Part 33 (2/2)

Most terrible of all, she turned swiftly to see her father coming out of the mine entrance with a gun in his hands--saw and understood.

It was Wingfield, seeing all that she saw and understanding quite as clearly, who came to her rescue at a moment when the bright August suns.h.i.+ne was filling with dancing black motes for her.

”Be brave!” he whispered. ”See--he isn't hurt much: he has let go of the wheel, and Bromley is only steadying him a bit.” And then to the others, with his habitual air of bored cheerfulness: ”The show is over, good people, and the water is rising to cut us off from luncheon. Sound the retreat, somebody, and let's mount and ride before we get wet feet.”

A movement toward the waiting vehicles followed, and at the facing about Elsa observed that her father hastily flung the rifle into the mine tunnel-mouth; and had a fleeting glimpse of Ballard and Bromley walking slowly arm-in-arm toward the mesa sh.o.r.e along the broad coping of the abutment.

At the buckboards Wingfield stood her friend again. ”Send Jerry Blacklock down to see how serious it is,” he suggested, coming between her and the others; and while she was doing it, he held the group for a final look down the canyon at the raging flood still churning and leaping at its barriers like some sentient wild thing trapped and maddened with the first fury of restraint.

Young Blacklock made a sprinter's record on his errand and was back almost immediately. Mr. Ballard had got his arm pinched in some way at the gate-head, he reported: it was nothing serious, and the Kentuckian sent word that he was sorry that the feeding of the mult.i.tude kept him from saying so to Miss Elsa in person. Elsa did not dare to look at Wingfield while Blacklock was delivering his message; and in the buckboard-seating for the return to Castle 'Cadia, she contrived to have Bigelow for her companion.

It was only a few minutes after Jerry Blacklock had raced away up the canyon path with his message of rea.s.surance that Bromley, following Ballard into the office room of the adobe bungalow and locking the door, set to work deftly to dress and bandage a deep bullet-crease across the muscles of his chief's arm; a wound painful enough, but not disabling.

”Well, what do you think now, Breckenridge?” he asked, in the midst of the small surgical service.

”I haven't any more thinks coming to me,” was the sober reply. ”And it is not specially comforting to have the old ones confirmed. You are sure it was the colonel who fired at me?”

”I saw the whole thing; all but the actual trigger-pulling, you might say. When Mr. Pelham cut him off, he turned and stepped back into the mouth of the mine. Then, while they were all standing up to see you lower the gate, I heard the shot and saw him come out with the gun in his hands. I was cool enough that far along to take in all the little details: the gun was a short-barrelled Winchester--the holster-rifle of the cow-punchers.”

”_Ouch!_” said Ballard, wincing under the bandaging. Then: ”The mysteries have returned, Loudon; we were on the wrong track--all of us.

Wingfield and you and I had figured out that the colonel was merely playing a cold-blooded game for delay. That guess comes back to us like a fish-hook with the bait gone. There was nothing, less than nothing, to be gained by killing me to-day.”

Bromley made the negative sign of a.s.senting perplexity.

”It's miles too deep for me,” he admitted. ”Three nights ago, when I was dining at Castle 'Cadia, Colonel Craigmiles spoke of you as a father might speak of the man whom he would like to have for a son-in-law: talked about the good old gentlemanly Kentucky stock, and all that, you know. I can't begin to sort it out.”

”I am going to sort it out, some day when I have time,” declared Ballard; and the hurt being temporarily repaired, they went out to superintend the arrangements for feeding the visiting throng in the big mess-tent.

After the barbecue, and more speech-making around the trestle-tables in the mess-tent, the railroad trains were brought into requisition, and various tours of inspection through the park ate out the heart of the afternoon for the visitors. Bromley took charge of that part of the entertainment, leaving Ballard to nurse his sore arm and to watch the slow submersion of the dam as the rising flood crept in little lapping waves up the sloping back-wall.

The afternoon sun beat fiercely upon the deserted construction camp, and the heat, rarely oppressive in the mountain-girt alt.i.tudes, was stifling. Down in the cook camp, Garou and his helpers were was.h.i.+ng dishes by the crate and preparing the evening luncheon to be served after the trains returned; and the tinkling clatter of china was the only sound to replace the year-long clamour of the industries and the hoa.r.s.e roar of the river through the cut-off.

Between his occasional strolls over to the dam and the canyon brink to mark the rising of the water, Ballard sat on the bungalow porch and smoked. From the time-killing point of view the great house in the upper valley loomed in mirage-like proportions in the heat haze; and by three o'clock the double line of aspens marking the river's course had disappeared in a broad band of molten silver half encircling the knoll upon which the mirage mansion swayed and s.h.i.+mmered.

Ballard wondered what the house-party was doing; what preparations, if any, had been made for its dispersal. For his own satisfaction he had carefully run bench-levels with his instruments from the dam height through the upper valley. When the water should reach the coping course, some three or four acres of the house-bearing knoll would form an island in the middle of the reservoir lake. The house would be completely cut off, the orchards submerged, and the nearest sh.o.r.e, that from which the roundabout road approached, would be fully a half-mile distant, with the water at least ten feet deep over the raised causeway of the road itself.

Surely the colonel would not subject his guests to the inconvenience of a stay at Castle 'Cadia when the house would be merely an isolated shelter upon an island in the middle of the great lake, Ballard concluded; and when the mirage effect cleared away to give him a better view, he got out the field-gla.s.s and looked for some signs of the inevitable retreat.

There were no signs, so far as he could determine. With the help of the gla.s.s he could pick out the details of the summer afternoon scene on the knoll-top; could see that there were a number of people occupying the hammocks and lazy-chairs under the tree-pillared portico; could make out two figures, which he took to be Bigelow and one of the Cantrell sisters, strolling back and forth in a lovers' walk under the shade of the maples.

It was all very perplexing. The sweet-toned little French clock on its shelf in the office room behind him had struck three, and there were only a few more hours of daylight left in Castle 'Cadia's last day as a habitable dwelling. And yet, if he could trust the evidence of his senses, the castle's garrison was making no move to escape: this though the members of it must all know that the rising of another sun would see their retreat cut off by the impounded flood.

After he had returned the field-gla.s.s to its case on the wall of the office the ticking telegraph instrument on Bromley's table called him, signing ”E--T,” the end-of-track on the High Line Extension. It was Bromley, wiring in to give the time of the probable return of the excursion trains for Garou's supper serving.

”How are you getting on?” clicked Ballard, when the time had been given.

”Fine,” was the answer. ”Everything lovely, and the goose honks high.

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