XXIII
DEEP UNTO DEEP
Mechanically as such things are done, Ballard remembered afterward thathe was keenly alive to all that was passing. He heard Elsa'shalf-stifled cry of horror, Blacklock's shout of encouragement from somepoint higher up on the mesa, and mingled with these the quick _pad-pad_of footfalls as of men running. In mid-air he had a glimpse of therunning men; two of them racing down the canyon on the side toward whichhis swinging bridge was projecting him. Then the derrick-fall swept himon, reached the extreme of its arc, and at the reversing pause hedropped, all fingers to clutch and tensely strung muscles to hold,fairly upon the crouching man in the muffling rain-coat.
For Blacklock, charging in upon the battle-field by way of the dam, thehappenings of the next half-minute resolved themselves into a fiercehand-to-hand struggle between the two men for the possession of thepiece of iron pipe. At the pendulum-swinging instant, the collegian hadseen the sputtering flare of a match in the dynamiter's hands; and inthe dash across the dam he had a whiff of burning gunpowder.
When the two rose up out of the dust of the grapple, Ballard was thevictor. He had wrested the ignited pipe-bomb from his antagonist, andturning quickly he hurled it in a mighty javelin-cast far up the Elbow.There was a splash, a smothered explosion, and a geyser-like column ofwater shot up from the plunging-point, spouting high to fall in sheetsof silver spray upon the two upcoming runners who were alertly springingfrom foothold to foothold across the dissolving mine dump.
So much young Blacklock noted at the moment of uprushing. In the nextbreath he had wrapped the mackintoshed bomb-firer in a wrestler's hugfrom behind, and the knife raised to be driven into Ballard's backclattered upon the stones of the path. There was a gasping oath in astrange tongue, a fierce struggle on the part of the garroted one toturn and face his new assailant, and then the collegian, with his chinburrowing between the shoulder-blades of his man, heard swift footstepsapproaching and a deep-toned, musical voice booming out a sharp command:"Manuel! you grand scoundrel!--drop that thah gun, suh!"
Something else, also metallic, and weightier than the knife, clickedupon the stones; whereupon Blacklock loosed his strangler's grip andstepped back. Ballard stooped to pick up the knife and the pistol.Wingfield, who had been the colonel's second in the race along thehazardous mine path, drew aside; and master and man were left facingeach other.
The Mexican straightened up and folded his arms. He was breathing hardfrom the effect of Blacklock's gripping hug, but his dark face was asimpassive as an Indian's. The white-haired King of Arcadia turned toBallard, and the mellow voice broke a little.
"Mistuh-uh Ballard, you, suh, are a Kentuckian, of a race that knows tothe fullest extent the meaning of henchman loyalty. You shall say whatis to be done with this po' villain of mine. By his own confession, madeto me this afte'noon, he is a cutthroat and an assassin. Undeh amistaken idea of loyalty to me"--the deep voice grew more tremulous atthis--"undeh a mistaken idea of loyalty to me, suh, he has been fightingin his own peculiah fashion what he conceived to be my battle with theArcadia Company. Without compunction, without remo'se, he has takennearly a score of human lives since the day when he killed the manBraithwaite and flung his body into the riveh. Am I making it cleah toyou, Mistuh Ballard?"
How he managed to convey his sense of entire comprehension, Ballardscarcely knew. One thought was submerging all others under a mountingwave of triumphant joy: Colonel Adam, the father of the princess ofheart's delight, was neither a devil in human guise nor a homicidalmadman. Elsa's trouble was a phantom appeased; it had vanished like thedew on a summer morning.
"I thank you, suh," was the courtly acknowledgment; and then the deepvoice continued, with an added note of emotion. "I am not pleading forthe murderer, but for my po' liegeman who knew no law of God or manhigheh than what he mistakenly took to be his masteh's desiah. How longall this would have continued, if I hadn't suhprised him in the ve'y actof trying to kill you as you were lowering that thah stop-gate to-day,we shall neveh know. But the entiah matteh lies heavy on my conscience,suh. I ought to have suspected the true sou'ce of all the mysterioustragedies long ago; I should have suspected it if I hadn't beenchin-deep myself, suh, in a similah pool of animosity against Mr. Pelhamand his fellow-robbehs. What will you do with this po' scoundrel ofmine, Mistuh Ballard?"
"Nothing, at present," said Ballard, gravely, "or nothing more than toask him a question or two." He turned upon the Mexican, who was stillstanding statue-like with his back to the low cliff of the path ledge."Did you kill Macpherson?--as well as Braithwaite and Sanderson?"
"I kill-a dem all," was the cool reply. "You say--he all say--'I make-ada dam.' I'll say: '_Caramba!_ You _no_ make-a da dam w'at da Colonel nowant for you to make.' Dass all."
"So it was you who hit Bromley on the head and knocked him into thecanyon?"
The statuesque foreman showed his teeth. "Dat was one bad _mees_take.I'll been try for knock _you_ on da haid, dat time, for sure, SenorBallar'."
"And you were wearing that rain-coat when you did it?"
The Mexican nodded. "I'll wear heem h-always w'en da sun gone down--samelike-a da Colonel."
"Also, you were wearing it that other night, when you heaved a stonedown on my office roof?"
Another nod.
"But on the night when you scared Hoskins and made him double up histrain on Dead Man's Curve, you didn't wear it; you wore a shooting-coatand a cap like the one Braithwaite used to wear."
The posing statue laughed hardily. "Dat was one--w'at you callheem?--one beeg joke. I'll been like to make dat 'Oskins break heesh'own neck, _si_: hees talk too much 'bout da man w'at drown' heself."
"And the Carson business: you were mixed up in that, too?"
"Dat was one _mees_take, al-so; one ver' beeg _mees_take. I'll hire datdam'-fool Carson to shoot da ditch. I t'ink you and da beeg h-Irishmantake-a da trail and Carson keel you. Carson, he'll take-a da money, andmake for leetle scheme to steal cattle. Som' day I keel heem for dat."
"Not in this world," cut in Ballard, briefly. "You're out of the game,from this on." And then, determined to be at the bottom of the finalmystery: "You played the spy on Mr. Wingfield, Bromley, Blacklock and meone afternoon when we were talking about these deviltries. Afterward,you went up to Castle 'Cadia. That evening Mr. Wingfield nearly lost hislife. Did you have a hand in that?"
Again the Mexican laughed. "Senor Wingfiel' he is know too moch. Som'day he is make me ver' sorry for myself. So I'll hide be'ind datfornace, and give heem one leetle push, so"--with the appropriategesture.
"That is all," said Ballard, curtly. And then to the colonel: "I thinkwe'd better be moving over to the other side. The ladies will beanxious. Jerry, take that fellow on ahead of you, and see that hedoesn't get away. I'm sorry for you, Colonel Craigmiles; and that is noempty form of words. As you have said, I am a Kentuckian, and I do knowwhat loyalty--even mistaken loyalty--is worth. My own grudge is nothing;I haven't any. But there are other lives to answer for. Am I right?"
"You are quite right, suh; quite right," was the sober rejoinder; andthen Blacklock said "_Vamos!_" to his prisoner, airing his one word ofSpanish, and in single file the five men crossed on the dam to the mesaside of the rising lake where Bigelow, with Elsa and Miss Cantrell and alately awakened Mrs. Van Bryck, were waiting. At the reassembling,Ballard cut the colonel's daughter out of the storm of eagerquestionings swiftly, masterfully.
"You were wrong--we were all wrong," he whispered joyously. "The manwhom you saw, the man who has done it all in your father's absolute andutter ignorance of what was going on, is Manuel. He has confessed; firstto his master, and just now to all of us. Your father is as sane as heis blameless. There is no obstacle now for either of us. I shall resignto-morrow morning, and----"
It was the colonel's call that interrupted.
"One moment, Mistuh Ballard, if you please, suh. Are there any of youhditch camps at present in the riveh valley below heah?"
Ballard shook his head. "Not no
w; they are all on the high land." Then,remembering Bromley's report of the empty ranch headquarters andcorrals: "You think there is danger?"
"I don't think, suh: I _know_. Look thah," waving an arm toward thedissolving mine dump on the opposing slope; "when the wateh reaches thattunnel and finds its way behind the bulkhead, Mistuh Ballard, youh dam'sgone--doomed as surely as that sinful world that wouldn't listen toPreachuh Noah!"
"But, Colonel--you can't know positively!"
"I do, suh. And Mistuh Pelham knows quite as well as I do. You may havenoticed that we have no pumping machinery oveh yondeh, Mistuh Ballard:_That is because the mine drains out into youh pot-hole below the dam!_"
"Heavens and earth!" ejaculated Ballard, aghast at the possibilitieslaid bare in this single explanatory sentence. "And you say that Mr.Pelham knows this?"
"He has known it all along. I deemed it my neighbo'ly duty to inform himwhen we opened the lower level in the mine. But he won't be the loseh;no, suh; not Mistuh Howard Pelham. It'll be those po' sheep that hebrought up here to-day to prepare them for the shearing--if the rivehgives him time to make the turn."
"The danger is immediate, then?" said Bigelow.
The white-haired King of Arcadia was standing on the brink of the mesacliff, a stark figure in the white moonlight, with his hand at his ear."Hark, gentlemen!" he commanded; and then: "Youh ears are all youngehthan mine. What do you heah?"
It was Ballard who replied: "The wind is rising on the range; I can hearit singing in the pines."
"No, suh; that isn't the wind--it's wateh; torrents and oceans of it.There have been great and phenomenal storms up in the basin all day;storms and cloud-bursts. See thah!"
A rippling wave a foot high came sweeping down the glassy surface of thereservoir lake, crowding and rioting until it doubled its depth inrushing into the foothill canyon. Passing the mine, it swept away othertons of the dump; and an instant later the water at the feet of theonlookers lifted like the heave of a great ground-swell--lifted, but didnot subside.
Ballard's square jaw was out-thrust. "We did not build for any suchbrutal tests as this," he muttered. "Another surge like that----"
"It is coming!" cried Elsa. "The power dam in the upper canyon is gone!"and the sharer of the single Cantrell Christian name shrieked and tookshelter under Bigelow's arm.
Far up the moon-silvered expanse of the lake a black line was advancingat railway speed. It was like the ominous flattening of the sea before ahurricane; but the chief terror of it lay in the peaceful surroundings.No cloud flecked the sky; no breath of air was stirring; the calm of thematchless summer night was unbroken, save by the surf-like murmur of thegreat wave as it rose high and still higher in the narrowing raceway.Instinctively Ballard put his arm about Elsa and drew her back from thecliff's edge. There could be no chance of danger for the group lookingon from the top of the high mesa; yet the commanding roar of the menacewas irresistible.
When the wave entered the wedge-shaped upper end of the Elbow it was afoam-crested wall ten feet high, advancing with the black-arched frontof a tidal billow, mighty, terrifying, the cold breath of it blowinglike a chill wind from the underworld upon the group of watchers. In itsonrush the remains of the mine dump melted and vanished, and the heavybulkhead timbering at the mouth of the workings was torn away, to behurled, with other tons of floating debris, against the back-wall of thedam.
Knowing all the conditions, Ballard thought the masonry would neverwithstand the hammer-blow impact of the wreck-laden billow. Yet itstood, apparently undamaged, even after the splintered mass of wreckage,tossed high on the crest of the wave, had leaped the coping course toplunge thundering into the ravine below. The great wall was like somemassive fortification reared to endure such shocks; and Elsa, facing theterrific spectacle beside her lover, like a reincarnation of one of thebattle-maidens, gave him his rightful meed of praise.
"You builded well--you and the others!" she cried. "It will not break!"
But even as she spoke, the forces that sap and destroy were at work.There was a hoarse groaning from the underground caverns of thezirconium mine--sounds as of a volcano in travail. The wave retreatedfor a little space, and the white line of the coping showed bare andunbroken in the moonlight. Silence, the deafening silence which followsthe thunderclap, succeeded to the clamour of the waters, and this inturn gave place to a curious gurgling roar as of some gigantic vesselemptying itself through an orifice in its bottom.
The white-haired king was nearest to the brink of peril. At the gurglingroar he turned with arms outspread and swept the onlooking group,augmented now by the men from Garou's cook camp, back and away from thedam-head. Out of the torrent-worn pit in the lower ravine a great jet ofwater was spurting intermittently, like the blood from a severed artery.
"That is the end!" groaned Ballard, turning away from the death grapplebetween his work and the blind giant of the Boiling Water; and just thenBlacklock shouted, snatched, wrestled for an instant with a writhingcaptive--and was left with a torn mackintosh in his hands for his onlytrophy.
They all saw the Mexican when he slipped out of the rain-coat, eludedBlacklock, and broke away, to dart across the chasm on the white pathwayof the dam's coping course. He was half-way over to the shore of escapewhen his nerve failed. To the spouting fountain in the gulch below andthe sucking whirlpool in the Elbow above was added a second tidal wavefrom the cloud-burst sources; a mere ripple compared with the first, butyet great enough to make a maelstrom of the gurgling whirlpool, and tosend its crest of spray flying over the narrow causeway. When thebarrier was bared again the Mexican was seen clinging limpet-like to therocks, his courage gone and his death-warrant signed. For while heclung, the great wall lost its perfect alignment, sagged, swayed outwardunder the irresistible pressure from above, crumbled, and was gone in athunder-burst of sound that stunned the watchers and shook the solidearth of the mesa where they stood.
* * * * *
"Are you quite sure it wasn't all a frightful dream?" asked the youngwoman in a charming house gown and pointed Turkish slippers of the youngman with his left arm in a sling; the pair waiting the breakfast call inthe hammock-bridged corner of the great portico at Castle 'Cadia.
It was a Colorado mountain morning of the sort called "Italian" byenthusiastic tourists. The air was soft and balmy; a rare blue haze layin the gulches; and the patches of yellowing aspens on the mountainshoulders added the needed touch of colour to relieve the dun-browns andgrays of the balds and the heavy greens of the forested slopes. Save forthe summer-dried grass, lodged and levelled in great swaths by thesudden freeing of the waters, the foreground of the scene was unchanged.Through the bowl-shaped valley the Boiling Water, once more anAugust-dwindled mountain stream, flowed murmurously as before; and amile away in the foothill gap of the Elbow, the huge steel-beamedderrick lined itself against the farther distances.
"No, it wasn't a dream," said Ballard. "The thirty-mile, nerve-tryingdrive home in the car, with the half-wrecked railroad bridge for a rivercrossing, ought to have convinced you of the realities."
"Nothing convinces me any more," she confessed, with the air of one whohas seen chaos and cosmos succeed each other in dizzying alternations;and when Ballard would have gone into the particulars of that with her,the King of Arcadia came up from his morning walk around the homesteadknoll.
"Ah, you youngstehs!" he said, with the note of fatherly indulgence inthe mellow voice. "Out yondeh undeh the maples, I run across the Bigelowboy and Madge Cantrell;--'Looking to see what damage the water haddone,' they said, as innocent as a pair of turtle-doves! Oveh in theorcha'd I stumble upon Mistuh Wingfield and Dosia. I didn't make themlie to me, and I'm not going to make you two. But I should greatlyappreciate a word with you, Mistuh Ballard."
Elsa got up to go in, but Ballard sat in the hammock and drew her downbeside him again. "With your permission, which I was going to askimmediately after breakfast, Colonel Craigmiles, we two are one," hesaid, with the frank, boyish
smile that even his critics found hard toresist. "Will you so regard us?"
The colonel's answering laugh had no hint of obstacles in it.
"It was merely a little matteh of business," he explained. "Will youhshot-up arm sanction a day's travel, Mistuh Ballard?"
"Surely. This sling is wholly Miss Elsa's idea and invention. I don'tneed it."
"Well, then; heah's the programme: Afteh breakfast, Otto will drive youoveh to Alta Vista in the light car. From there you will take the trainto Denver. When you arrive, you will find the tree of the ArcadiaCompany pretty well shaken by the news of the catastrophe to the dam. AmI safe in assuming so much?"
"More than safe: every stockholder in the outfit will be ducking tocover."
"Ve'y good. Quietly, then, and without much--ah--ostentation, as youhown good sense would dictate, you will pick up, in youh name or mine, asafe majority of the stock. Do I make myself cleah?"
"Perfectly, so far."
"Then you will come back to Arcadia, reorganise youh force--you andMistuh Bromley--and build you anotheh dam; this time in the locationbelow the Elbow, where it should have been built befo'. Am I stillcleah?"
"Why, clear enough, certainly. But I thought--I've been given tounderstand that you were fighting the irrigation scheme on its merits;that you didn't want your kingdom of Arcadia turned into a farmingcommunity. I don't blame you, you know."
The old cattle king's gaze went afar, through the gap to the foothillsand beyond to the billowing grass-lands of Arcadia Park, and the shrewdold eyes lost something of their militant fire when he said:
"I reckon I was right selfish about that, in the beginning, MistuhBallard. It's a mighty fine range, suh, and I was greedy for theisolation--as some otheh men are greedy for money and the power itbrings. But this heah little girl of mine she went out into the world,and came back to shame me, suh. Here was land and a living, independenceand happiness, for hundreds of the world's po' strugglers, and I wasmaking a cattle paschuh of it! Right then and thah was bo'n the idea,suh, of making a sure-enough kingdom of Arcadia, and it was my laying ofthe foundations that attracted Mr. Pelham and his money-hungry crowd."
"Your idea!" ejaculated Ballard. "Then Pelham and his people wereinterlopers?"
"You can put it that way; yes, suh. Thei-uh idea was wrapped up in acoin-sack; you could fai'ly heah it clink! Thei-uh proposal was to sellthe land, and to make the water an eve'lasting tax upon it; mine was tomake the water free. We hitched on that, and then they proposed to_me_--to _me_, suh--to make a stock-selling swindle of it. When I toldthem they were a pack of damned scoundrels, they elected to fight me,suh; and last night, please God, we saw the beginning of the end that isto be--the righteous end. But come on in to breakfast; you can't live onsentiment for always, Mistuh Ballard."
They went in together behind him, the two for whom Arcadia had suddenlybeen transformed into paradise, and on the way the Elsa whom Ballard hadfirst known and learned to love in the far-distant world beyond thebarrier mountains reasserted herself.
"What do you suppose Mr. Pelham will say when he hears that you havereally made love to the cow-punching princess?" she asked, flippantly."Do you usually boast of such things in advance, Mr. Ballard?"
But his answer ignored the little pin-prick of mockery.
"I'm thinking altogether of Colonel Adam Craigmiles, my dear; and of thehonour he does you by being your father. He is a king, every inch ofhim, Elsa, girl! I'm telling you right now that we'll have to put in thehigh speed, and keep it in, to live up to him."
And afterward, when the house-party guests had gathered, in good oldKentucky fashion, around the early breakfast-table, and the story of thenight had been threshed out, and word was brought that Otto and the carwere waiting, he stood up with his hand on the back of Elsa's chair andlifted his claret class with the loyal thought still uppermost. "A toastwith me, good friends--my stirrup-cup: I drink to our host, the KnightCommander of Castle 'Cadia, and the reigning monarch of the Land ofHeart's Delight--Long live the King of Arcadia!"
And they drank it standing.
THE END
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