Part 23 (1/2)

”There's hope f'r the little man, Misther Ballard?” he inquired anxiously.

”Good hope, now, I think, Michael.”

”That's the brave wor-rd. The min do be sittin' up in th' bunk-shanties to hear ut. 'Twas all through the camp the minut' they brought him in.

There isn't a man av thim that wouldn't go t'rough fire and wather f'r Misther Bromley--and that's no joke. Is there annything I can do?”

”Nothing, thank you. Tell the yard watchman to stay within call, and I'll send for you if you're needed.”

With this provision for the possible need, the young chief kept the vigil alone, sitting where he could see the face of the still unconscious victim of fate, or tramping three steps and a turn in the adjoining office room when sleep threatened to overpower him.

It was a time for calm second thought; for a reflective weighing of the singular and ominous conditions partly revealed in the week agone talk with Elsa Craigmiles. That she knew more than she was willing to tell had been plainly evident in that first evening on the tree-pillared portico at Castle 'Cadia; but beyond this a.s.sumption the unanswerable questions cl.u.s.tered quickly, opening door after door of speculative conjecture in the background.

What was the motive behind the hurled stone which had so nearly bred a tragedy on his first evening at Elbow Canyon? He reflected that he had always been too busy to make personal enemies; therefore, the attempt upon his life must have been impersonal--must have been directed at the chief engineer of the Arcadia Company. a.s.suming this, the chain of inference linked itself rapidly. Was Macpherson's death purely accidental?--or Braithwaite's? If not, who was the murderer?--and why was the colonel's daughter so evidently determined to s.h.i.+eld him?

The answer, the purely logical answer, pointed to one man--her father--and thereupon became a thing to be scoffed at. It was more than incredible; it was blankly unthinkable.

The young Kentuckian, descendant of pioneers who had hewn their beginnings out of the primitive wilderness, taking life as they found it, was practical before all things else. Villains of the Borgian strain no longer existed, save in the unreal world of the novelist or the playwriter. And if, by any stretch of imagination, they might still be supposed to exist....

Ballard brushed the supposition impatiently aside when he thought of the woman he loved.

”Anything but that!” he exclaimed, breaking the silence of the four bare walls for the sake of hearing the sound of his own voice. ”And, besides, the colonel himself is a living, breathing refutation of any such idiotic notion. All the same, if it is not her father she is trying to s.h.i.+eld, who, in the name of all that is good, can it be? And why should Colonel Craigmiles, or anyone else, be so insanely vindictive as to imagine that the killing of a few chiefs of construction will cut any figure with the company which hires them?”

These perplexing questions were still unanswered when the graying dawn found him dozing in his chair, with the camp whistles sounding the early turn-out, and Bromley conscious and begging feebly for a drink of water.

XVII

THE DERRICK FUMBLES

Bromley had been a week in hospital at the great house in the upper valley, and was recovering as rapidly as a clean-living, well-ancestored man should, when Ballard was surprised one morning by a descent of the entire Castle 'Cadia garrison, lacking only the colonel and Miss Cauffrey, upon the scene of activities at the dam.

The chief of construction had to flog himself sharply into the hospitable line before he could make the invaders welcome. He had a workingman's shrewd impatience of interruptions; and since the accident which had deprived him of his a.s.sistant, he had been doing double duty.

On this particular morning he was about to leave for a flying round of the camps on the railroad extension; but he reluctantly countermanded the order for the locomotive when he saw Elsa picking the way for her guests among the obstructions in the stone yard.

”Please--oh, please don't look so inhospitable!” she begged, in well-simulated dismay, when the irruption of sight-seers had fairly surrounded him. ”We have driven and fished and climbed mountains and played children's games at home until there was positively nothing else to do. Pacify him, Cousin Janet--he's going to warn us off!”

Ballard laughingly disclaimed any such ungracious intention, and proceeded to prove his words by deeds. Young Blacklock and Bigelow were easily interested in the building details; the women were given an opportunity to see the inside workings of the men's housekeeping in the shacks, the mess-tent and the camp kitchen; the major was permitted and encouraged to be loftily critical of everything; and Wingfield--but Ballard kept the playwright carefully tethered in a sort of moral hitching-rope, holding the end of the rope in his own hands.

Once openly committed as entertainer, the young Kentuckian did all that could be expected of him--and more. When the visitors had surfeited themselves on concrete-mixing and stone-laying and camp housekeeping, the chief engineer had plank seats placed on a flat car, and the invaders were whisked away on an impromptu and personally conducted railway excursion to some of the nearer ditch camps.

Before leaving the headquarters, Ballard gave Fitzpatrick an Irish hint; and when the excursionists returned from the railway jaunt, there was a miraculous luncheon served in the big mess-tent. Garou, the French-Canadian camp cook, had a soul above the bare necessities when the occasion demanded; and he had Ballard's private commissary to draw upon.

After the luncheon Ballard let his guests scatter as they pleased, charging himself, as before, particularly with the oversight and wardens.h.i.+p of Mr. Lester Wingfield. There was only one chance in a hundred that the playwright, left to his own devices, might stumble upon the skeleton in the camp closet. But the Kentuckian was determined to make that one chance ineffective.

Several things came of the hour spent as Wingfield's keeper while the others were visiting the wing dam and the quarry, the spillway, and the cut-off tunnel, under Fitzpatrick as megaphonist. One of them was a juster appreciation of the playwright as a man and a brother. Ballard smiled mentally when he realised that his point of view had been that of the elemental lover, jealous of a possible rival. Wingfield was not half a bad sort, he admitted; a little inclined to pose, since it was his art to epitomise a world of _poseurs_; an enthusiast in his calling; but at bottom a workable companion and the shrewdest of observers.

In deference to the changed point of view, the Kentuckian did penance for the preconceived prejudice and tried to make the playwright's insulation painless. The sun shone hot on the stone yard, and there was a jar of pa.s.sable tobacco in the office adobe: would Wingfield care to go indoors and lounge until the others came to a proper sense of the desirability of shade and quietude on a hot afternoon?