Part 31 (2/2)

”How shocking!” she exclaimed, with an embarra.s.sed little laugh. ”Is Mr.

Bromley to marry your widow? Or are you to figure as the consolation prize for his widow? Doubtless you have arranged it amicably between you.”

Having said the incendiary thing, he brazened it out like a man and a lover.

”It's no joke. I suppose I might sidestep, but I sha'n't. You know very well that Bromley is in love with you--up to his chin, and I'm afraid you have been too kind to him. That is a little hard on Loudon, you know--when you are going to marry some one else. But let that rest, and tell me a little more about this stock deal. Why should there be a 'gentlemen's agreement' to exclude your father? To a rank outsider like myself, Arcadia Irrigation would seem to be about the last thing in the world Colonel Adam Craigmiles would want to buy.”

”Under present conditions, I think it is,” she said. ”_I_ shouldn't buy it now.”

”What would you do, O wise virgin of the market-place?”

”I'd wait patiently while the rocket is going up; I might even clap my hands and say 'Ah-h-h!' with the admiring mult.i.tude. But afterward, when the stick comes down, I'd buy every bit of Arcadia Irrigation I could find.”

Again he was regarding her through half-closed eyelids.

”As I said before, you know too much about such things--altogether too much.” He said it half in raillery, but his deduction was made seriously enough. ”You think your father will win his law-suit and so break the market?”

”No; on the contrary, I'm quite sure he will be beaten. I am going, now.

Don't ask me any more questions: I've said too much to the company's engineer, as it is.”

”You have said nothing to the company's engineer,” he denied. ”You have been talking to Breckenridge Ballard, your future----”

She set the car in motion before he could complete the sentence, and he stood looking after it as it shot away up the hills. It was quite out of sight, and the sound of its drumming motor was lost in the hoa.r.s.e grumbling of the river, before he began to realise that Elsa's visit had not been for the purpose of asking him to send for Gardiner, nor yet to beg him not to be vindictive. Her real object had been to warn him not to buy Arcadia Irrigation. ”Why?” came the unfailing question, shot-like; and, like all the others of its tribe, it had to go unanswered.

It was two days later when Gardiner, the a.s.sistant professor of geology, kept his appointment, was duly met at Alta Vista by Ballard's special engine and a ”d.i.n.key” way-car, and was transported in state to the Arcadian fastnesses. Ballard had it in mind to run down the line on the other engine to meet the Bostonian; but Elsa forestalled him by intercepting the ”special” at Ackerman's with the motor-car and whisking the guest over the roundabout road to Castle 'Cadia.

Gardiner walked down to the construction camp at Elbow Canyon bright and early the following morning to make his peace with Ballard.

”Age has its privileges which youth is obliged to concede, Breckenridge, my son,” was the form his apology took. ”When I learned that I might have my visit with you, and still be put up at the millionaire hostelry in the valley above, I didn't hesitate a moment. I am far beyond the point of bursting into enthusiastic raptures over a bunk shake-down in a camp shanty, steel forks, tin platters, and plum-duff, when I can live on the fat of the land and sleep on a modern mattress. How are you coming on? Am I still in time to be in at the death?”

”I hope there isn't going to be any death,” was the laughing rejoinder.

”Because, in the natural sequence of things, it would have to be mine, you know.”

”Ah! You are tarred a little with the superst.i.tious stick, yourself, are you? What was it you said to me about 'two sheer accidents and a commonplace tragedy'? You may remember that I warned you, and the event proves that I was a true prophet. I predicted that Arcadia would have its shepherdess, you recollect.”

Thus, with dry humour, the wise man from the East. But Ballard was not prepared at the moment for a plunge into the pool of sentiment with the mildly cynical old schoolman for a bath-master, and he proposed, as the readiest alternative, a walking tour of the industries.

Gardiner was duly impressed by the industrial miracles, and by the magnitude of the irrigation scheme. Also, he found fitting words in which to express his appreciation of the thoroughness of Ballard's work, and of the admirable system under which it was pressing swiftly to its conclusion. But these matters became quickly subsidiary when he began to examine the curious geological formation of the foothill range through which the river elbowed its tumultuous course.

”These little wrinklings of the earth's crust at the foot of the great mountain systems are nature's puzzle-pieces for us,” he remarked. ”I foresee an extremely enjoyable vacation for me--if you have forgiven me to the extent of a snack at your mess-table now and then, and a possible night's lodging in your bungalow if I should get caught out too late to reach the millionaire luxuries of Castle 'Cadia.”

”If I haven't forgiven you, Bromley will take you in,” laughed Ballard.

”Make yourself one of us--when you please and as you please. The camp and everything in it belongs to you for as long as you can persuade yourself to stay.”

Gardiner accepted the invitation in its largest sense, and the afternoon of the same day found him prowling studiously in the outlet canyon with hammer and specimen-bag; a curious figure of complete abstraction in brown duck and service leggings, overshadowed by an enormous cork-lined helmet-hat that had been faded and stained by the sun and rains of three continents. Ballard pa.s.sed the word among his workmen. The absent-minded stranger under the cork hat was the guest of the camp, who was to be permitted to go and come as he chose, whose questions were to be answered without reserve, and whose peculiarities, if he had any, were to pa.s.s unremarked.

With the completion of the dam so near at hand, neither of the two young men who were responsible for the great undertaking had much time to spare for extraneous things. But Gardiner asked little of his secondary hosts; and presently the thin, angular figure prowling and tapping at the rocks became a familiar sight in the busy construction camp. It was Lamoine, the camp jester, who started the story that the figure in brown canvas was a mascot, imported specially by the ”boss” to hold the ”hoodoo” in check until the work should be done; and thereafter the Boston professor might have chipped his specimens from the facing stones on the dam without let or hindrance.

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