Part 5 (1/2)
Ballard was Elsa Craigmiles's lover, and he agreed in a single forcible expletive. Bromley acquiesced in the expletive, and went on.
”The colonel refused to sell his country-house holding, as a matter of course; and the company decided to take chances on the suit for damages which will naturally follow the flooding of the property. Meanwhile, Braithwaite had organised his camp, and the foundations were going in. A month or so later, he and the colonel had a personal collision, and, although Craigmiles was old enough to be his father, Braithwaite struck him. There was blood on the moon, right there and then, as you'd imagine. The colonel was unarmed, and he went home to get a gun.
Braithwaite, who was always a cold-blooded brute, got out his fis.h.i.+ng-tackle and sauntered off down the river to catch a mess of trout. He never came back alive.”
”Good heavens! But the colonel couldn't have had any hand in Braithwaite's drowning!” Ballard burst out, thinking altogether of Colonel Craigmiles's daughter.
”Oh, no. At the time of the accident, the colonel was back here at the camp, looking high and low for Braithwaite with fire in his eye. They say he went crazy mad with disappointment when he found that the river had robbed him of his right to kill the man who had struck him.”
Ballard was silent for a time. Then he said: ”You spoke of a mine that would also be flooded by our reservoir. What about that?”
”That came in after Braithwaite's death and Sanderson's appointment as chief engineer. When Braithwaite made his location here, there was an old prospect tunnel in the hill across the canyon. It was boarded up and apparently abandoned, and no one seemed to know who owned it. Later on it transpired that the colonel was the owner, and that the mining claim, which was properly patented and secured, actually covers the ground upon which our dam stands. While Sanderson was busy brewing trouble for himself with Manuel, the colonel put three Mexicans at work in the tunnel; and they have been digging away there ever since.”
”Gold?” asked Ballard.
Bromley laughed quietly.
”Maybe you can find out--n.o.body else has been able to. But it isn't gold; it must be something infinitely more valuable. The tunnel is fortified like a fortress, and one or another of the Mexicans is on guard day and night. The mouth of the tunnel is lower than the proposed level of the dam, and the colonel threatens all kinds of things, telling us frankly that it will break the Arcadia Company financially when we flood that mine. I have heard him tell Mr. Pelham to his face that the water should never flow over any dam the company might build here; that he would stick at nothing to defend his property. Mr. Pelham says all this is only bluff; that the mine is worthless. But the fact remains that the colonel is immensely rich--and is apparently growing richer.”
”Has n.o.body ever seen the inside of this Golconda of a mine?” queried Ballard.
”n.o.body from our side of the fence. As I've said, it is guarded like the sultan's seraglio; and the Mexicans might as well be deaf and dumb for all you can get out of them. Macpherson, who was loyal to the company, first, last, and all the time, had an a.s.say made from some of the stuff spilled out on the dump; but there was nothing doing, so far as the best a.n.a.lytical chemist in Denver could find out.”
For the first time since the strenuous day of plan-changing in Boston, Ballard was almost sorry he had given up the Cuban undertaking.
”It's a beautiful tangle!” he snapped, thinking, one would say, of the breach that must be opened between the company's chief engineer and the daughter of the militant old cattle king. Then he changed the subject abruptly.
”What do you know about the colonel's house-hold, Loudon?”
”All there is to know, I guess. He lives in state in his big country mansion that looks like a World's Fair Forest Products Exhibit on the outside, and is fitted and furnished regardless of expense in its interiors. He is a widower with one daughter--who comes and goes as she pleases--and a sister-in-law who is the dearest, finest piece of fragile old china you ever read about.”
”You've been in the country house, then?”
”Oh, yes. The colonel hasn't made it a personal fight on the working force since Braithwaite's time.”
”Perhaps you have met Miss--er--the daughter who comes and goes?”
”Sure I have! If you'll promise not to discipline me for hobn.o.bbing with the enemy, I'll confess that I've even played duets with her. She discovered my weakness for music when she was home last summer.”
”Do you happen to know where she is now?”
”On her way to Europe, I believe. At least, that is what Miss Cauffrey--she's the fragile-china aunt--was telling me.”
”I think not,” said Ballard, after a pause. ”I think she changed her mind and decided to spend the summer at home. When we stopped at Ackerman's to take water this evening, I saw three loaded buckboards driving in this direction.”
”That doesn't prove anything,” a.s.serted Bromley. ”The old colonel has a house-party every little while. He's no anchorite, if he does live in the desert.”
Ballard was musing again. ”Adam Craigmiles,” he said, thoughtfully. ”I wonder what there is in that name to set some sort of bee buzzing in my head. If I believed in transmigration, I should say that I had known that name, and known it well, in some other existence.”