The engineer had stopped laughing when he said definitely and decidedly: "It is."
It was the promoter's turn to laugh.
"What sort of a bug have you got in your cosmos this morning, Brouillard? Why, man, you're crazy!"
Brouillard rose and relighted his cigar.
"If that is your last word, Mr. Cortwright, I may as well go back to my office. You don't need me."
"Oh, hold on; don't go off in a huff. You're too thin-skinned for any common kind of use. I was only trying you to see how far you'd carry it. Let it stand. Assume, for the sake of argument, that I do want the 'Little Susan' and that I've got a good friend or two in the Red Butte smelters who will help me get it. Now, then, does that stand the band-wagon upon its wheels again?"
Brouillard's black eyes were snapping, but his voice was quite steady when he said: "Thank you; now we shall go on better. You want the 'Little Susan,' and Massingale naturally thinks you're taking an unfair advantage of him to get it. Quite as naturally he is going to make reprisals if he can. That brings us down to the mention of the Coronida Grant and Stephen Massingale's threat—which your son can't remember."
"Right-o," said Mr. Cortwright, still with predetermined geniality. "What was the threat?"
"I don't know, but the guessing list is open to everybody. There was once a grant of many square miles of mountain and desert somewhere in this region made to one Don Estacio de Montarriba Coronida. Like those of most of the great Spanish land grants, the boundaries of this one were loosely described and——"
Mr. Cortwright held up a fat hand.