Part 31 (1/2)

”You are jesting again. You always jest when I want to be serious.”

”I might retort that I learned the trick of it from you--in the blessed days that are now a part of another existence.”

”Oh!” she said; and there was so much more of distress than of impatience in the little outcry that he was mollified at once.

”I'm going to crank the engines and send you home,” he a.s.severated. ”I'm not fit to talk to you to-day.” And he started the engines of the motor-car.

She put a dainty foot on the clutch-pedal. ”You'll come up and see me?”

she asked; adding: ”Some time when you are fit?”

”I'll come when I am needed; yes.”

He walked beside the slowly moving car as she sent it creeping down the mesa hill on the brakes. At the hill-bottom turn, where the camp street ended and the roundabout road led off to the temporary bridge, she stopped the car. The towering wall of the great dam, with its dotting of workmen silhouetted black against the blue of the Colorado sky, rose high on the left. She let her gaze climb to the summit of the huge dike.

”You are nearly through?” she asked.

”Yes. Two other weeks, with no bad luck, will see us ready to turn on the water.”

She was looking straight ahead again.

”You know what that means to us at Castle 'Cadia?--but of course you do.”

”I know I'd rather be a 'mucker' with a pick and shovel out yonder in the ditch than to be the boss here when the spillway gates are closed at the head of the cut-off tunnel. And that is the pure truth.”

”This time I believe you without reservation, Breckenridge--my friend.”

Then: ”Will Mr. Pelham come out to the formal and triumphal opening of the Arcadian Irrigation District?”

”Oh, you can count on that--with all the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs. There is to be a demonstration in force, as Major Blacklock would say; special trains from Denver to bring the crowd, a barbecue dinner, speeches, a land-viewing excursion over the completed portion of the railroad, and fireworks in the evening while the band plays 'America.' You can trust Mr. Pelham to beat the big drum and to clash the cymbals vigorously and man-fas.h.i.+on at the psychological instant.”

”For purely commercial reasons, of course? I could go a step further and tell you something else that will happen. There will be a good many transfers of the Arcadia Company's stock at the triumphal climax.”

He was standing with one foot on the car step and his hands buried in the pockets of his short working-coat. His eyes narrowed to regard her thoughtfully.

”What do you know about such things?” he demurred. ”You know altogether too much for one small bachelor maid. It's uncanny.”

”I am the cow-punching princess of Arcadia, and Mr. Pelham's natural enemy, you must remember,” she countered, with a laugh that sounded entirely care-free. ”I could tell you more about the stock affair. Mr.

Pelham has been very liberal with his friends in the floating of this great and glorious undertaking--to borrow one of his pet phrases. He has placed considerable quant.i.ties of the Arcadia Company's stock among them at merely nominal prices, asking only that they sign a 'gentlemen's agreement' not to resell any of it, so that my father could get it. But there is a wheel within that wheel, too. Something more than half of the nominal capitalisation has been reserved as 'treasury stock.' When the enthusiasm reaches the proper height, this reserved stock will be put upon the market. People will be eager to buy it--won't they?--with the work all done, and everything in readiness to tap the stream of sudden wealth?”

”Probably: that would be the natural inference.”

”I thought so. And, as the company's chief engineer, you could doubtless get in on the 'ground floor' that Mr. Pelham is always talking about, couldn't you?”

The question was one to p.r.i.c.k an honest man in his tenderest part.

Ballard was hurt, and his face advertised it.

”See here, little girl,” he said, flinging the formalities to the winds; ”I am the company's hired man at the present moment, but that is entirely without prejudice to my convictions, or to the fact that some day I am going to marry you. I hope that defines my att.i.tude. As matters stand, Mr. Pelham couldn't hand me out any of his stock on a silver platter!”

”And Mr. Bromley?”

”You needn't fear for Loudon; he isn't going to invest, either. You know very well that he is in precisely the same boat that I am.”