The City of Numbered Days

Hept

chnical talk of dams and reservoirs, bed-rock anchorages, and the latest word in concrete structural process

ur when the orders had come from Washington giving Brouillard his step up and directing him to advance with his squad of Reclamation-Service pioneers upon the new work in the western Timanyonis. But, apart from this, the reminiscences had an experimental v

an analytical rather than a sympathetic listener. The hundred-odd men of the pioneer party, relaxing after the day-long march over the mountains, were smoking, yarning, or playing cards around the dozen or more camp-fires. The evening, with a half-grown moon silvering the inverted bowl of a firmament which seemed to shut

igns and omens of the ages that had to get along without laboratories and testing plants. Just the same, every man has his little atavistic streak, if you can hit upon it. For example, you may throw flip-f

e and analytical, stuffing more of the spruce branches under

y. "As I said a few minutes ago, I am only burbling to hear the sound of my own voice. But the bottoming fact rema

altitudes and give it a plain, every-day name

ur feet out of the trough, I'll tell you. Away back in the porringer period, in which we are all like the pin-f

chuckled Grislow. "D

d coloring: a well-knit figure of a man, rather under than over the normal stature, but bulging athletically in the loose-fitting khaki of the engineer; dark of skin, even where the sun had not burned its rich mahogan

in the dimmest dawnings the number seven began to have a curious significance for me. From my earliest recollections things h

tice when the coincidences hit, and have forgotten the m

rned down. Back in the pin-feather time that I mentioned somebody handed me a fact-the discovery of the physiologists about the waste and

on," said the

nse of a sudden and sort of magical change coming at the end of each seven-year period and bound to occur at those

in good-natured ridicule

Murray, every time the fatal

r derisively. "This is merely your night for b

lf alive. I recollect, as if it were only yesterday, how the neighbor women used to come in and condole with my mother, ignoring me, of course, as if I ha

Grislow, sitting up to relight his pip

r of our removal to Vincennes from the country village where I was born.

!" applauded Gris

stupidest blockhead that ever thumbed a school-book. I simply couldn't learn, Murray. My mother made excuses for me, as mothers will, b

ographer in exaggerated sarcasm. "Any man who can stare into the fire an

t I got my dubiously given passport to the high school chiefly because my father was one of the best-known and best-loved men in the old home town. Perhaps it wasn't the magic seven that built me all over new that summer; perhaps it was

up and finis

es of promotion until you have come out at the top of the heap in the Construction Division, all of which you're much too modest to brag about. But, say; we've skip

dark to the sky-line save for a single pin-prick of yellow light fixing the position of a solitary miner's cabin half-way between the valley level and the

ologetic-"I don't mind telling you, Grislow; you're not the kind to pass it on where it would hurt. At twenty-one I

f the charred log ends into the blaze, and growled wh

ing match and I didn't mean to back you out into deep water. I know something about the lo

d not be selfishly indifferent: "That is fine. I wish I were going

't y

housand yea

ime you'll be at the top of the Reclamat

t appre

that and went back to

. "What is the active principle of your

oinder; "always something di

f into the memory woods,

lled out and said he was going to unpack his camp kit. He went over to his tent and lighted up, and a few minutes afterward I heard the clock strike-seven. I looked at my watch and saw that it lacked a few minutes of eight,

owing interested in spite of a keen

't imagine it, Murray; I co

at, could you? You say there was a light in the tent-I suppose Anson was t

empty. The clock was ticking away on Anson's soap-box dressing-case, with a lighted candle beside it, and fo

miraculous significance

fith's tool kit. 'I've got to tinker her again,' he said. 'She's got so she keeps Pacific time with one hand and Eastern w

of it? The clock struck seven, y

ed his curling mustache

izzy. To-day happens to be my twenty-eighth b

y that he dropped his pipe into the ashes of the fire. "In that case, according to w

hat auxiliary reservoir supply from the Apache Basin, for example. Were the field-notes in when you left Washington?" And from the abrupt break, the technicalities came to their own again; were still holding the centre of t

inally rang the curtain cal

he glow of the dying embers. "You may sit here all night, if you like, but it's me for the blankets and a

e entering upon its plunging race through the mountain barrier, a beam of white light flickered unsteadily for a fraction of a second. Then it became a luminous pencil to trace a zigzag line up the winding course of the river, across to the foot-hill sp

k the form of a half-

a fit of the creepies?-this far

d thoughtfully, apparently taking Grislow's

't we just as far from a carbide shop as we a

ouillard was still staring fixedly at the distant gulf of blac

we should have called it the 'spot-light,' turned on to mark the end of your fourth act and the beginning, auspicious or otherwise, of the f

feet and was buttoning his

he said, almost morosely. Then he added: "I'm going to take a litt

me 'ammick.' Wake me up when you come back and tell me what the fifth act is going to do to you. The more I think

majestically from the broken shoulder of Chigringo to the opposing steeps of Jack's Mountain. The half-grown moon, tilting now toward the sky-line of the western barrier, was leaving the canyon portal in deepest gloom. As Brouillard swung along he kept a

through the barrier mountains fairly double the distance. Beginning as a broken ravine at the valley outlet, the gorge narrows in its lower third to a cliff-walled raceway for the torrent, and the trail, leaving the bank of the s

pines leading to the western outlook upon the desert swales and sand-hills. At the canyon portal, where the forest thinned away and left him

man in chauffeur leather serving the sitters. Back of the group, and with its detachable search-light missing, stood a huge touring-car to account for the picnic hamper, the dust-coats, the man in leather, and, doubtless, for the apparitional eye which had appeared and disappeared at th

he ample proportions of the great touring-car and remembered the newness and rawness of his temporary ca

s a sudden attack of desert shyness he would not have admitted. But the fact remained. Good red blood with its quickenings of courage and self-reliance, and a manful ability to do and dare, are the desert's gifts; but the penalty the desert ex

ring down to plunge into the stream the man in chauffeur leather reached for the search-light lantern and directed its beam upon the canyo