The King of Arcadia. Lynde Francis
he had sometimes wished to be sentimental on his own account, Ballard had been a little impatient under these frivolous appeals for sympathy. But there is a certain tonic for growing love even in such bucketings of cold water as the loved one may administer in telling the tale of the predecessor. It is a cold heart, masculine, that will not find warmth in anything short of the ice of indifference; and whatever her faults, Miss Elsa was never indifferent. Ballard recalled how he had groaned under the jesting confidences. Also, he remembered that he had never dared to repel them, choosing rather to clasp the thorns than to relinquish the rose.
From the sentimental journey past to the present stage of the same was but a step; but the present situation was rather perplexingly befogged. Why had Elsa Craigmiles changed her mind so suddenly about spending the summer in Europe? What could have induced her to substitute a summer in Colorado, travelling under Mrs. Van Bryck's wing?
The answer to the queryings summed itself up, for the Kentuckian, in a name – the name of a man and a playwright. He held Mr. Lester Wingfield responsible for the changed plans, and was irritably resentful. In the after-dinner visit with the sight-seeing party in the Pullman there had been straws to indicate the compass-point of the wind. Elsa deferred to Wingfield, as the other women did; only in her case Ballard was sure it meant more. And the playwright, between his posings as a literary oracle, assumed a quiet air of proprietorship in Miss Craigmiles that was maddening.
Ballard recalled this, sitting upon the edge of the ditch-cutting in the heart of the fragrant night, and figuratively punched Mr. Wingfield's head. Fate had been unkind to him, throwing him thus under the wheels of the opportune when the missing of a single train by either the sight-seers or himself would have spared him.
Taking that view of the matter, there was grim comfort in the thought that the mangling could not be greatly prolonged. The two orbits coinciding for the moment would shortly go apart again; doubtless upon the morning's arrival in Denver. It was well. Heretofore he had been asked to sympathise only in a subjective sense. With another lover corporeally present and answering to his name, the torture would become objective – and blankly unendurable.
Notwithstanding, he found himself looking forward with keen desire to one more meeting with the beloved tormentor – to a table exchange of thoughts and speech at the dining-car breakfast which he masterfully resolved not all the playmakers in a mumming world should forestall or interrupt.
This determination was shaping itself in the Kentuckian's brain when, after many futile backings and slack-takings, the ditched car was finally induced to climb the frogs and to drop successfully upon the rails. When the obstructing freight began to move, Ballard flung away the stump of his cigar and climbed the steps of the first open vestibule on the "Flyer," making his way to the rear between the sleeping emigrants in the day-coaches.
Being by this time hopelessly wakeful, he filled his pipe and sought the smoking-compartment of the sleeping-car. It was a measure of his abstraction that he did not remark the unfamiliarity of the place; all other reminders failing, he should have realised that the fat negro porter working his way perspiringly with brush and polish paste through a long line of shoes was not the man to whom he had given his suit-cases in the Council Bluffs terminal.
But thinking pointedly of Elsa Craigmiles, and of the joy of sharing another meal with her in spite of the Lester Wingfields, he saw nothing, noted nothing; and the reverie, now frankly traversing the field of sentiment, ran on unbroken until he became vaguely aware that the train had stopped and started again, and that during the pause there had been sundry clankings and jerkings betokening the cutting off of a car.
A hasty question fired at the fat porter cleared the atmosphere of doubt.
"What station was that we just passed?"
"Short Line Junction, sah; whah we leaves the Denver cyar – yes, sah."
"What? Isn't this the Denver car?"
"No, indeed, sah. Dish yer cyar goes on th'oo to Ogden; yes, sah."
Ballard leaned back again and chuckled in ironic self-derision. He was not without a saving sense of humour. What with midnight prowlings and sentimental reveries he had managed to sever himself most abruptly and effectually from his car, from his hand-baggage, from the prefigured breakfast, with Miss Elsa for his vis-à-vis; and, what was of vastly greater importance, from the chance of a day-long business conference with President Pelham!
"Gardiner, old man, you are a true prophet; it isn't in me to think girl and to play the great game at one and the same moment," he said, flinging a word to the assistant professor of geology across the distance abysses; and the fat porter said: "Sah?"
"I was just asking what time I shall reach Denver, going in by way of the main line and Cheyenne," said Ballard, with cheerful mendacity.
"Erbout six o'clock in the evenin', sah; yes, sah. Huccome you to get lef', Cap'n Boss?"
"I didn't get left; it was the Denver sleeper that got left," laughed the Kentuckian. After which he refilled his pipe, wrote a telegram to Mr. Pelham, and one to the Pullman conductor about his hand-baggage, and resigned himself to the inevitable, hoping that the chapter of accidents had done its utmost.
Unhappily, it had not, as the day forthcoming amply proved. Reaching Cheyenne at late breakfast-time, Ballard found that the Denver train over the connecting line waited for the "Overland" from the West; also, that on this day of all days, the "Overland" was an hour behind her schedule. Hence there was haste-making extraordinary at the end of the Boston-Denver flight. When the delayed Cheyenne train clattered in over the switches, it was an hour past dark. President Pelham was waiting with his automobile to whisk the new chief off to a hurried dinner-table conference at the Brown Palace; and what few explanations and instructions Ballard got were sandwiched between the consommé au gratin and the dessert.
Two items of information were grateful. The Fitzpatrick Brothers, favourably known to Ballard, were the contractors on the work; and Loudon Bromley, who had been his friend and loyal understudy in the technical school, was still the assistant engineer, doing his best to push the construction in the absence of a superior.
Since the chief of any army stands or falls pretty largely by the grace of his subordinates, Ballard was particularly thankful for Bromley. He was little and he was young; he dressed like an exquisite, wore neat little patches of side-whiskers, shot straight, played the violin, and stuffed birds for relaxation. But in spite of these hindrances, or, perhaps, because of some of them, he could handle men like a born captain, and he was a friend whose faithfulness had been proved more than once.
"I shall be only too glad to retain Bromley," said Ballard, when the president told him he might choose his own assistant. And, as time pressed, he asked if there were any other special instructions.
"Nothing specific," was the reply. "Bromley has kept things moving, but they can be made to move faster, and we believe you are the man to set the pace, Mr. Ballard; that's all. And now, if you are ready, we have fifteen minutes in which to catch the Alta Vista train – plenty of time, but none to throw away. I have reserved your sleeper."
It was not until after the returning automobile spin; after Ballard had checked his baggage and had given his recovered suit-cases to the porter of the Alta Vista car; that he learned the significance of the fighting clause in the president's Boston telegram.
They were standing at the steps of the Pullman for the final word; had drawn aside to make room for a large party of still later comers; when the president said, with the air of one who gathers up the unconsidered trifles:
"By the way, Mr. Ballard, you may not find it all plain sailing up yonder. Arcadia Park has been for twenty years a vast cattle-ranch, owned, or rather usurped, by a singular old fellow who is known as the 'King of Arcadia.' Quite naturally, he opposes our plan of turning the park into a well-settled agricultural field, to the detriment of his free cattle range, and he is fighting us."
"In the courts, you mean?"
"In the courts and out of them. I might mention that it was one of his cow-men who killed Sanderson; though that was purely a personal quarrel, I believe. The trouble began with his refusal to sell us a few acres of land and a worthless mining-claim which our reservoir may submerge, and