well 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 he cursed the guest fluently and comprehensively, winding up with a crude and savage threat of dismemberment if he should ever venture so much as to name Miss Massingale again In the threatener’s hearing. Hosford sat up slowly, and his big face turned darkly red. "Well!" he broke out. "So you’re that kind of a fire-eater, are you? I didn’t suppose anything like that ever happened outside of the ten-cent shockers. Wake up, man; this Is the twentieth century we’re living in. Don’t look at me that way!" But the wave of insane wrath was already subsiding, and Broulllard, half ashamed of the momentary lapse into savagery, was once more scowling down at the pages of his notebook, when the door opened and Quinlan, the operator, came in with a communication fresh from the Washington wire. The message was an indirect reply to Hosford’s telegraphed appeal to the higher powers. Broulllard read It, stuck It upon the file, and took a roll of blueprints from the bottom drawer of his desk. "Here are the drawings for your power Installation, Mr. Hosford,” he said, handing the roll to the man in the chair. And a little later he went out to smoke a pipe in the open air, leaving the message of Inquiry he had intended to send unwritten.

For some few minutes the two on the cabin porch made no attempt to talk, but when the rumbling thunder of the ore-car which the eider Massingale was pushing ahead of him into the mine had died away in the subterranean distances Brouillard began again. "I do get your point of view—sometimes,” he said. "Civilization, or what stands for it, does have a way of shrinking into littleness, not to say cheapness, when one can get the proper perspective. And your life up here on Chigringo has given you the needful detached point of view.” The trouble shadows in the eyes of the young woman who was sitting in the fishnet hammock gave place to a smile of gentle derision. “Do you call that civilization?*’ she demanded, indicating the straggling new town spreading itself, maplike, in the valley below. "I suppose It Is —one form of it. At least it is civilization in the making. Everything has to have some sort of a beginning.” Miss Masslngale acquiesced in a little uptilt of her perfectly rounded chin.

“Just the same, you don’t pretend to say you are enjoying it,” she said in manifest deprecation. “Oh, I don’t know. My work is down there. A few weeks ago I was righteously hot. It seemed so crudely unnecessary to start a pigeon-plucking match at thi? distance from Wall street.” < “But now,” she queried—“now, I suppose, you have become reconciled?” “I am growing more philosophical, let us say. There are just about so many pigeons to be plucked, anyway; they’d molt if they weren’t plucked. And it may as well be done here as on the stock exchange, when you come to think of It.” “I like you-least when you talk that way,” said the young woman in the hammock, with open-eyed franknesß. “Do you do it as other men do? —just to hear how it sounds ?” Brouillard, sitting on the top step of the porch, leaned his head against the porch post and laughed. “You know too much —a lot too much for a person of your tender years,” he asserted. “Which names one more of the charming collection of contradictions which your father or mother or somebody had thetemerity

CHAPTER VI ■ ■ i

Symptomatic

THE EVENING REPUBLICAN, RENSSELAER, IND.

to label 'Amy,’ sweetest and moat seraphic of diminutives." "If you don’t like my name—" she began, and then she went off at another tangent. "Please tell me wh/ I am a ‘collection of contradictions.’ ” Broulllard’s gaze went past the shapely little figure In the string hammock to lose Itself In the far Timanyonl distances. "You are a bundle of surprises, ’’ he said, letting the musing thought slip into speech. "What can you possibly know about my thoughts V She made a funny little grimace at him. "It was ’contradictions’ a moment ago and now it is ‘surprises.’ Which reminds me, you haven’t told me why I am a ‘collection.’ ” "Oh, I can catalogue them if you push me to It. One minute you are the Madonna lady that I can’t recall, calm, reposeful, truthful, and all that, you know —so truthful that those childlike eyes of yours would make a stuttering imbecile of the man who should come to you with a lie In his mouth.” "And the next minute?” "The next minute you are a witch, laughing at the man’s little weaknesses, putting your finger on them as accurately as if you could read his soul, holding them up to your ridicule and —what’s much worse —to his own. At such times your lußlght, or whatever you choose to call it, is enough to give a man a fit of 'seeing things.’" Her laugh was like a schoolgirl’s, light-hearted, ringing, deliciously unrestrained.

"What a picture!” she commented. And then: "I can draw a better one of you. Monsieur Victor de Brouillard." "Do it,” he dared. "Very well, then: Once upon a time —it was a good while ago, I’m afraid — you were a very upright young man. You would cheerfully have died for a principle in those days, and you would have allowed the enemy to cut you up Into cunning little inch cubes before you would have admitted that any pigeon was ever made to be plucked." He was smiling mirthlessly, with the black mustaches taking the sardonic upcurve. "Then what happened?" "One of two things, or maybe both of them. You were pushed out Into the life race with some sort of a handicap. I don't know what It was — or is. Is that true?”

He nodded gravely. "It is all true enough. You haven’t added anything more than a graceful little touch here and there. Who has been telling you all these things about me? Not Grlzzy ?” "No, not Murray Grlslow; It was the man you think you know best in all the world —who is also probably the one you know the least —yourself." "Good heavens! Am I really such a transparent egoist as all that?” "All men are egoists,” she answered calmly. "In some the ego Is sound and clear-eyed and strong; In others It Is weak—ln the same way that passion Is weak; it will sacrifice all it has or hopes to have in some sudden fury of self-assertion."

She sat up and put her handß to her hair, and he was free to look away, down upon the great ditch where the endless chain of concrete buckets added to the deep and widespread foundations of the dam. Across the river a group of hidden sawmills sang their raucous song. In the middle distance the camp-town city spread its roughly indicated streets over the valley level, the tall chimney stacks of the new cement plant were rising, and from the quarries beyond the plant the dull thunder of the blasts drifted up. This was not Brouillard’s first visit to the cabin on the Masslngale claim by many. In the earliest stages of the valley activities Smith, the Buckskin cattleman, had been Amy Massingale’s escort to the reclamation camp—“ Just a couple o’ lookers,” in Smith’s phrase —and the unconventional altitudes had done the rest. From that day forward thefyoung woman had hospitably opened her door to Brouillard and his assistants, and any member of the corps, from Leshlngton the morose, who commonly came to sit in solemn silence on the porch step, to Griffith, who had lost his youthful heart to Miss Masslngale on his first visit, was welcome.

CHAPTER VII

A Turn in the Trail

For Brouillard it had seemed the most natural thing in the world to fall under the spell of enchantment. He knew next to nothing of the young woman’s life story; he had not cared to know. It had not occurred to him to wonder how the daughter of a man who drilled and shot the holes in his own mine should have the gifts and belongings—when she chose to display them—of a woman of a much wider world. It was enough for him that she was piquantly attractive in any character and that he found her marvelously stimulating and uplifting. On the days when the devil of moroseness and irritability possessed and maddened him he could climb to the cabin on high Chigringo and find sanity. It was a keen joy to he with her, and up to the present this had sufficed. "Egoism is merely another name for the expression of a vital need,” he saiid after the divagating pause, defining the word more for his own satisfaction than in self-defense. - “You may put it in that way if you please,” she returned gravely. “What is your need?*’ He stated it concisely. “Money—a lot of it” • , “How singular!" she laughed. She got oat of the hammock and cams to

learn, with bar lands behind hen against the opposite porch post. "Bat tell me, what would you do with your pot _pf rainbow gold—ls you should find ttr Broulllard rose and straightened himself with his arms over bis heed like an athlete testing his muscles for the record-breaking event "What would I do? A number oC things. Bnt first of all, I think, I'd buy ths privilege of telling some woman that I love her." 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-spo-ken question. "Does it date back to the handlcapf 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 be 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—ln round numbers, a hundred thousand dollars." "Horrors!" she gasped. "And you are carrying that millstone? Must you carry it?”

“If you knew the circumstances yon 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! Let’* drop It." She was looking beyond him and her voice was quick with womanly sympathy when she said: "If you could drop

“But Tell Me, What Would You Do With Your Pot of Rainbow Gold?"

it —but you can’t. And it change* everything for you, distorts everything; colors your entire life. It’s heartbreaking!” This was dangerous ground for him and he knew it. 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 fettering*. 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 thlfigs. 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 Bell?" she questioned, and Brouihard chose to discover a gently quickened interest in the clear-seeing eyes. “My love for the —for some woman. I’m saving that, you Jmow. 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. "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 It you only want to hard enough." He was looking down, chiefly because he dared not look up, when he answered soberly: “She is it many times over; her price is above rubies. Money, much or little, wouldn’t be in it."

“That is better —muoh 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 times he has —well, it’s gone. And now he is going to make good again when the railroad comes.” Brouillard got up. “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 Nb quota, Amy?" .

Do you think that Amy will conduct a little flirtation with the despised Hosford, In order to aid her father, If she finds out that Hosford can bring the railroad te Niquoia or keep it away? (TO Bffi CONTINUmDU

SAFETY-FIRST TRAIN BEGINS TOUR

President Wilson and his cabinet witnessed the start of the United States government Safety-First special, which left Washington May 1 for a visit to 200 cities and towns. After it has been over the lines on which it started it will be switched to some other trunk line. The train, consisting of 12 steel coaches containing exhibits which illustrate the work of the various federal bureaus in saving life and property, is drawn by two engines. Each car carries the United States seal, shown partially in this picture. On the left, reading toward the center, are Secretaries Redfield, Gregory, Lansing, and Daniels. In the center is Daniel J. Willard, president of the line. On the extreme right is Secretary Baker, and next to him Secretary Wilson.

COMFORT ON TRAINS

TRAVELING PUBLIC HAS LITTLE CAUSE FOR COMPLAINT. Railroads Make Consistent Efforts to Please Their Passengers—Some Minor Deficiencies That Might Call for Correction. Attention of the railroads has been called to the deficiencies of the dining service, Kathleen Hills writes in Leslie’s. Among others the suggestion has been made that a neatly framed sigh be placed in each car announcing the time for the respective meals and the kind of service —a la carte or table d’hote —to take the place of the noisy "calls” so familiar to all travelers, and that when a train nears its final stopping place around meal hours no table in the dining car shall be dismantled while any passenger remains at a table.

On some lines, it has been noted, the starting and stopping of trains is done in a jerky manner, which does not conduce to the comfort of passengers and the coupling of sleepers in the night is often accompanied by crashes that awaken the traveler with fright. It has been suggested that when lines traverse interesting scenic or historic country, trains should be equipped with small phonographs to announce points of interest, or that Informative placards be conspicuously displayed stating on which side of the train the various points of interest lie and at what hour the train is due to paBS them. At way stations, where two or more trains pull through at approximately the same time, instead of having an announcer call the trains and their various stops, the use of a small sign on each car might give the train number, the various stops to be made and the destination. There is another side to this situation which most of us do not consider. We pay for our tickets and think it should buy everything for our comfort; we give little heed to the fact that the transportation companies take great pains to make us comfortable as we would be In our own hftnes .—often more so. Small electric lamps with frosted globes to relieve the glare on the eyes are furnished for one to read by in his berth; there Is plenty of distilled ice water provided, with individual drinking cups, individual towels and soap, and on some roads and steamships even electric curling irons for women. There are screens for the windows, comfortable seats, hassocks for the feet, steam heat and electric fans. On Christmas and other holidays every endeavor Is made to make the Journey noteworthy. On all through trains and all firstclass passenger steamers there are menus particularly appropriate to the day. Sometimes these are elaborate and are given to the passenger in the way of a souvenir, and can be mailed to friends free of charge. This year we noticed holiday banners and posters wishing the traveler the season’s greetings. If anything for the comfort of the traveler has been overlooked, it would almost seem to he accidental.

Electricity on Trains.

Those who wonder how the electricity used for lighting operating fans in coaches and the like Is generated should know that It comes from a turbine generator which is usually geared to the axle of the car, the motldl of the train operating it and supplying the current at no cost but that of “deterioration of marchin•ry.*

DEATHS DUE TO TRESPASS

Fatalities on Railroad Lines, Caused by Carelessness, Constantly Show a Substantial Increase. Fatalities in railroad accidents so far as passengers are concerned have decreased in this country. Several of the most important railroad lines in their campaign for safety have been able to announce that no deaths have resulted to travelers upon their roads for periods ranging from one to five years. Fatalities to trespassers, however, have increased proportionally seven times as much as have deaths of passengers. A recent report gives the number of trespassers killed last year as 5,471, and for the preceding 25 years as 113,480. This appalling figure represents 53 per cent of all the railroad fatalities in the United States. This percentage is remarkably constant As the Railway Age Gazette expresses it: “The more railroads there are and the more trains there are run the greater is" the hazard that they will kill persons who persist in walking on the track, and apparently the more people there are in the United States the more trespassers there are.” The railroads have endeavored to have the states act and have also attempted to deal with it themselves. They have policed their tracks and have arrested trespassers, but according to the court records these persons went unpunished because the judges refused to convict them and local 1 authorities refused to stand the expense of their imprisonment. At a meeting of the Association of Railroad Superintendents in San Francisco E. W. Camp said that his efforts to interest various state legislatures in a bill to make trespassing a misdemeanor were in almost every case futile. Where it received any favor at all the bill was made almost inoperative by limitation. One instance that he mentioned was a pro-, viso that it “should not apply to pickets during a strike.”

SET A NEW SAFETY RECORD

Year 1915 Showed a Gratifying Decrease of Accidents on the Country’s Railroad Lines. Nineteen hundred and fifteen set a new record. The greatest improvement in safety of railroad operation! ever recorded for a year is shown by the annual accident bulletin of the Interstate commerce commission. The total number of persons killed was In excess of 3,500, but of theße only 222 were passengers, the others being employees of the lines, Including freight as well as passenger service, track workers and employees at divisional points, and trespassers on tha ; rights of way. Including pedestrians and passengers of the genus hobo, riding either on the trucks or In “sidedoor Pullmans.” The striking fact in the figures Is that of approximately 1,000,000,000 passengers carried only 222 were killed. The number of persons Injured was much greater, but the cause of the decrease in the number of passengers injured In any way is to be found in the reduced number of the train accidents. The number, of Buch accidents in 1915 was 11,542,, &s against 15,006 the year before, a: decrease of 32 per cent. The number! of collisions fell more than 33 per cent; showing, as We may suppose, amuch wjder use of the, block signal system as well as higher grades of efficiency in many mechanical and dispatching. departments.

Thousands of Passenger Cars. There are 51,490 passenger cars the railroads of this country.