The King of Arcadia. Lynde Francis

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СКАЧАТЬ yet, in my hearing, people are always saying that you are nothing less than a genius when it comes to handling workingmen. Isn't it so?"

      "Oh, that part of it is all right. It's the hoodoo that is making an old man of me before my time."

      "The what?"

      Bromley moved uneasily in his chair, and Ballard could have sworn that he gave a quick glance into the dark corners of the room before he said: "I'm giving you the men's name for it. But with or without a name, it hangs over this job like the shadow of a devil-bat's wings. The men sit around and smoke and talk about it till bedtime, and the next day some fellow makes a bad hitch on a stone, or a team runs away, or a blast hangs fire in the quarry, and we have a dead man for supper. Breckenridge, it is simply hell!"

      Ballard shook his head incredulously.

      "You've let a few ill-natured coincidences rattle you," was his comment. "What is it? Or, rather, what is at the bottom of it?"

      "I don't know; nobody knows. The 'coincidences,' as you call them, were here when I came; handed down from Braithwaite's drowning, I suppose. Then Sanderson got tangled up with Manuel's woman – as clear a case of superinduced insanity as ever existed – and in less than two months he and Manuel jumped in with Winchesters, and poor Billy passed out. That got on everybody's nerves, of course; and then Macpherson came. You know what he was – a hard-headed, sarcastic old Scotchman, with the bitterest tongue that was ever hung in the middle and adjusted to wag both ways. He tried ridicule; and when that didn't stop the crazy happenings, he took to bullyragging. The day the derrick fell on him he was swearing horribly at the hoister engineer; and he died with an oath in his mouth."

      The Kentuckian sat back in his chair with his hands clasped behind his head.

      "Let me get one thing straight before you go on. Mr. Pelham told me of a scrap between the company and an old fellow up here who claims everything in sight. Has this emotional insanity you are talking about anything to do with the old cattle king's objection to being syndicated out of existence?"

      "No; only incidentally in Sanderson's affair – which, after all, was a purely personal quarrel between two men over a woman. And I wouldn't care to say that Manuel was wholly to blame in that."

      "Who is this Manuel?" queried Ballard.

      "Oh, I thought you knew. He is the colonel's manager and ranch foreman. He is a Mexican and an all-round scoundrel, with one lonesome good quality – absolute and unimpeachable loyalty to his master. The colonel turns the entire business of the cattle raising and selling over to him; doesn't go near the ranch once a month himself."

      "'The colonel,'" repeated Ballard. "You call him 'the colonel,' and Mr. Pelham calls him the 'King of Arcadia.' I assume that he has a name, like other men?"

      "Sure!" said Bromley. "Hadn't you heard it? It's Craigmiles."

      "What!" exclaimed Ballard, holding the match with which he was about to relight his pipe until the flame crept up and scorched his fingers.

      "That's it – Craigmiles; Colonel Adam Craigmiles – the King of Arcadia. Didn't Mr. Pelham tell you – "

      "Hold on a minute," Ballard cut in; and he got out of his chair to pace back and forth on his side of the table while he was gathering up the pieces scattered broadcast by this explosive petard of a name.

      At first he saw only the clearing up of the little mysteries shrouding Miss Elsa's suddenly changed plans for the summer; how they were instantly resolved into the commonplace and the obvious. She had merely decided to come home and play hostess to her father's guests. And since she knew about the war for the possession of Arcadia, and would quite naturally be sorry to have her friend pitted against her father, it seemed unnecessary to look further for the origin of Lassley's curiously worded telegram. "Lassley's," Ballard called it; but if Lassley had signed it, it was fairly certain now that Miss Craigmiles had dictated it.

      Ballard thought her use of the fatalities as an argument in the warning message was a purely feminine touch. None the less he held her as far above the influences of the superstitions as he held himself, and it was a deeper and more reflective second thought that turned a fresh leaf in the book of mysteries.

      Was it possible that the three violent deaths were not mere coincidences, after all? And, admitting design, could it be remotely conceivable that Adam Craigmiles's daughter was implicated, even to the guiltless degree of suspecting it? Ballard stopped short in his pacing sentry beat and began to investigate, not without certain misgivings.

      "Loudon, what manner of man is this Colonel Craigmiles?"

      Bromley's reply was characteristic. "The finest ever – type of the American country gentleman; suave, courteous, a little inclined to be grandiloquent; does the paternal with you till you catch yourself on the edge of saying 'sir' to him; and has the biggest, deepest, sweetest voice that ever drawled the Southern 'r.'"

      "Humph! That isn't exactly the portrait of a fire-eater."

      "Don't you make any mistake. I've described the man you'll meet socially. On the other side, he's a fighter from away back; the kind of man who makes no account of the odds against him, and who doesn't know when he is licked. He has told us openly and repeatedly that he will do us up if we swamp his house and mine; that he will make it pinch us for the entire value of our investment in the dam. I believe he'll do it, too; but President Pelham won't back down an inch. So there you are – irresistible moving body; immovable fixed body: the collision imminent; and we poor devils in between."

      Ballard drew back his chair and sat down again. "You are miles beyond my depth now," he asserted. "I had less than an hour with Mr. Pelham in Denver, and what he didn't tell me would make a good-sized library. Begin at the front, and let me have the story of this feud between the company and Colonel Craigmiles."

      Again Bromley said: "I supposed, of course, that you knew all about it" – after which he supplied the missing details.

      "It was Braithwaite who was primarily to blame. When the company's plans were made public, the colonel did not oppose them, though he knew that the irrigation scheme spelled death to the cattle industry. The fight began when Braithwaite located the dam here at Elbow Canyon in the foothill hogback. There is a better site farther down the river; a second depression where an earthwork dike might have taken the place of all this costly rockwork."

      "I saw it as we came up this evening."

      "Yes. Well, the colonel argued for the lower site; offered to donate three or four homesteads in it which he had taken up through his employees; offered further to take stock in the company; but Braithwaite was pig-headed about it. He had been a Government man, and was a crank on permanent structures and things monumental; wherefore he was determined on building masonry. He ignored the colonel, reported on the present site, and the work was begun."

      "Go on," said Ballard.

      "Naturally, the colonel took this as a flat declaration of war. He has a magnificent country house in the upper valley, which must have cost him, at this distance from a base of supplies, a round half-million or more. When we fill our reservoir, this house will stand on an island of less than a half-dozen acres in extent, with its orchards, lawns, and ornamental grounds all under water. Which the same is tough."

      Ballard was Elsa Craigmiles's lover, and he agreed in a single forcible expletive. Bromley acquiesced in the expletive, and went on.

      "The colonel refused to sell his country-house holding, as a matter of course; and the company decided to take chances on the suit for damages which will naturally follow the flooding of the property. Meanwhile, СКАЧАТЬ