Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 134, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 June 1916 — Page 2

The City of numbered Days

BYNOPSIB. —B— chief engineer of the Niquoia Irrigation dam, meets J. Wesley Cortwrlght and his daughter, Genevieve and explains the reclamation work to them. Cortwright sees In the project a big chance te make money, organises a company and obtains government contracts to furnish power and material for the dam construction. A busy city springs up about the site. Steve Masslngale threatens to start a gold rush if Brouillard does 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” ftiine. On a visit to Amy Masslngale at her father’s mine Brouillard teUs her of his need for money to pay oft his dead father’s debte and that to ba free he would sacrifice anything save his love for one woman. Though his influence Is vital to the building of the railroad extension she tells him to be true to himself. He decides for It. Mirapolis, the city of numbered days, booms. Cortwright persuades Brouillard to become consulting engineer of the consolidated electric power company in return for SIOO,OOO stock. Permanent building in Mirapolis and a real estate boom are In full swing when the stoppage of work on the rhilroad threatens a panic. Brouillard spreads the Masslngale story of placer gold in the river bed and starts a gold rush. The gold rush promises to stop the reclamation project. Amy tells Brouillard that her father has incorporated the "Little Susan" and is in Cortwright’s clutches financially. He tells her he has made SIOO,OOO and declares his love.

Just imagine feelings of a man who has blunted his conscience and turned a questionable trick In finance in order to please the girl he loves, and then has been severely judged by the young lady when she discovered his handiwork. What steps will Brouillard take to square him-•elffJn-Amy** eyw?"^

CHAPTER XII—Continued.

He was abashed, confounded; and at the bottom of the tangle of conflicting emotions there was a dull glow of resentment. “I did it, as I say—for love of you. Amy; and now I have done a much more serious thing—for the same reason.’' “Tell me," she said, with a quick catching of her breath. “Your brother put a weapon in my hands, and I have used it. There was one sure way to make the railroad people get busy again. They couldn’t sit still if all the world were trying to get te a new gold camp, to which they already hare a line graded and Dearly ready for the steel.” “And you have —?” He nodded. She had retreated to take her former position, leaning against the porch post, with her hands behind her, and she had grown suddenly calm. “Don’t look at me that way, Amy,” he pleaded. “You wanted something—and I wanted to give it to you. That was all —as God hears me, it was all. You believe that, Amy? It will break my heart if you don’t believe it.” She shook her head sadly. You don’t understand, and I can’t make you understand —that is the keen misery of it If this ruthless thing you tried to do had succeeded, I should be the most wretched woman in the world.” “If it had succeeded? It has succeeded. Didn’t I say Just now that the town was crazy with excitement when I left to come up here?” The girl was shaking her head again. “God sometimes saves us in spite of ourselves,” she said gravely. “The excitement will die out. There are no placers in the Niquoia. The bars have been prospected again and again.”

CHAPTER XIII Tumults and Dangers

Brouillard turned on his heel and choked back the sudden malediction that rose to his lips. She had called Mirapolis a city of knaves and dupes; surely, he himself was the simplest of the dupes. _ *3 nee —after so long a time," he •went on. “Your brother merely ‘salted* a few shovelfuls of sand for my especial benefit Great heavens, but I was an easy mark!" "Don’t! *’ she cried, and the tears In her voice cut him to the heart — "don't make it harder for me than it has to be. ; I have told you only what I’ve heard my father say, time and again: that there is no gold in the Niquola river. And you .mustn’t ask me to despise my brother. He fights his way to his ends without caring 1 much for the consequences to others ; but tell me —haven’t you been doing the same thing?" "Yet you condone in your brother what you condemn in me,” he complained. “My brother is my brother ; and you are—let me tell you something, Victor: God helping me. I shall be no man’s evil genius, and yours least of •11. You broke down the barriers a few minutes ago and you know what Is in my heart But I can take it out of my heart if the man who put it there is not true to himself." Brouillard was silent for a little •pace, and when he spoke again it was his one awaking from a troubled dream, ijfc "I know. There is a change. I am aot the same man I was a few years, jar seen a few months ago. I have lost

By Francis Lynde

C*»plskt by Charles Scrtbser's Sobs

something; “I have not the same promptings; things that I used to loathe no longer shock me. And there is no cause. Nothing different has broken into my life save the best of all things—a great love. And you tell me that the love Is unworthy." “No, I didn’t say that; I only meant that you had misconceived it. Love is the truest, finest thing we know. It can never be the tool of evil; it may even breathe new life into the benumbed conscience.” Again a silence came and sat between them; and, as before, it was the man who broke it. “You lead me to a conclusion that I refuse to accept. Amy; that I am dominated by some Influence which is stronger than love.” “You are," she said simply. “What is it?” “Environment.” “That is the most humiliating thing you have said today.” "No. However much others may be deluded, I am sure you can see Mirapolis in its true light. The very air you breathe down there is poisoned. The taint is in the blood. Mr. Cortwright and his fellow bandits call It the ’Miracle City,' but the poor wretches on lower Chigringo avenue laugh and call it Gomorrah." “Just at the present moment It Is a city of fools—and I, the king of the fools, have made it so,” said Brouillard gloomily. From his seat on the porch step he was frowning down upon the outspread scene in the valley, where the triangular shadow of Jack’s mountain was creeping slowly across to the foot of Chigringo. Something In the measured eye-sweep brought him to his feet with a hasty exclamation: “Good Lord! the machinery has stopped! They've knocked off work on the dam!” “Why"not?” she said. “Did you imagine that your workmen were any less human than other people?" “No, of course not; that Is, I —but I haven’t any time to go into that now. Is your telephone line up here in operation?” "No, not yet.’’ “Then I must burn the wind getting down there. By Jove! if those un-

“Give Us a Job If We Come Back Tomorrow?”

speakable idiots have gone off and left the concrete to freeze wherever it happens to be —’’ “One moment,” she replied, while he was reaching for his hat. “This new madness will have spent itself by nightfall—it must. And yet I have the queerest shivery feeling, as if something dreadful were going to happen. Can’t you contrive to get word to me, some way—after it is all over? I wish you could." “I’ll do it,” he promised. 'Til come up after supper.” “No, don’t do that. You will be needed at the dam. There will be trouble, with a town full of disappointed gold-hunters, and liquor to be had. Wait a minute." She ran into the house and came out with two little paper-covered cylinders with fuses projecting. “Take these; they are Bengal lights —some of the fireworks that Tig bought in Red Butte for the Fourth. Light the blue one when you are ready to send me my message of cheer. I shall be watching for it.” “And the other?’’ he asked. "It is a red light, the signal of war and tumults and danger. If you light it, I shall know—" He nodded, dropped the paper cylinders into his pocket, and a moment later was racing down the trail to take his place at the helm of the abandoned ship of the industries. Brouillard descended upon his disheartened subordinates like a whirlwind of invincible energy, electrifying everybody into instant action. Gassman was told off to bring the Indians, who alone were loyally indifferent to the-gold craze, down from the crushers. Anson was dispatched to impress the waiters and bellboys from tfye Metropole; Leshington was sect to the shops and the bank to turn out the

THE EVENING REPUBLICAN, RENSSELAER, IND.

clerks; Grlslow 'and Handley were ordered to take charge of the makeshift concrete handlers as fast as they materialized, squadding them and driving the work of wreck clearing for every man and minute they could command, with Gassman and Bender to act as foremen. For himself, Brouillard reserved the most hazardous of the recruiting expedients. The lower avenue had already become a double rank of dives, saloons and gambling dens; here, if anywhere in the craze-depopulated town, men might be found, and for once in their lives they should be shown how other men earned money. “Shove it for every minute of daylight there is left,” he ordered, snapping out his commands to his staff while he was filling the magazine of his Winchester. “Puddle what material there is in the forms, dump the telpher buckets where they stand, and clean out the mixers; that’s the size of the job, and it’s got to be done. Jump to it, Grizzy, you and Handley, and we’ll try to fill your gangs the best way we can." “You’ll be up on the stagings yourself, won’t you?" asked Grlslow, struggling into his working coat. “After a bit. I’m going down to the lower avenue to turn out the crooks and diamond wearers. It’s time they were learning how to earn an honest dollar."

“You’ll get yourself killed up,” grumbled Leshington. “Work is the one thing you won’t get out of that crowd.” “Watch me,” rasped the chief, and he was gone as soon as he had said It. Strange things and strenuous happened in the lower end of the Niquoia valley during the few hours of daylight that remained. First, climbing nervously to the puddlers’ staging on the great dam, and led by Poodles himself, came the Metropole quota of waiters, scullions, cooks and porters, willing but skill-less. After them, and herded by Leshington, came a dapper crew of office men and clerks to snatch up the puddling spades and to soil their clothes and blister their hands in emptying the concrete buckets. Mr. Cortwright’s contribution came as a dropping fire; a handful of tree-cutiers from the Bawmills, a few picked up here and there in the deserted town, an automobile load of power-company employees shot down from the generating plant at racing speed. Last, but by no means least in numbers, came the human derelicts from the lower avenue; men in frock-coats; men in cowboy Jeans taking it as a huge joke; men with foreign faces and lowering brows and with Btrange oaths in their mouths; and behind the motley throng and marshaling It to a quickstep, Brouillard and Tig Smith. It was hot work and heavy for the strangely assorted crew, and Brouillard drove it to the limit, bribing, cajoling or threatening, patrolling the long line of staging to encourage the awkward puddlers, or side-stepping swiftly to the mixers to bring back a detachment of skulkers at the rifle’s muzzle. And by nightfall the thing was done, with the loss reduced to a minimum and the makeshift laborers dropping out In squads and groups, some laughing , some swearing, and all too weary and toil-worn to be dangerous. “Give us a job if we come back tomorrow, Mr. Brouillard?” called out the king of the gamblers in passing; and the cry was taken up by others in grim jest. “Thus endeth the first lesson," said Grislow, when the engineering corps was reassembling at the headquarters preparatory to a descent upon the supper table. But Brouillard was dumb and haggard, and when he had hung his rifle and cartridge belt on their pegs behind his desk, he went out, leaving unbroken the silence which had greeted his entrance. "The boss is taking it pretty hard," said young Griffith to no one in particular, and It was Leshington who took him up savagely and invited him to hold his tongue. least said is the soonest mended —at a funeral,” was the form the first assistant’s rebuke took. “You take my advice and don't mess or meddle with the chief until he’s had time to work this thing out of his system.” • • • The shouts of the mob were ringing in Brouillard’s ears when he strode dejectedly into the deserted maproom, and the cries were rtsfhg with a new note and in fresher frenzies a little later when Grislow came in. The hydrographer’s blue eyes were hard and his voice had a tang of bitterness in it when he said: “Well, you’ve done It. Three men have just come in with a double handful ot nuggets, and Mlrapolis makes its bow to the world at large as the newest and richest of the gold camps.” Brouillard had been humped over his desk, and he sprang lip with a cry like that of a wounded animal. “It can’t be; Grizzy, I tell you It can’t be! Steve Massingale planted that gold that I washed out —played me for a fool to get me to work for the railroad. I didn’t know it until—until —” “Until Amy Massingale told you about it this afternoon,” cut in the mapmaker shrewdly. "That’s all right. The bar Steve took you to was barren enough; they tell me that every cubic foot of it has been washed over In dishpans and skillets in the past few hours. But you know the big bend opposite the Quadjenai hills; the river has built that bend out of Its own washings, and the bulletin over at the Spotlight office says that the entire peninsula is one huge bank of goldbearing gravel.” At the word Brouillard staggered »■ from the impact of a bullet. Then he crossed the room slowly, groping his way toward the peg where the coat he had worn in the afternoon was hanging. Grislow saw him take something

out of the pocket of the coat, and the next moment the door opened and closed and the hydrographer was left alone. Having been planned before- there was a city to be considered, the government buildings inclosed three sides of a small open square, facing toward the great dam. In the middle of this open space Brouillard stopped, kicked up a little mound of earth, and stood the two paper cylinders on it, side by side. The tempered glow from the city electrics made a soft twilight in the little plaza; he could see the wrapper colors of the two signal fires quits well. A sharp attack of indecision had prompted him to place both of them on the tiny mound. With the match in his hand, he was still undecided. Amy Massingale’s words came back to him as he hesitated: "Light the blue one when you are ready to send me my message of cheer. . . ." On the lips of another woman the words might have taken a materialistic meaning; the miraculous gold discovery would bring the railroad, and the railroad would rescue the Massingale mine and restore the Massingale fortunes. He looked up at the dark bulk of Chigringo, unrelieved even by the tiny fleck of lamplight which he had so often called his guiding star. “Take me out of your mind and heart and say which you will have, little girl,” he whispered, sending the words out into the void of night. But only the din and clamor of a city gone wild with enthusiasm came to answer him. Somewhere on the avenue a hand was playing; men were shouting themselves hoarse in excitement, and above the shouting came the staccato crackling of pistols and guns fired in air. He struck the match and stooped over the blue cylinder, “This is your message of cheer, whether you take it that way or not,” he went on, whispering again to the silent void. But when the fuse of the blue light was fairly fizzing he suddenly pinched it out and held the match to the other. • * * * * —. ♦ - *—

Up on the high bench of the great mountain Amy Massingale was pacing to and fro on the puncheon-floored porch of the home cabin. The girl’s gaze never wandered far from a dark area in the western edge of the town—the semicircle cut into the dotting lights and marking the site of the government reservation. It was when a tiny stream of sparks shot up in the center of the dark area that she stopped and held her breath. Then, when a blinding flare followed to prick out the headquarters, the commissary and the mess house, she sank In a despairing little heap on the floor, with her face hidden In her hands and the quick sobs shaking her like an ague chill. It was Brouillard’s signal, but it was no£ the signal of peace; it was the blood-red of revolution and strife and turmoil.

CHAPTER XIV The Feast of Hurrahs

Mirapolis the marvelous was a hustling, roaring, wide-open mining camp of twenty thousand souls by the time the railroad, straining every nerve and crowding three shifts into the 2t-hour day, pushed its rails along the foothill bench of Chigringo, tossed up its temporary station buildings, and signaled its opening for business by running a mammoth excursion frcm the cities of the immediate East.

Busy as it was, the city took time to celebrate fittingly the event which linked it to the outer world. By proclamation Mayor Cortwright declared a holiday. There were lavish displays of bunting, an impromptu trades parade, speeches from the plaza bandstand, free lunches and free liquor a day of boisterous, hilarious triumphings, with, incidental, much buying and selling and many transfers of the precious “front foot” or choice “corner.” Yielding to pressure, which was no less imperative from below than from above, Brouillard had consented to suspend work on the great dam during the day of. triumphs, apd the reclamation service force, smaller now than at any time since the beginning of the undertaking, went to swell the crowds on Chigringo avenue. Mr. Cortwright had “been inexorable, and Brouillard found himself discomfortingly emphasized as chairman of the civic reception committee. It was after his part of the speechmaking, and while the plaza crowds were still bellowing their approval of the modest forensic effort, that he went to sit beside Miss Cortwright<jln the temporary grand stand, mopping his face and otherwise exhibiting the after effects of the unfamiliar strain.

Victor Brouillard knows that he cannot win Amy Massingale until .he pulls from his feet the mire of this financial trickery. How will he extricate himself with a clean conscience and a pocketful of money—or can he do It?

(TO BE CONTINUED.)

Not the Teapot’s Fault.

Pat was very fond of strong tea. He always praised a housekeeper according to the 'strength of the tea she made. Last Saturday the woman of the house where Pat worked was pouring out the tep for his breakfast It was coming out very slowly, and the good woman asked Pat to excuse the teapot as It had a bad spout. Pat (not liking the look of the tea) said sadly: “Oh, begor, ma’am, don’t blame the taypot, because anything weak must go aisf ”

On Achill Beg

AT LAST we came where the road ended and stood opposite the seldom visited Island of Achill Beg. There was only ontf thing for us to do —that was to shout and shout until someone on the island heard us and launched a boat to ferry us across, writes a traveler to the Emerald Isle, in Ireland. We talked while we waited about the ul-tra-nationalism of the friend we were going to visit. There had been a project to build a causeway from this peninsula of the mainland to the island of his sojourn. Our friend objected because he did not want the 25 families he lived amongst to be corrupted by an alien culture. We shouted again. Then we saw a stir on the Island and knew that a boat was being launched. Another wayfarer had come up and was waiting to cross over with us. This was a young woman who thought little of nursing her baby while she waited. She had taken the child to some far-away dispensary upon the peninsula and had received a pronounc’ement upon its sickness. Now she held it and talked to it as if it was a treasure —as if it was wonderful she had got the child back so far. This young woman took our phrases in Gaelic as good conversational coin. Most native speakers talk to learners either scornfully or patronizingly, but she talked trustingly, as if we had the Gaelic “like the flowing sea,” as they say. It was evidently that our friend on the Island had brought no hint of paucity in ’Gaelic speech. He lived with one of the island families in the utmost discomfort. Meat the people seldom saw, and they burnt it when they undertook to cook it. They boiled potatoes well enough. But no amount of repetition could get them to make drinkable tea. Our friend had a room that had no catch on its door and hk was waited upon by a barefooted girl. His mental nourishment seemed as zestless as his physical fare. There were books on his shelf, but they were dictionaries, grammars, textbooks, handbooks, exercises in translation, volumes of propagandist journals. There was one thing in the room that promised some delight—our friend’s fiddle. We knew how well he could play the music of fishers and shepherds of Gaelic Scotland and Ireland?

A Stronghold of Gaelic. He held this remote island as a lonely post in a battle that seemed long lost—a battle of languages and civilization. Gaelic might be surrendered or sold on the mainland or in the big islands, but here 25 families would be drilled to hold and keep it. Actually he had made this island the one spot in tjie British islands where English is a decaying language. He had found it flourishing here and Gaelic weak and ready to give out. He had restored Gaelic. The young men and young women who would spend six months of the year in the fields of England and East Scotland spoke_ no-Bngttsh“fi"efe7 We saw him fling the door open and dart out like a weasel when he heard an English phrase used by someone in the main room. But the harvester was speaking of “The Midland Great Western Railway” and how could a name like that be put into Gaelic? He was giving a lectqre that night, and we followed him as he went, lantern in hand, to the schoolhoase. We passed closed houses before which geese seemed to sleep standing. We walked amongst ducks that gave one the impression that they were truants from school —they slipped into pools of water and pushed out. “They’ll say nothing about It; they’ll say nothing about it," they v told each other In quacking undertones. We crossed the stepping stones and came to the schoolhouse.' Inside we lighted lamps and waited. Have you seen a herd, of mountain ponies break down a road? So they rushed In, the island girls who came to our friend’s lecture. No one else came. They flung themselves about the room until they were winded. Then they became less disorderly. At last, having trepanned them between school desks, our friend began his lec-

HARVESTING ON ACHILL ISLAND

ture. When he was three-quarters through they showed some disposition to break away. But the power of the human eye held them for a space longer. Then it became necessary to apply the voice threateningly: "Now Brighid,” “Now Oona,” “Now Slav.” At last, by opening wide the door, he signified that the lecture was over. Brighid, Oona, Slav, Cauth and the others bolted out. Comfort of Peat Fires. The peat fires make it possible to live in houses that are drenched with constant rain. On the outside walls where the thatch drips down you see the green of the damp. But inside, with the pile of burning peat on the hearth, everything is dry and warm. Naturally, the people do not keep their good friends the horse or the cow from the kindly warmth. The family sits about the fire, and at the end of the room the horse stands as quiet and as well-behaved as a guest could be. From infancy the children are intimate with the animals: at three one can drive the cow where it should go, at five one rides on a pony behind hampers of sea weed. The people have a fuller life than those who have no friendliness with horses or cattle. And yet we have heard H. G. "Wells speak of such people as parasites living upon animals. We suppose it would be impossible for the great prophet of machinery to understand that people may live with animals, and be better human beings for the experience. In the house where my friend stays, around the fire in the living room, a few young men are seated. They are not dressed in the flannels of the island, nor in the ready-mades one might buy in a town on the mainland, but in ragged clothes that suggest Lancashire. They are returned harvesters. From April until October the young men and women ot the island work for she farmers of England and East Scotland, crossing over with the gangs that go from the west of Ireland. For the rest of the year the young men stay on the island, putting in their time working on fields on which the plow cannot be put or fishing in boats that do not go miles out to sea. The main income of the island is earned abroad. The young men and women come back with from £l2 to £2O in their pockets. This goes to pay the rent, the shop debts, or buys tea and the bag of flour or meal. The English that the young men can speak is scanty and is eked out with a good many oaths. Abroad they have the name of being good workers.

Music of Crickets and Sea. In our friend’s room the peat fire is lighted also. He takes up his fiddle and sits down on his bed until the barefooted girl comes into the room with an apron full of peat. “ The fire is renewed, and it is time to go to bed. A mattress is laid on the floor, and our friend shows us how to make a sailor’s bed, folding the blanket into a sleeping bag, into which we insert Then W° qf t hft — fire. The visitors have left the room above and the people of the house have gone to bed. It is now the hour of the crickets. They riot about the fire in the living room, making a continuous noise. And the noise of the crickets has for a background the noise of the sea—a score of yards from the house it dashes upon the island. But at last comes sleep, and we hear no more until a sea bird cries in the silence of the morning. Then a young harvester comes into the room with another armful of peat, and the fire, which was slumbering down in the ashes, breaks up again. Bread and tea and eggs soon come our way, and otir friend talks of taking us to shoot wild goats on the high places of the peninsula.

Eighteen of One Family Killed In War.

Court Chamberlain Count Carl von Wedel-Piesdorf. the head of one of the most distinguished aristocratic families in Germany, reports that since the beginning of the war five counts and thirteen baronp Von Wedel have given their lives, for their country. Seventeen other members of the family have been bacUy wounded and five slightly wounded* *