THE CITY DF *
NUMBERED DAYS
&/ FRANCIS LYNOE - • -
ILLUSTRATIONS by C.D.RhODES • • ■
CDPVHIGMT BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
It was not characteristic of Brouil
lard—the Rrouillard Grislow knew
best—that he should suffer the purely
technical talk of dams and reservoirs,
bed rock anchorages, and the latest
word in concrete structural processes
to languish and should drift into per
sonal reminiscences over their first
evening campfire in the Niquoia.
"As you were saying?” Grislow
prompted, stretching himself luxuri
ously upon the fragrant banking of
freshly clipped spruce tips, with his
feet to the blaze and his hands locked
under his head, lie felt that Rrouil
lard was merely responding to the
subtle influences of time, place and
encompassments and took no shame
for being an analytical rather than a
sympathetic listened. 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 campfires. The evening, with a
half-grown moon silvering the inverted
bowl of a firmament which seemed to
shut down, lidlike, upon the mountain
rim of the high-walled valley, was
witchingly enchanting.
"I was saying that the present-day
world slant is sanely skeptical—as it
should be,” Rrouillard went on at the
end of the thoughtful pause. ‘‘Just the
same, every man has his little atavis
tic streak, if you can hit upon it. For
example, away back in the porringer
period, in which we are all like the
pin-feathered dickybirds, open-mouth
ed for anything anybody may drop into
us someone fed me with the number
seven."
bucculent morsel! chuckled Gris
low. "Did It agree with you?”
Broulllard sat back from the fire
and clasped his hands over his bent
knees. He was of a type rare enough
to be noteworthy—a well-knit figure
of a man, rather under the normal
stature, but bulging athletically in the
loose-fitting khaki of the engineer;
dark of skin, and owning a face which
might have served as a model for a
Vierge study of a fighting franc-tireur.
"I don’t remember how early in the,
game the thing began,” he resumed,
ignoring Grislow's joking interruption,
"but away back in the dimmest dawn
ings the number seven began to have
a curious significance for me. Back in
the pin-feather time somebody handed
me a fact about the waste and replace
ment that goes on in the human or
ganism, bringing around a complete
cellular change about once in every
seven years. Are you asleep?"
"Not yet; go on," said the hydrog
rapher.
“Up to my seventh birthday 1 was
a sickly child, puny and only about
half alive. It came—the change, I
mean—when I was seven years old.
That was the year of our removal to
Vincennes from the country village
where I was born. Since that time I
haven’t known what it means to be
sick, or even ailing.”
"Bully old change!" applauded Gris
low. "Is that all?”
"No. What the second period spent
on my body it took out of my mind. I
grew stouter and stronger every year
and became more and more the stu
pidest blockhead that ever thumbed a
schoolbook. I was fourteen to a day
when I squeezed through the final
grammar grade; think of it—fourteen
years old and still with the woman
teachers! I found out afterward that
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 only the change in
schools and teachers. But from that
year on all the hard things were too
easy. It was as if somebody or some
thing had suddenly opened a closed
door in my brain and let the daylight
into all the dark corners at once.”
Grislow sat up and finished for him.
"Yes; and since that time you have
staved your way through the univer
sity, and butted into the reclamation
service, and played skittles with every
other man’s chances of promotion un
til 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
skipped one of the seven-year flag sta
tions. What happened when you were
twenty-one—or were you too busy Just
then chasing the elusive engineering
degree to take notice?”
Brouillard was staring out over the
loom of the dozen campfires—out and
across the valley at the massive bulk
of Mount Chigringo rising like a huge
barrier dark to the skyline save fcr a
single pinprick of yellow light fixing
the position of a solitary miner’s
cabin half way between the valley
level and the summit. When he spoke
again the hydrographer had been given
time to shave another pipe charge of
tobacco from his pocket plug and to
fill and light the brier.
“When I was twenty-one my father
died, and”—he stopped short and then
went on in a tone which was more
than half apologetic—“1 don't mind
telling, Grislow; you’re not the kind
to pass it on where it would hurt. At
twenty-one I was left with a back load
that I am carrying to this good day;
that I will probably go on carrying
through life.”
Grislow walked around the fire,
kicked two or three of the charred log
ends into the blaze, and growled when
the resulting smoke rose up to choke
and blind him.
"Forget it, Victor,” he said. “In less
than a hundredth part of that time
you’ll be at the top of the reclamation
service pay roll—won’t that help out?”
"No; not appreciably.”
Grislow gave it up at that and went
back to the original contention.
“We're dodging the main issue,” ho
said. “What is the active principle
of y'our ‘sevens’—or haven't you fig
ured it out?”
C hange,” was the prompt rejoin- !
der; “always something different—
radically different.”
“And what started you off into the
memory woods, particularly tonight?"
“Coincidences. It began with that
hopelessly unreliable little clock that
Brouillard Was Staring Out Over the
Loom of the Camp Fires.
Anson persists in carrying aronnd
with him wherever he goes. While you
were up on the hill cutting your spruce
tips Anson went over to his tent and
lighted up. and a few minutes after
ward I heard the clock strike—seven.
Just as I was comfortably forgetting
the significant reminder the clock
went off again, striking slowly, as if
the mechanism were nearly run
down.”
“Another seven?” queried Grislow.
“No; it struck four.”
“Well?” was the bantering comment.
“I suppose Anson was tinkering with
his little tin god of a timepiece. It's
a habit of his.”
“1 was curious enough to go and
look. When 1 lifted the flap the tent .
was empty. The clock was ticking
away on Anson's soap-box dressing
case, with a lighted candle beside it,
and for a crazy half second 1 had a
shock, Murray—the minute hand was
pointing to four and the hour hand to
seven!”
"Still I don’t see the miraculous sig
nificance,” said the hydrographer.
“Don’t you? It was only another of
the coincidences, of course. While 1 1
I stood staring at the clock Anson came
in with Griffiths tool kit. Tve got to
tinker her again,’ he said. ’She’s got
so she keeps Pacific time with one
hand and eastern with the other.’ Then
I understood that he had been tinker
i ing with it and had merely gone over
to Griffith’s tent for thw tools.”
“Well.” said Grislow again, “what of
it? The clock struck seven, you say;
but it also struck four.”
Brouillard’s smjle tilted his curling
mustaches to the sardonic angle.
“The combination was what called
the turn, Griaszy. Today happens to
be my twenty-eighth birthday—the end
of the fourth cycle of seven.”
"By Georg*;!” ejaculated the hydrog
rapher in mock perturbation, sitting
up so suddenly that he dropped his
pipe into the ashes of the fire. “In
that case, according to what seems to
be the well-established custom, some
thing is due to fall in right now!”
“I have been looking for it all day,”
returned Brouillard calmly.
It was Murray Grislcw who finally
rang the curtain call on the prolonged
talk.
“Say, man! do you know that it is
after ten o’clock?” he demanded, hold
ing the face of his watch down to the
glow of the dying embers. "You may
sit here all night, if you like, but it’s
me for the blankets. Now, what in the
name of a guilty conscience is that?”
As it chanced, they were both fac
ing toward the lower end of the val
ley when the apparition flashed into
view. In the deepest of the shadows
I
at the mouth of the gorge, where the
torrenting Niquoia straightened itseli
momentarily before 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 tc
trace a zigzag line up the winding
course of the river, across to the foot
hill spur where the camp of the recla
mation service vanguard was pitched
and so on arounjl to the base of the
Ohigringo. For certain other seconds
it remained quiescent, glowing bale
fully like the eye of some fabled mon
ster searching for its prey. Then it
was gone.
Grislow's comment took the form ol
a half-startled exclamation.
“By Jove! wouldn't that give you a
fit of the creepies?—this far from civi
lization and a dynamo? What are you
calling it?"
"Your guess is as good as mine."
was the half-absent reply. Brouiliard
had got upon his feet and was but
toning his many-pocketed shooting
coat.
"I’m going to take a little hike down
yonder for investigation purposes.
Want to come along?"
But the mapper of watersheds was
yawning sleepily. "Not on your tin
type,” he refused. “I’m going to ’cork
it orf in me ’ammick.’ ”
It was only a short mile from the
camp on the inward slopes of the east
ern foothills to the mouth of the outlet
gorge, across which Brouiliard could
already see, in mental prevision, the
great gray wra!l of the projected Ni
quoia dam—his future work—curving
majestically from the broken shoulder
of Chigringo to the opposing steeps
of Jack’s mountain. The half-grown
moon, tilting now toward the skyline
Of the western barrier, was leaving the
canyon portal in deepest gloom.
Picking his way judiciously because
the trail was new to him, Brouiliard
came in due time to the descending
path among the spruces and scrub
pines leading to the western outlook
upon the desert swales and sandhills.
At the canyon portal, where the forest
thinned away and left him standing
at the head of the final descending
plunge in the trail, he found himself
looking down upon the explanation of
the curious apparition.
None the less, what he saw was in
itself rather inexplicable. In the first
desert looping of the river a campfire
of pinyon knots was blazing cheerfully,
and beside it, with a picnic hamper for
a table, sat a supper party of three—
two men and a woman—in enveloping
dust-coats, and a third man in chauf
feur leather serving the sitters. Pack
cf the group, and with its detachable
searchlight missing, stood a huge tour
ing car to account for the picnic ham
per, the dust-coats, the man in leather,
and, doubtless, for the apparitional eye
which had appeared and disappeared
at the mouth of the upper gorge. Also
it accounted, in a purely physical
sense, for the presence of the picnick
ers, though the whim which had led
them to cress the desolate Buckskin
desert for the dubious pleasure of mak
ing an all-night bivouac on its eastern
edge was not so readily apparent.
The young engineer saw no reason
why he should intrude upon the group
at the cheerful campfire. On the con
trary, he began speedily to find good
and sufficient reasons why he should
not. That the real restraining motive
was a sudden attack of desert shyness
he would not have admitted. But the
fact remained. Four years in the rec
lamation service had made the good
looking young chief of construction a
man-qucller of quality. But each year
of isolation had done something
toward weakening the social ties.
A loosened pebble turned the scale.
When a bit of the coarse-grained sand
stone cf tiie trail rolled under Hrouil
lard’s foot and went clattering down
to plunge Into the stream the man in
the chauffeur leather reached for the
searchlight lanteiti and directed its
beam upon the canyon portal. But by
that time Brouillard had sought the
shelter of the scrub pines and was re
tracing his steps up the shoulder of
tiie mountain.
CHAPTER II
J. Wesley Croesus
v3*j|W
Brouillard was not what the West
calls "jurapy.” Four years o:’ field
work, government or other, count for
something; and the man who has
proved powder-shy in any stage of his
grapple with the Land of Short Notice
is customarily a dead man.
In spite of his training, however, the
young <*hief of construction, making an
early morning exploration of the site
for the new dam winced handsomely
when the shock of a distance-muffled
explosion trembled upon the crisp
morning air, coming, as it seemed,
from some point near the lower end
of the canyon.
The detonating crash reminded him
forcibly that the presence of the tour
ing parly was asserting itself. Tue ex
plosion was too heavy to figure as a
gunehot. Therefore it must have boon
an accident of some sort—possibly the
blowing up >f the automobile.
Between this and a hurried weight
1 ing of the sheaf of blueprints with his
flel'iglass preparatory to a tirst-aid
i dash down the outlet gorge, there was
no rnr r<-' iVne interval. Put when he
came to his outlook halting place of
the night before, ho saw that there had
been no accident. The big touring car,
yellow with the dust of the Buckskin,
stood intact on the sand flat where
it had been hacked nnfl turned and
headed toward the desert. Wading in
the shallows of the iver with a linen
dust rcbe for a seine, the two younger
, rnon of the party were gathering the
, choicest of The dead mountain trout
with which the eddy was thickly dot
ted.
Coming toward him on the upward
trail, and climbing labonoi .’••• to gain
the easier path among the pint s, v ere
the two remaining members of the
party—an elderly, pudgy stockily built
man with a gray face, stiff gray mus
taches and sandy-gray eyes to match,
and the young woman, booted gaunt
lotejl, veiled, and bulked into shape
lessness by iter touring coat. Brouil
lard had a sudden rush of blood to the
anger cells when he realized that the
alarm which had brought him two
hard-breathing mi'os out of his way
bad been ttie discharge of a stick of
dynamite thrown into the Niquoia for
the fish-killing purpose. In his code
tli; dynamiting of a stream figured as
a high crime. But the t -o on the trail
had come up, and his protest was fore
stalled by the elderly man with the
gray face and the sandy-gray eyes,
w’hosc explosive “Ha!” was os much a
measure of his breathlessness as of
his surprise.
“I was just telling Van Bruce that
his thundering fish cartridge would
raise the neighbors,” the trail climber
went on with a stout man's chuckle.
And then: "You’re one of the reclama
tion engineers? Great work the gov
ernment is undertaking here. You
are connected with it, aren’t you?”
Broui’.lard's nod was for the man,
but his words were for the young
woman whose beauty refused to be
quenched by the touring handicaps.
"Yes, 1 am In charge of it," ho said.
“Ha!” said the stout man, and this
time the exclamation was purely ap
probative. “Chief engineer, eh? That’s
fine, fine! My name is Cortwright—
J. Wesley Cortwright of Chicago. And
yours is—?”
Brouillard named himself in one
word. Strangers usually found him
bluntly unresponsive to anything like
effusiveness, but he was finding it cu
riously difficult to resist the good
natured heartiness which seemed to
exude from the talkative gentleman,
overlaying him like the honevdew on
the leaves in a droughty forest.
If Mr. J Wesley Cortwright's sur
prise on hearing the Brouillard sur
name was not genuine it w-as at least
an excellent imitation.
“Well, well, well—you don't say!
Not of the Brouiliards of Knox county,
Indiana?—but, of course, you must be."
“Yes.” said Brouillard. “Our branch
of the family settled near Vincennes,
and my father w-as on the bench, when
he wasn’t in politics.”
“What? Not .lunge Antoine! Why.
my dear young man! Do you know
“Chief Engineer, eh? Thats Fine,
Fine! ’’
that 1 once had the pleasure of intro
ducing your good father to my hank
ers in Chicago? It was years ago. at
a time when he was interested in float
ing a bond issue for some growing in
dustry down on the Wabash. And to
think that away out here in this howl
ing wilderness, a thousand miles from
nowhere, as you niight say, I should
meet his son!”
Brouillard laughed and fell headlong
into the pit of triteness.
“The world isn’t so very big when
you come to surround it rroperly, Mr.
Uortwright,' he asserted.
“You are wondering what fool no
tion chased us away out here in tli'
desert when we had a comfortable ho
tel to stop at," he rattled on. “I'll
tell you. Mr. Brouillard—in confidence.
It was curiosity—raw, country curios
ity. The papers and magazines have
been full of this Buckskin reclamation
scheme, and we wanted to see the
place where all the wonderful miracles
were going to get themselves wrought
out. Have you got time to ‘put us
next?''
Brouillard, as the son of the man
who had been introduced to the Chi
cago money gods in his hour of need,
could scarcely do less than to take the
time. The project, he explained, con
templated the building of a high dam
across Qio upper end of the Niquoia
canyon and the converting of the in- |
land valley above into a great storage
reservoir. From this reservoir a series .
of distributing canals would lead the
wafer out upon the arid lands of the
Hue! shin and the miracle would be a
fact accomplished.
' Sure, sure!" said (he cheerful quer
ist. feeling in the pockets of the au
tomobile coat for a cigar. At the
match-striking instant he remembered
a tiling neglected. ‘‘By (icorge! y-ou’ll
have to pardon me. Mr. Brouillard; I'm
always forgetting the little social dew
dabs. Let me present you to my
daughter Genevieve. Gene, shako
hands with the son of my good old
friend, Judge Antoine Brouillard of
Vincennes.”
It was rather awkwardly done, and
somehow Brouillard could not help
fancying that Mr. Cortvvright could
have done it better. But when the
unquenchable beauty stripped her
gauntlet and gave him her hand, with
a dazzling smile and a word of ac
knowledgment which was not bor
rowed from her father's efTusive vo
cabulary. he straightway fell into an
other pit of triteness and his saving
first impressions of Mr. J. Wesley Cort
wright’s character began to fade.
“I'm immensely interested,” was
Miss Cortvvright s comment on the out
lining of the reclamation project. "Do
you mean to say that real farms with
green things growing on them can be
made cut of that frightful desert we
drove over yesterday afternoon?”
Brouillard smiled and plunged fatu
ously. “Oh, yes; the farms are al
ready there. Nature made them, you
know; she merely forgot to arrange
for their watering.” He was going on
to tell about the exhaustive experi
ments the department of agriculture
experts had been making upon the
Buckskin soils when the gentleman
whose name had once figured upon
countless thousands of lard packages
cut in.
“Mr. Brouillard, how far is it up to
where you are going to build your
dam?”
•‘I'll be glad to show you the way If
you care to try.” Brouillard offered;
and the tentative invitation was
promptly accepted.
The transfer cf viewpoints front the
lower end of the canyon te the upper
was effected without incident, save at
its beginning, when the father would
have called down to the young man
who had waded ashore and was drying
himself before the caniptire. ' Van
Bruce won’t rare to go.” the daughter
hastened to say; and Brouillard. whose
gift it was to be able to pick out and
identify the human derelict at long
range, understood perfectly well the
reason for the young woman's hasty
interruption. Ono result of the suc
cessfully marketed lard packages was
very plainly evident in the dissipated
race and hangdog attitude of the mar
keter's son.
Conversation flagged on the climb
from the Buckskin level to that of the
reservoir valley; but when they
reached the pine tree of tb - anchored
blueprints at the upper portal. Mr
Cortwright recovered Ills breath suffi
ciently to gasp his appreciation of the
prospect and its possibilities.
“Why, good goodness, Mr. Brouil
lard, it's practically all done for you!"
he wheezed, taking in the level, moun
tain-inclosed valley with an apprnisive
eye-sweep. "What will you do?—build
your dam right here and take out your
canal through the canyon? Is that the
plan?”
Brouillard nodded and went a little
further into details, showing how the
inward-arching barrier would be an
chored into the two opposing mountain
buttresses.
"And the structure itself—how high
is it to be?”
"Two hundred feet above the spill
way apron foot; concrete and steel.”
“Then you are going to need Port
land cement—a whole lot of it. Where
will you get it? And how will you get
it here?”
llrouillard smiled inwardly at the
pork packer’s suddenly awakened in
terest in the technical ways and
means. His four years in the desert
had taken blm out of touch with a
money-making world, and this momen
tary contact with one of its successful
devotees was illuminating.
“We are in luck cn the cement prop
osition,” llrouillard told the eager
money-maker. “We shall probably
manufacture our own supply right
here on the ground.”
“H’m,” said the millionaire; “a ce
! ment plant, eh? The materials have
all been tested, I suppose?”
“Oh, yes; we’ve had experts in here
for more than a year. The materlad is
all right.”
"And your labor?"
“On the dam, you mean? We shall
work all the Indians we can get from
the Navajo reservation, forty-odd miles
south of here; for the remainder wo
shall import men from the States.”
Mr. Cortwright’s calculating eye
roved once more over the attractive
prospect.
“Fuel for your power plant?—wood,
I take it?” he surmised; and then:
I "Oil, I forgot; you say you have coal.”
"Yes; there is coal, of a sort.; good
enough for the cement kilns. For
power we shall utilize the river. There
is another small canyon at the head of
the valley where a temporary dam can
, be built which will deliver power
enough to run anything—an entire
manufacturing city, if we had one.”
“No chance for a man to get the
thin edge of a wedge in anywhere,”
lamented the money-maker despair
ingly. Then his eye lighted upon the
gravbeard dump of a solitary mine
high up on the face of Mount Chi
gringo. “What’s that up there?” he
demanded.
“It is a mine.” said Brottfllard, show
ing Miss Cortwright how to adjust the
fieldglass for the shorter distance.
“Two men named Massingale, father
and son, are working it. I'm told.” And
then again to Miss Genevieve: “That
is their cabin—on the trail a little to
the right of the tunnel opening.”
“I see it quite plainly,” she returned.
‘ Two people are Just leaving it to ride
down the path—a man and a woman,
THIS is just what you need, madam. Many
women who were troubled with indigestion, a
sallow, muddy skin, indicating biliousness and
habitual constipation, have been permanently cured
by the use of Chamberlain’s Tablets. Before using
these tablets they felt miserable and despondent.
Now they are cheerful and happy and relish their
meals. Try them. They only cost a quarter.
RUB OUT PAIN
with good oil liniment. That’s
the surest way to stop them.
^ 1 he best rubbing liniment is
MUSTANG
LINIMENT
Good for the A ilments of
Horses, Mules, Cattle, Etc.
(food for your own A ches.
Pains, Rheumatism, Sprains,
Cuts, Burns, Etc.
25c. 50c. $1.
At all Dealers.
“I See It Quite Plainly,” She Re
turned.
I think, though the woman—if it is a
woman—is ridins on a man's saddle.”
(Continued Next Week.j
Encle Eben.
“Some men,” said Uncle Eben,
don't realize how much patience an’
■erseverance dey has in deir systems
■til dey gits ambitious to fill three*
card (lushes an' inside straights.”