The City of Numbered Days

oc

xuriously on the porch step at the Massingale house and making up for lost time-counting all time lost when

the repetitions," she gibed, when he had finally fallen back upon the time demands of his work to account for

rather talk about something else. Tell me about yourself. What have you

ert Griffith, and with-no, not with Mr. Leshington; he scares me-makes a face like a wooden image and says: 'Little girl, you

demanded Brouillard, ign

and is always trying to explain. 'Beg pawdon, my deah Miss Massingale, but I'm not Lord Falkland, don't y' know. The-er-title goes with the-er-entail. I'm only

e All-the-rest keep hims

hink. It's his ranch, you know, and he is immensely proud of it. He never tires of telling me

s alphabetical monstrosity!"

speech. You simply can't flirt with a somebody who is almost as brilli

rd. "Now tell me about the 'Little Susan'; is the Blue-grass

her frivolous

and a hoist, and an aerial tramway down to the place where the railroad yard is going to be-all the improvements you c

n. But the money is all here, safely stacked up in the

ning I heard that the railroad wasn't coming, after all; or, rather, Tig had heard it and he told me. W

find out?

t your office begging you to come up if you co

al to you, doesn't i

thousand times more n

eyes of the girl standing on the step above

addle loads of the richest ore and freight them over the mountains to Red Butte. That was how we got along. But when

he enco

associates had been trying to buy an interest in the 'Little Susan.' Father let them in on some sort of a stock ar

Cortwright?" qu

d of him-everything is rose-colored; we are going to be immensely rich the minute the railroad builds its track to the mine dump. The ore is growing richer every day-which is true-and

said Brouillard enigmatically. "You say your father has borrowe

just how. All I know is that father is responsible, and t

. "I don't wonder that the qu

next week in spite of all I can do or say. That means more expense and more temptations. I can't tell you how

get ready to be sorry for their sins. The other nine or ten will speed up and burn the candle right down into the socket. We shall see worse things in Mirapolis before we see better. But I think

"Are you sure? How

Let's go back a bit and I'll explain. Do you remember my telling you th

r be able to forget

If I'd say the right thing to President Ford, well and good; if not, your brother would disarrange things for the government by giving away the secret of the gold placers. It was ingenious, and e

nameless fear in the steadfast eyes-a sha

t be got out of it, was his only so long as he kept the secret. But he covered that point at once; he said that the 'Little Susan'-with the railroad-was worth more

eved all this?" s

and grain gold in a few panfuls of the sand. It pretty nearly turned my head, Amy; would have turned i

. "You believed him, and for that reaso

N

se Mr. Ford to bu

es

r the best interests of t

g it very mu

it? I must know; it

her in his arms, an

an. I am a free man-or I can be whenever I choose to say the word.

and the great horror in he

a thing to be cheapened l

hat do you mean? I

you have admitted it. And you did it in the sacred name of love! And your freedom-how hav

ottom of the tangle of conflicting emoti

ion about the money. "I merely told Mr. Ford what I should do if the decision la

l up at the "Little Susan" mine on Chigringo Mountain who needs your

estion of culpability in the matter of giving Ford what he asked for. I did it, as I say-fo

, with a quick catc

e railroad people get busy again. They couldn't sit still if all the world were trying to get

you h

nod

ing that it was taken out of a bar in the Niquoia. When I left the office

leaning against the porch post, with her hand

lready a city of frenzied knaves and dupes; did you realize that you were taking

g-and I wanted to give it to you. That was all-as God hears me, it was all. There was another thing that might have weighed, but I didn't let it weigh; I stood to lo

k her he

stand, and I can't make you understand-that is the keen misery of it. If this ruthless

n't I say just now that the town was crazy

shaking her

vely. "The excitement will die out. There are no placers in

have b

tion that rose to his lips. She had called Mirapolis a city of k

er merely 'salted' a few shovelfuls of sand for my es

y what I've heard my father say, time and again: that there is no gold in the Niquoia River. And you mustn't ask me to despise my broth

"My love isn't measured by a fear o

ss part of it," she

brother what you condem

man's evil genius, and yours least of all. You broke down the barriers a few minutes ago and you know wh

pace, and when he spoke again it was

o climb to any height you pointed to. The time is past, and I can't recall it, try as I may; there is a change; it goes back to that day when I first saw you-down at the lower ford in the desert's edge. I loved you then,

ses of the comedy we call life, we play many parts, perhaps; but back of t

Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde notion-a step farther along. You may remember how he compares the human being to a ship changing commanders at every port.

us theory, if you take it s

r shock me. New and unsuspected pitfalls open for me every day. For example, I am not naturally hot-headed-or rather, I should say, I am quick-tempered but have always been able to control myself. Yet in the past few months I

uides the tool. Given a free field, it always makes for the wider horizons, the higher planes of thought and action; it may even breathe new life into the benumbed cons

between them; and, as before,

to accept, Amy; that I am dominated by so

" she sai

t is

iron

man a mere bit of driftwood, to be tossed about in the froth

u can see Mirapolis in its true light. It is frankly, baldly, the money-making scheme of a few unscrupulous men. It has no future-it can have none. And because it is what it is, the very air you bre

eat on the porch step he was frowning down upon the outspread scene in the valley, where the triangular shadow of Jack's Mountain was

has stopped! They've kno

magine that your workmen were a

en't any time to go into that now. Is yo

not

ve! if those unspeakable idiots have gone off and le

f by nightfall-it must. And yet I have the queerest shivery feeling, as if something dreadful were go

romised. "I'll com

ute." 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

other?"

of war and tumults and danger.

nd a moment later was racing down the trail to take his p

ifying 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 despatched to impress the waiters and bell-boys from the Metropole; Leshington was sent to the shops and the ba

ready become a double rank of dives, saloons, and gambling dens; here, if anywhere in the craze-depopulat

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. Leshington, don't you take any refusal from the shopkeepers and the bank people; if they kick, you tell them that not another dollar of government money will b

rself, won't you?" asked Grislow,

o turn out the crooks and diamond wearers. It's ti

mbled Leshington. "Work is the one t

hief, and he was gone as

of waiters, scullions, cooks, and porters, willing but skilless. 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 buck

men in cow-boy jeans taking it as a huge joke; men with foreign faces and lowering brows and with strange oa

tly 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 laugh

ratory to a descent upon the supper-table. But Brouillard was dumb and haggard, and when he had hung rifle and cart

th to no one in particular, and it was Leshington who

st assistant's rebuke took. "You take my advice and don't mess or meddle

ntment. By nine o'clock the town was full of them, and since the liquor was flowing freely across many bars, the mutterings of disappointment soon swelled to a thunder roar of drunken rage, with the unknown exhibitor of the specimen nuggets for its object. From threats of vengeance upon the man who had hoaxed an entire

her 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 d

is desk, and he sprang up with a

planted that gold that I washed out-played me for a fool to g

that every cubic foot of it has been washed over in dish pans and skillets in the past few hours. But you know the big bend opposite the Quadjenà? Hills; the river

way toward the peg where the coat he had worn in the afternoon was hanging. Grislow saw him take something out

sides of a small open square, facing toward the great dam. In the middle of this open space Brouilla

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

y 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.

you take it that way or not," he went on, whispering again to the silent void. But when the fuse

in. Her father had gone to bed, and somewhere down among the electric lights starring the valley her brother was mingling wit

on. It was when a tiny stream of sparks shot up in the centre 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 despair