Part 15

“There are times, Mr. Sprague, when we all feel that way; crises which seem to call for something in the way of extra-judicial proceedings,” he admitted. And then: “Have you told Maxwell about this?”

“Not specifically. Dick has troubles of his own just now; he has had enough of them this summer to turn his hair gray, as you know. I have been hoping that this latest move of the enemy could be blocked without dragging him into it.”

Stillings turned quickly. “That is the frankest thing you’ve said this evening. Is it another move of the enemy--the New Yorkers?”

Sprague spread his hands and his big shoulders went up in a shrug.

“You have just as much incriminating evidence as I have. How does it strike you?”

The attorney shook his head in doubtful incredulity, again unconsciously following Editor Kendall’s lead.

“It doesn’t seem possible!” he protested. “Think of the tremendous consequences involved--outside of the crippling of the railroad. The Short Line wouldn’t be the only sufferer in case of a dam-break in the Mesquite. The entire valley would be flood-swept, and our High Line dam--” he stopped abruptly and half-rose to his feet. “Good Lord, Sprague! the breaking of the High Line dam would mean death and destruction without end!”

Sprague had found a cigar in an overlooked pocket and was calmly lighting it. Though he did not tell Stillings so, the argument had finally gotten around into the field toward which he had been pushing it from the first.

“Three days ago, your High Line treasurer, Mr. J. Montague Smith, declared in the presence of witnesses--it was right here in this hotel lobby, and I happened to overhear it--that a ten-foot rise in the river, which, as you know, would submerge and sweep away miles of the railroad track in the canyon, would by no means endanger his dam. There you are, Mr. Stillings. Now fish or cut bait.”

“Great Scott! what could Smith have been thinking of!” ejaculated the lawyer.

“It was merely a bit of loyal brag, as he admitted to Starbuck and me on the train this afternoon; and it had been craftily provoked by one of the men who heard it. But he said it, and what is more, he said it to--Jennings!”

This time the attorney’s start carried him out of his chair and stood him upon his feet.

“I shall have to see Smith at once,” he said hurriedly. “Still, I can’t believe that these New York stock pirates would authorize any such murderous thing as this!”

“Authorize murder or violence? Of course not; big business never does that. What it does is to put a man into the field, telling him in general terms the end that is to be accomplished. The head pushers would turn blue under their finger-nails if you’d charge them with murder.”

“But that is what this would amount to--cold-blooded murder!”

“Hold on a minute,” objected Sprague. “Let’s apply a little scientific reasoning. Suppose this thing has been accurately figured out, engineering-wise. Suppose that, by careful computation, it has been found that a certain quantity of water, turned loose at the mouth of Mesquite Valley, would produce a flood of a certain height in the full length of Timanyoni Canyon--say ten or twelve feet--sufficient to obliterate thirty-five or forty miles of the railroad track. Below its path of the greatest destruction it comes out into your High Line reservoir lake, with some miles farther to go, and a greatly enlarged area over which to diffuse itself.”

Stillings was nodding intelligence. “I am beginning to see,” he said. “Ten feet in the canyon wouldn’t necessarily mean ten feet at Smith’s dam.”

“No; but at the same time Smith is on record as having said that ten feet wouldn’t endanger his dam or the power plant. So there you are again.”

Stillings walked the length of the alcove twice with his head down and his hands in his pockets before he stopped in front of the expert to say: “You’ve half-convinced me, Mr. Sprague. If we could get the barest shred of evidence that these people are building a dam which isn’t intended to hold----”

“There spoke the lawyer again,” laughed Sprague. “If you had the evidence, what would you do?”

“Institute legal proceedings at once.”

“And how long would it take you to get action?”

“Oh, that would depend upon the nature of the evidence I had to offer, of course.”

Sprague laughed again, derisively this time.

“Yes, I thought so; and while you were getting out your writs and monkeying around--do you know what that piece of canyon track cost, Mr. Stillings? I was told to-day that three million dollars wouldn’t replace it--to say nothing of what it would mean to the railroad company to have its through line put out of business indefinitely. No; if we mean to----”

The interruption was the intrusion into the alcove of a huge-framed, hard-faced man who was fumbling in his pocket for a paper.

“Hello, Harding,” said Stillings; and then, jokingly: “What brings the respected sheriff of Timanyoni County charging in upon us at this time of night?”

“It’s a warrant,” said the sheriff, half in apology. And then to Sprague: “I hate like the mischief to trouble you, Mr. Sprague, but duty’s duty.”

Sprague smiled up at the big man. “Tell us about it, Mr. Harding. You needn’t bother to read the warrant.”

“It’s that scrap you had with Jennings up at the Mesquite this morning. He’s swore out a warrant against you for assault and battery.”

“And are you going to lock me up over night? I fancy that is what he would like to have you do.”

“Not me,” said the sheriff good-naturedly. “I got Judge MacFarland out o’ bed and made him come down to his office. I’m goin’ to ask you to walk around there with me, just to let me out of it whole. I’ve fixed it with the judge so you won’t have to give bail.”

“I’ll go with you,” Stillings offered; and a few minutes later, in the magistrate’s office, the Government man had bound himself on his own recognizance to appear in court the next morning to answer the charge against him.

On the sidewalk in front of the justice shop, Stillings reverted to the more pressing matter.

“I’m going to see Smith before I sleep, if I have to drive out to the Baldwin ranch to find him,” he declared. “In the meantime, Mr. Sprague, if you can devise any scheme by which we can get a legal hold on these fellows--anything that will serve as an excuse for our asking that an injunction be issued----”

“That would come before Judge Watson, wouldn’t it?” Sprague broke in.

“Yes.”

“See Kendall, of _The Tribune_, about that. From what he told me a couple of hours ago, I should say that your petition for an injunction would be only a crude loss of time. We’ll try to think of a better way, or at least a more effective way. Good-night; and don’t omit to throw the gaff into Smith, good and hard.”

On the morning following Sprague’s visit to _The Tribune_ editorial rooms, the newspaper-reading public of Brewster had a small sensation served, in Starbuck’s phrase, “hot from the skillet.” A good portion of the front page of _The Tribune_ was given to a news story of the work which was under way in the Mesquite Valley, and pictures were printed of the camp, the dam, and the growing lake.

On the editorial page there was a caustic arraignment of the Mesquite Company, which was called upon to show cause why it should not be condemned as a public nuisance of a kind which had already brought much reproach upon the West as a field for legitimate investment, and the suggestion was made that a committee of responsible citizens be sent to investigate the Mesquite project, to the end that the charges made might be either substantiated or set aside.

Specifically, these charges were that there was no arable land within reach of the Mesquite dam, and that the dam itself was unsafe. Throughout his editorial Kendall had judiciously refrained from making any mention of a possible disaster to the railroad; but he hinted broadly at the danger to which the High Line dam--the source of the city’s power and lights--would be subjected in the event of a flood catastrophe on the distant project.

Maxwell, who was living at the hotel in the absence of his family, had read the paper before he came down to join Sprague at the breakfast-table, and, like every other newspaper reader in Brewster that morning, he was full of the latest sensation.

“By George, Calvin,” he began, “somebody has been stirring up the mud for those people we were talking about night before last. Have you seen _The Tribune_?”

Sprague nodded assent.

“What do you make of it?” asked the railroad man.

“I should say that somebody--possibly the High Line management--is beginning to sit up and take notice, wouldn’t you?”

“Y-yes; but see here--any such thing as Kendall hints at would knock the Nevada Short Line out long before it would get to the High Line dam!”

“Naturally,” said Sprague coolly.

“Great Jehu! was that what you meant when you were making me dig this Mesquite project over for you the other day?”

“I didn’t want to drag you into it, and don’t yet,” said Sprague quietly. “You’ve had grief enough for one summer. But the detective half of me tells me that there is little doubt that this thing is another attempt on the part of the big-money crowd to side-swipe your railroad off the map. It can be done, and you have no preventive recourse; Stillings says you haven’t.”

“But, Calvin--something’s _got_ to be done! Are we going to sit still and----”

“One kind of a something is doing itself, right now,” interrupted Sprague. “It’s your play, this time, to keep out of it, if you can. You’d say that the High Line people, J. Montague Smith and his crowd, inspired that blast in _The Tribune_ this morning, wouldn’t you?”

“It looks that way, yes.”

“Well, let them stir up the mud and make the fight. You sit tight in the boat and say nothing. What kind of an agent or operator have you at Angels?”

“Disbrow?--he’s a good man; so good that I’m going to promote him to a better station next week.”

“Let that promotion wait a while. Give this good man instructions to watch every move that Jennings makes, and to report at once anything out of the ordinary that may happen. Do you get that?”

“I’ll do it. Anything else?”

“No, not at present. Later on, say after the evening edition of _The Times-Record_ comes out, I may want to get you on a quick wire. But the chief thing just now is to post the Angels man, and to have him keep in touch with you.”

After Maxwell had gone the chemistry expert finished his breakfast with epicurean leisure, smoked a reflective cigar in comfortable solitude in the hotel lobby, and, when the court hour arrived, went around to the office of the justice of the peace to answer to the charge of assault. As was to be expected, Jennings was not present; was not even represented by an attorney. Sprague pleaded guilty and paid his nominal fine, which MacFarland took with a quiet smile.

“I don’t know what you did to that black-faced bully, Mr. Sprague, but I hope you got your money’s worth,” he said. “Every time he turns up here in Brewster he proves himself an undesirable citizen, right from the word go.”

“Tough, is he?” queried Sprague.

“As tough as they make them. I wonder he didn’t try to get square with you with a gun. That would be more like him.”

“Perhaps he will, later on,” suggested the fined one, with a good-natured smile; after which he went across to his laboratory and was invisible for the remainder of the morning.

Just before noon Stillings dropped into the laboratory office. He found the chemist working among his retorts and test-tubes.

“I fell in to give you a pointer,” was the attorney’s excuse for the intrusion. “Jennings is in town. He came over on the ten-o’clock local and went straight to _The Times-Record_ office.”

Sprague grinned. “You were looking out for him, were you? Somebody got waked up at last?”

“Yes; the High Line people are on, all right,” was the reply. “Smith called an emergency meeting of his directors early this morning. Two of them are Red Desert cattle barons, and they know the Mesquite situation like a book. What none of them can understand is the ‘why’; why the Mesquite outfit should take ninety-nine chances in a hundred of sending a flood down the Timanyoni when there is no money to be made by it.”

“What action did the directors’ meeting take?”

“Instructed me to feel Judge Watson on the question of holding things up with an injunction. I did it, and it turned out as you intimated it would; nothing doing. Smith asked me to borrow Maxwell’s special officer, Arch Tarbell, suggesting that we ought to keep in touch with Jennings. Archer was going over to Angels on the afternoon train, but Jennings has saved him the trouble by coming to town.”

“Well, what next?” Sprague inquired.

“That is just what I’d like to ask you,” was the lawyer’s frank admission. “We’re all looking to you to set the pace. You’re the one man with the holy gift of initiative, Mr. Sprague. You haven’t admitted it in so many words, but I know as well as I know anything that you are the man who started this newspaper talk.”

“Pshaw!” said the expert, in genial raillery; “I’m only a Government chemist, Mr. Stillings.”

“That’s all right, too; but that isn’t why the railroad men call you ‘Scientific Sprague.’ Four times this summer you’ve dug Maxwell and his railroad out of a hole when the rest of us didn’t know there was any hole. What I’m most afraid of now is that Jennings will put up some sort of a scheme to get you out of the way. He knows well enough by this time that you are the key to his situation.”

“I’m a tenderfoot,” said the big man, with naïve irony. “What would you suggest?”

“That you go to Sheriff Harding and get him to swear you in as a special deputy. Then you can be prepared to defend yourself.”

Sprague’s mellow laugh rumbled deep in his big body.

“I guess I can take care of myself, if it comes to that, without ‘packing hardware,’ as Starbuck would put it,” he averred. “There won’t be more than three or four of them to tackle me at once, will there? But about your campaign--I have been hoping that the High Line people, backed by public sentiment, would be able to head this thing off. I am still hoping it. It will be altogether better if the railroad doesn’t have to take a hand on its own account. The New Yorkers would be sure to make capital out of it, holding the Ford-Maxwell management up to public execration as a corporation which deliberately strangles development propositions in its own territory.”

“That’s a fact,” the attorney agreed.

“Working along that line, we can afford to wait, for a little while at least, to see how the cat is going to jump. Jennings is over here to get into the newspaper fight himself. In Maxwell’s demoralization tussle of two weeks ago, it was demonstrated that _The Times-Record_ had been subsidized by the enemy. Now we shall see Higginson and his editor jump in and take up the clubs in defence of the Mesquite Company.”

“I guess that is pretty good advice--to wait,” said Stillings. “But we have an active crowd in the High Line, and its blood is up. Our people will want to be doing something while they wait.”

“Let them talk,” said Sprague quickly. “Tell them to resolve themselves into committees of one to throw the big scare into the Brewster public which depends upon the safety of the High Line dam for its own safety. Then pick out a few good, dependable men like Smith, his old fighting father-in-law the colonel, and Williams the engineer, who will hold themselves in readiness to start at a moment’s notice, night or day, for the firing line--any firing line that may happen to show up.”

“That is more like it,” rejoined the attorney. “I’m sworn to uphold the majesty of the law, but----”

“But, as you remarked last night, there are extra-judicial crises now and then which have to be met in any old way that offers. Let it rest at that, and see me at the hotel this evening, if you can make it convenient.”

With the appearance on the streets of the evening edition of _The Times-Record_, the Brewster public learned that there were two sides to the Mesquite question. In terms of unmeasured scorn Editor Healy attacked the narrow prejudice which would seek to place stumbling-blocks in the way of a great enterprise designed to benefit, not only the region locally concerned, but the entire West.

In the course of a long and vituperative editorial, the High Line company, the Brewster public-service corporations, and the railroad, each came in for its share of accusation, and their joint lack of public spirit was roundly condemned. It was pointed out that the High Line plant, by the admission of its own officials, would be in no danger even in the unsupposable case of the breaking of the Mesquite dam. Also, it was urged that the penny-wise policy of the railroad in adopting the low grade in Timanyoni Canyon was a matter of its own risk. Was the development of the nation to be halted, it was asked, because a niggardly railroad company was unwilling to spend a little money in raising its grade beyond a possible danger line?

But the sting of the editorial for Maxwell was in its tail. Healy concluded by darkly hinting that certain of the railroad officials were interested financially in sundry Timanyoni Park lands owned by the High Line Company, and that they were willing to kill the prospects of the new district for the sake of their own pockets.

Maxwell was furiously hot about this blast in the evening paper, as his demeanor at the dinner-table, where he spoke his mind freely to Sprague, sufficiently proved.

“Why, the miserable liars!” he raged. “There isn’t an official on the Short Line from President Ford down who owns a single share of stock in the High Line! We all did help out at first, but Ford made every man of us turn loose the minute the dam was completed and the project was securely on its feet. He insisted that we couldn’t afford to work for two dividend accounts!”

“He was quite right,” said Sprague calmly. “But that is neither here nor there. It was Jennings’s turn at bat and he took it. Let it go, and tell me what you hear from that good and reliable man, Disbrow, at Angels.”

“I had him on the wire myself, just a few minutes ago,” was the superintendent’s answer. “He says something has stirred things up over on the Mesquite. They’re working night shifts--began last night.”

“Rain?” queried the expert.

“How the devil do you manage to jump at things that way?” demanded Maxwell, half-irritably. “Yes; there have been cloud-bursts in the eastern foot-hills. The river rose two feet to-day.”

“Ah? That may bring on more talk--before the stenographers are ready to take it down. Any more items from Angels?”

“Nothing special. The Mesquite people got half a car-load of dynamite this morning. That shows you how careful Disbrow is; he is spotting everything--even the common routine things.”

“Um; dynamite, eh? What use has Jennings for so much high explosive as that?”

“I don’t know; uses it in excavating, I suppose. The more he uses, the bigger his rake-off from the powder company. Where there’s a big graft, there are always a lot of little ones.”

Sprague ate in silence for five full minutes before he said, quite without preliminary: “How long would it take a light special train to run from Brewster to Angels, with a clear track and regardless orders, Dick?”

“I made it once in my own car in two hours and fifty-five minutes, with two stops for water. Why?”

“Oh, I was just curious to know. Two fifty-five, eh? And how long would it take to get the special train ready?”

“Fifteen or twenty minutes, perhaps, on a rush order.”

Sprague sat back and began to fold his napkin carefully in the original creases.

“As I have said before, I don’t want to pose as an alarmist, Maxwell; but if I were you, I’d have that special train hooked up and ready to pull out--and I’d keep it that way, on tap, so to speak.”

The railroad man rose to the occasion promptly.

“Beginning to-night?” he asked.

“Yes, beginning to-night.”

“Has Jennings gone back?”

“He has. He went over on the evening train. Your man Tarbell kept cases on him while he was here. He spent most of the day with Higginson and Healy in _The Times-Record_ office.”

Maxwell refused his dessert and ordered a second cup of black coffee.

“This suspense is something fierce, Calvin,” he said, when the waiter left them. “Have we got to sit still and do nothing?”

“That is your part in it,” was the quiet reply. “If a party of prominent citizens should call upon you for a special train at some odd hour of the day or night, you want to be ready to supply it suddenly. Aside from that, you are to keep hands off.”

For forty-eight hours beyond this evening dinner in the Topaz café--two days during which the railroad agent at Angels reported increased activities at the Mesquite dam--the newspaper wrangle over the merits and demerits of the irrigation project in the edge of the Red Desert went on with growing acrimony on both sides. But by the end of the second day it was apparent that _The Tribune_ had public sentiment with it almost unanimously.

It was also on this second day that further bitterness was engendered by a street report that Judge Watson had enjoined the High Line Company from interfering in any way with the operations on the Mesquite. This was the last straw, and public indignation found expression that night in a monster mass meeting of protest, in which the speakers, with J. Montague Smith to set them the example, criticised the court sharply in free Western phrase.

After the meeting, adopting all sorts of resolutions condemnatory of everything in sight, adjourned--which was between nine and ten o’clock--there was a street rumor to the effect that Judge Watson would declare some of the speakers in contempt, and cinch them accordingly.

Maxwell and Starbuck brought this report to Sprague, who was smoking one of his big, black cigars on the porch of the hotel.

“Going to institute contempt proceedings, is he?” said the expert, with interest apparently only half-aroused.

“Wouldn’t that jar you?” commented Starbuck. “I was telling Dick just now that Judge Watson has about outlived his usefulness in this little old shack town. This injunction of his is about the rawest thing that ever came over the range.”

“Smith is red-hot,” Maxwell put in; “hot enough to get out and scrap somebody. And his directors are all with him.”

Still the big-bodied expert seemed only mildly interested.

“If anybody should happen to get mixed up legally with the Mesquite folks on this job of theirs, it would be pretty hard to get a jury in Brewster which would lean the way the judge does, wouldn’t it?” he asked.

Maxwell’s verdict was unqualified. “It would be practically impossible.” He had found his pipe and was filling it when Sprague pointed to the spur track at the end of the railroad building opposite.

“Is that your special train over there, Dick?”

“Yes. You see I’ve obeyed orders. That train has been standing there for two days, with three shifts of men dividing up the watch in the engine cab.”

“And the committee of prominent citizens hasn’t yet materialized, eh? Never mind; you’ve done your part. What is the latest from Angels?”

“More cloud-bursts in the hills, and more activity up on the Mesquite. Disbrow says that Jennings has been offering all sorts of big pay to the scattered ranchmen to get them to come on the job with scraper-teams.”

“That’s bad,” said the chemistry man briefly; adding, “I don’t like that.”

Starbuck got up to stand with his back to a porch pillar. From the new position he could look through the windows into the thronged hotel lobby.

“This town’s stirred up some hotter than I’ve ever seen it before,” he drawled. “Look at that mob inside--and every blame’ man of it chewing the rag over this water proposition.”