The City of Numbered Days

by Francis Lynde

Brouillard had written one more letter to the lawyer. In it he had asked how David Massingale could be unassailably reinstated in his rights as the sole owner of the "Little Susan." The answer had come promptly and it was explicit. "Only by the repayment of such sums as had been actually expended in the reorganization and on the betterments—for the modernizing machinery and improvements—and the voluntary surrender, by the other parties to the agreement, of the stock in dispute," the lawyer had written; and Brouillard had smiled at the thought of Cortwright voluntarily surrendering anything which was once well within the grasp of his pudgy hands.

Failing to start the legal wedge, Brouillard had dipped—also without consulting Massingale—into the matter of land titles. The "Little Susan" was legally patented under the land laws, and Massingale's title, if the mine were located upon government land, was without a flaw. But on a former reclamation project Brouillard had been brought in contact with some of the curious title litigation growing out of the old Spanish grants; and in at least one instance he had seen a government patent invalidated thereby.

As a man in reasonably close touch with his superiors in Washington, the chief of construction knew that there was a Spanish-grant involvement which had at one time threatened to at least delay the Niquoia project. How it had been settled finally he did not know; but after the legal failure he had written to a man—a college classmate of his own—in the bureau of land statistics, asking for data which would enable him to locate exactly the Niquoia-touching boundaries of the great Coronida Grant. To this letter no reply had as yet been received. Brouillard had cause to know with what slowness a simple matter of information can ooze out of a department bureau. The letter—which, after all, might contain nothing helpful—lingered on the way, and the crisis, the turning-point beyond which there could be no redemption in a revival of the speculative craze, had arrived.

Brouillard took up the draught of the Washington telegram and read it over. He was cooler now, and he saw that it was only as it came from the hand of a traitor, who could and would deliberately wreck the train of events it might set in motion, that it became a betrayal. Writing as the commanding officer in the field, he had restated the facts—facts doubtless well known in the department—the probability that Congress would intervene and the hold the opposition was gaining by the suspension of the work on the dam. If the work could be pushed energetically and at once, there was a possibility that the opposition would become discouraged and voluntarily withdraw. Would the department place the men and the means instantly at his disposal?

"If I were the honest man I am supposed to be, that is precisely the message I ought to send," he mused reflectively. "It is only as the crooked devil in possession of me will drive me to nullify the effort and make it of no effect that it becomes a crime; that and the fact that I can never be sure that the Cortwright gang hasn't the inside track and will not win out in spite of all efforts. That is the touchstone of the whole degrading business. I'm afraid Cortwright has the inside track. If I could only get a little clear-sighted daylight on the damnable tangle!"

Obeying a sudden impulse, he thrust the two copies of the telegram under the paper-weight again, sprang up, put on his hat, and left the building. A few minutes later he was on the porch of the stuccoed villa in the Quadjenàï road and was saying gravely to the young woman who had been reading in the hammock: "You are staying too closely at home. Get your coat and hat and walk with me up to the 'Little Susan.' It will do you good."

The afternoon was waning and the sun, dipping to the horizon, hung like a huge golden ball over the yellow immensities of the distant Buckskin as they topped the final ascent in the steep trail and went to sit on the steps of the deserted home cabin at the mine.

For a time neither spoke, and the stillness of the air contributed something to the high-mountain silence, which was almost oppressive. Work had been stopped in the mine at the end of the previous week, Massingale declaring, morosely, that until he knew whose ore he was digging he would dig no more. Presumably there was a watchman, but if so he was invisible to the two on the cabin step, and the high view-point was theirs alone.

"How did you know that I have been wanting to come up here once more before everything is changed?" said the girl at length, patting the roughly hewn log step as if it were a sentient thing to feel the caress.

"I didn't know it," Brouillard denied. "I only knew that I wanted to get out of Gomorrah for a little while, to come up here with you and get the reek of the pit out of my nostrils."