LITMIR.BIZ

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off," said the big man coolly. "Somebody has bungled in giving you the dope. You want to keep your job, don't you?"

      "That is neither here nor there. What we are discussing at present is the department's attitude toward your enterprise. I shall be exceeding my instructions if I make that attitude friendly to the detriment of my own work."

      The new resident manager sat back in his chair and chewed his cigar reflectively, staring up at the log beaming of the office ceiling. When he began again he did not seem to think it worth while to shift his gaze from the abstractions.

      "You're just like all the other government men I've ever had to do business with, Brouillard; pig-headed, obstinate, blind as bats to their own interests. I didn't especially want to begin by knocking you into line, but I guess it'll have to be done. In the first place, let me tell you that there are all kinds of big money behind this little sky-rocket of ours here in the Niquoia: ten millions, twenty millions, thirty millions, if they're needed."

      Brouillard shook his head. "I can't count beyond a hundred, Mr. Hosford."

      "All right; then I'll get you on the other side. Suppose I should tell you that practically all of your bosses are in with us; what then?"

      "Your stockholders' listings concern me even less than your capitalization. We are miles apart yet."

      Again the representative of Niquoia Improvement took time to shift the extinct cigar.

      "I guess the best way to get you is to send a little wire to Washington," he said reflectively. "How does that strike you?"

      "I haven't the slightest interest in what you may do or fail to do," said Brouillard. "At the same time, as I have already said, I don't wish to quarrel with you or with your company."

      "Ah! that touched you, didn't it?"

      "Not in the sense you are imagining; no. Send your wire if you like. You may have the use of the government telegraph. The office is in the second shack north of this."

      "Still you say you don't want to scrap?"

      "Certainly not. As you have intimated, we shall have to do business together as buyer and seller. I merely wished to make it plain that the Reclamation Service doesn't put its engineering department at the disposal of the Niquoia Improvement Company."

      "But you have made the plans for this power plant, haven't you?"

      "Yes; and they are the property of the department. If you want them, I'll turn them over to you upon a proper order from headquarters."

      "That's a little more like it. Where did you say I'd find your wire office?"

      Brouillard gave the information a second time, and as Hosford went out, Grislow came in and took his place at the mapping table.

      "Glad you got back in time to save my life," he remarked pointedly, with a sly glance at his chief. "He's been ploughing furrows up and down my little potato patch all day."

      "Humph! Digging for information, I suppose?" grunted Brouillard.

      "Just that; and he's been getting it, too. Not out of me, particularly, but out of everybody. Also, he was willing to impart a little. We're in for the time of our lives, Victor."

      "I know it," was the crabbed rejoinder.

      "You don't know the tenth part of it," asserted the hydrographer slowly. "It's a modest name, 'The Niquoia Improvement Company,' but it is going to be like charity – covering a multitude of sins. Do you know what that plank-faced organizer has got up his sleeve? He is going to build us a neat, up-to-date little city right here in the middle of our midst. If I hadn't made him believe that I was only a draughtsman, he would have had me out with a transit, running the lines for the streets."

      "A city? – in this reservoir bottom? I guess not. He was only stringing you to kill time, Grizzy."

      "Don't you fool yourself!" exclaimed the map-maker. "He's got the plans in his grip. We're going to be on a little reservation set apart for us by the grace of God and the kindness of these promoters. The remainder of the valley is laid off into cute little squares and streets, with everything named and numbered, ready to be listed in the brokers' offices. You may not be aware of it, but this palatial office building of ours fronts on Chigringo Avenue."

      "Stuff!" said Brouillard. "What has all this bubble blowing got to do with the building of a temporary power dam and the setting up of a couple of cement kilns?"

      Grislow laid his pen aside and whirled around on his working-stool.

      "Don't you make any easy-going mistake, Victor," he said earnestly. "The cement and power proposition is only a side issue. These new people are going to take over the sawmills, open up quarries, build a stub railroad to the Hophra mines, grade a practicable stage road over the range to Quesado, and put on a fast-mule freight line to serve until the railroad builds in. Wouldn't that set your teeth on edge?"

      "I can't believe it, Murray. It's a leaf out of the book of Bedlam! Take a fair shot at it and see where the bullet lands: this entire crazy fake is built upon one solitary, lonesome fact – the fact that we're here, with a job on our hands big enough to create an active, present-moment market for labor and material. There is absolutely nothing else behind the bubble blowing; if we were not here the Niquoia Improvement Company would never have been heard of!"

      Grislow laughed. "Your arguing that twice two makes four doesn't change the iridescent hue of the bubble," he volunteered. "If big money has seen a chance to skin somebody, the mere fact that the end of the world is due to come along down the pike some day isn't going to cut any obstructing figure. We'll all be buying and selling corner lots in Hosford's new city before we're a month older. Don't you believe it?"

      "I'll believe it when I see it," was Brouillard's reply; and with this the matter rested for the moment.

      It was later in the day, an hour or so after the serving of the hearty supper in the engineers' mess tent, that Brouillard was given to see another and still less tolerable side of his temporary guest. Hosford had come into the office to plant himself solidly in the makeshift easy-chair for the smoking of a big, black, after-supper cigar.

      "I've been looking over your rules and regulations, Brouillard," he began, after an interval of silence which Brouillard had been careful not to break. "You're making a capital mistake in trying to transplant the old Connecticut blue laws out here. Your working-men ought to have the right to spend their money in any way that suits 'em."

      Brouillard was pointedly occupying himself at his desk, but he looked up long enough to say: "Whiskey, you mean?"

      "That and other things. They tell me that you don't allow any open gambling, or any women here outside of the families of the workmen."

      "We don't," was the short rejoinder.

      "That won't hold water after we get things fairly in motion."

      "It will have to hold water, so far as we are concerned, if I have to build a stockade around the camp," snapped Brouillard.

      Hosford's heavy face wrinkled itself in a mirthless smile. "You're nutty," he remarked. "When I find a man bearing down hard on all the little vices, it always makes me wonder what's the name of the corking big one he is trying to cover up."

      Since there was obviously no peaceful reply to be made to this, Brouillard bent lower over his work and said nothing. At every fresh step in the forced acquaintance the new-comer was painstakingly developing new antagonisms. Sooner or later, Brouillard knew, it would come to an open rupture, but he was hoping that the actual hostilities could be postponed until after Hosford had worn out his temporary welcome as a guest in the engineers' mess.

      For a time the big man in the easy-chair smoked on in silence. Then he began again:

      "Say, Brouillard, I saw one little girl to-day that didn't belong to your workmen's-family outfit, and she's a peach; came riding down the trail with her brother from that mine up on the south mountain – Massingale's, isn't it? By Jove! she fairly made my mouth water!"

      Inasmuch as no man can read field-notes when the page has suddenly become a red blur, Brouillard looked up.

      "You are my guest,

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