The King of Arcadia. Lynde Francis

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      "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 – nobody 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 nobody ever seen the inside of this Golconda of a mine?" queried Ballard.

      "Nobody 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 assay made from some of the stuff spilled out on the dump; but there was nothing doing, so far as the best analytical 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 hobnobbing 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," asserted 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."

      "Oh, I don't know," said Bromley. "It's not such an unusual name."

      "No; if it were, I might trace it. How long did you say the colonel had lived in Arcadia?"

      "I didn't say. But it must be something over twenty years. Miss Elsa was born here."

      "And the family is Southern – from what section?"

      "I don't know that – Virginia, perhaps, measuring by the colonel's accent, pride, hot-headedness, and reckless hospitality."

      The clue, if any there were, appeared to be lost; and again Ballard smoked on in silence. When the pipe burned out he refilled it, and at the match-striking instant a sing-song cry of "Fire in the rock!" floated down from the hill crags above the adobe, and the jar of a near-by explosion shook the air and rattled the windows.

      "What was that?" he queried.

      "It's our quarry gang getting out stone," was Bromley's reply. "We were running short of headers for the tie courses, and I put on a night-shift."

      "Whereabouts is your quarry?"

      "Just around the shoulder of the hill, and a hundred feet, or such a matter, above us. It is far enough to be out of range."

      A second explosion punctuated the explanation. Then there was a third and still heavier shock, a rattling of pebbles on the sheet-iron roof of the adobe, and a scant half-second later a fragment of stone the size of a man's head crashed through roof and ceiling and made kindling-wood of the light pine table at which the two men were sitting. Ballard sprang to his feet, and said something under his breath; but Bromley sat still, with a faint yellow tint discolouring the sunburn on his face.

      "Which brings us back to our starting-point – the hoodoo," he said quietly. "To-morrow morning, when you go around the hill and see where that stone came from, you'll say that it was a sheer impossibility. Yet the impossible thing has happened. It is reaching for you now, Breckenridge; and a foot or two farther that way would have – " He stopped, swallowed hard, and rose unsteadily. "For God's sake, old man, throw up this cursed job and get out of here, while you can do it alive!"

      "Not much!" said the new chief contemptuously. And then he asked which of the two bunks in the adjoining sleeping-room was his.

      VI

      ELBOW CANYON

      Ballard had his first appreciative view of his new field of labor before breakfast on the morning following his arrival, with Bromley as his sightsman.

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