The City of Numbered Days

e St

rd completion, when it began to dawn upon the collective consciousness of a daily increasing citizenry that something was missing. Garner, the real-estate plunger

race for growth, and, in a way, no lack of business. With money plentiful and credit unimpaired, with an army of workmen to spend its weekly wage, and a still larger army o

ain trails or across the Buckskin in dust-encrusted automobiles by methods best known to a gray-mustached adept in the art of promotion

th-rooms. One coterie of Chicagoans refused an advance of fifty per cent on a quarter square of business earth and the next day decided to build a six-storied office-building, with a ground-floor corner for the Niquoia National Bank, commodious suites for the city offices of the power company, the cement company, the lumber sy

the newly incorporated Buckskin Gold Mining and Milling Company had discarded the old and slow method of prospecting with pick and shovel, and power-d

ils and the cars awaiting shipment by the railroad. Under other conditions it is conceivable that an impatient committee of construction would have had the rails freighted in across the desert, would have had the cars taken to piec

a cipher wire of inquiry to the East, got a "rush" reply, and began warily to unload his Mirapolitan holdings. Being a man of business

e of the Mirapolitan activities in the Metropole suite and the two stenographers had been curtly dismiss

etting the third series of forms on

o or three days. But that may mean nothing more than

lasting stopped, and Garner-you know him, the little Kansas City shark across the street-got busy with the wire. The next thing we knew he was unloadin

e construction chief, that the pricking of the Mirapolitan bubb

many applications from men hunting work in the past two days, more th

fter I did; what did he s

m that little I gathered that the members of his executive comm

s all. Read that," and the promote

ckerman," and was still damp from the re

ed for the present. Reason assigned, shrinkage in secu

"What a bunch of blanked fools!" he broke out. "They've spent a clean m

n figured as a fleshl

t of eggs here that I'm worrying about. Let it once get out that the ra

as the expression of

; it has only an exceedi

rritation slid aside, revealing the face which Mr. J. Wesley Cortwright

that it isn't-that it's the real thing. That's bad for the nerves. But about this railroad fizzle; I don't rel

himself as one wh

urn to think, M

would hamper the Reclamation Service like the mischief; the entire works shut down; no cement, no lumber, no power; everything tied up in th

enue. And it was the man who saw one hundred thousand dollars, the price of freedom, slipping away from him who turned after a minute or two of the absent street gazing and said: "W

other cigar. They're 'Poodles's Pride,' and they're not half bad when you get used to the near

nkers. You can read that between the

thrust out his jaw and tilted his freshl

at will make the railroad crowd sit up and take notice. By George, if those gold hunte

furnace mouth it swept over him-the sudden realization that the means, the one all-p

f they should happen to uncover a gold reef just now it would simplify matters immensely for Mirapolis, wouldn't i

orth in the clear space behind the table-topped desk. It was not until he had extended the meditative st

rook for the engineer, and when Brouillard joined hi

office on the opposite side of the street. The purpose of the excited ones was not difficult

run on a bank,"

but he couldn't keep his mouth shut. He's been talking, and every man in that mob i

him alive to the imperative call of the moment-the sight of Amy Massingale walking down the street with Tig Smith, the Triangle-Circle foreman. It was of the death of her hopes that he was thinking when he said cooll

sion that he asked no questions. "Do it," he snapped. "I'll cover you for

k to Amy Massingale and the ranchman, but he did it, and even walked a little way with them before

ed and said there were no takers he placed his order promptly. "You may bid in for me, at yesterday's prices, anything within the city limits-not option

e could be no privacy at suc

our account? Say, that's plenty good enough for me. Garner, cancel my order to sell, will you? When the chief e

lting away from Garner's sidewalk when Brouillard rejoined

ding: "It's only a stop-gap. To make the bl

w minutes of crucial suspense had extinguished. And then, without warni

y own consent to use it I could bring the railroad here in spit

e that is your way of saying that your share in the table stakes isn't big enough. All righ

you may remember that you were at some considerable pains to ascertain my price before you made the original bid-and the bid was accepted. You've just been given

oesn't start up again within the next few days we are all due to go to pot. If you've got

stenographers' desks were, and Brouillard wa

of a motive which you couldn't understand in a thousand years. If that motive prevails, you get your railroad and a little longer lease of life. If it doesn

toward the door of exit when

n's sake, don't go off and leave it

had opened and closed

ficance and was forgotten. The suddenly evoked excitement focussed in a crowd besieging the window of the principal jewelry shop-focussed more defin

ily Spot-Light came out with an extra which was all head-lines, the telegraph-wires to the East were buzzing, and the town

town builders and on the great dam as well, and gold-crazed mobs were frantically digging a