The King of Arcadia. Lynde Francis
chemist in Denver could find out."
For the first time since the strenuous day of plan-changing in Boston, Ballard was almost sorry he had given up the Cuban undertaking.
"It's a beautiful tangle!" he snapped, thinking, one would say, of the breach that must be opened between the company's chief engineer and the daughter of the militant old cattle king. Then he changed the subject abruptly.
"What do you know about the colonel's house-hold, Loudon?"
"All there is to know, I guess. He lives in state in his big country mansion that looks like a World's Fair Forest Products Exhibit on the outside, and is fitted and furnished regardless of expense in its interiors. He is a widower with one daughter—who comes and goes as she pleases—and a sister-in-law who is the dearest, finest piece of fragile old china you ever read about."
"You've been in the country house, then?"
"Oh, yes. The colonel hasn't made it a personal fight on the working force since Braithwaite's time."
"Perhaps you have met Miss—er—the daughter who comes and goes?"
"Sure I have! If you'll promise not to discipline me for hobnobbing with the enemy, I'll confess that I've even played duets with her. She discovered my weakness for music when she was home last summer."
"Do you happen to know where she is now?"
"On her way to Europe, I believe. At least, that is what Miss Cauffrey—she's the fragile-china aunt—was telling me."
"I think not," said Ballard, after a pause. "I think she changed her mind and decided to spend the summer at home. When we stopped at Ackerman's to take water this evening, I saw three loaded buckboards driving in this direction."
"That doesn't prove anything," asserted Bromley. "The old colonel has a house-party every little while. He's no anchorite, if he does live in the desert."
Ballard was musing again. "Adam Craigmiles," he said, thoughtfully. "I wonder what there is in that name to set some sort of bee buzzing in my head. If I believed in transmigration, I should say that I had known that name, and known it well, in some other existence."
"Oh, I don't know," said Bromley. "It's not such an unusual name."
"No; if it were, I might trace it. How long did you say the colonel had lived in Arcadia?"
"I didn't say. But it must be something over twenty years. Miss Elsa was born here."
"And the family is Southern—from what section?"
"I don't know that—Virginia, perhaps, measuring by the colonel's accent, pride, hot-headedness, and reckless hospitality."
The clue, if any there were, appeared to be lost; and again Ballard smoked on in silence. When the pipe burned out he refilled it, and at the match-striking instant a sing-song cry of "Fire in the rock!" floated down from the hill crags above the adobe, and the jar of a near-by explosion shook the air and rattled the windows.
"What was that?" he queried.
"It's our quarry gang getting out stone," was Bromley's reply. "We were running short of headers for the tie courses, and I put on a night-shift."
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