Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 134, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 June 1916 — CHAPTER XIII Tumults and Dangers [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

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

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-

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

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.

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