Meade County news. [volume] (Meade, Kan.) 1900-1918, 1916-10-05


When 1t was finished he translated 1t |
laboriously into the department code. |
But after the copy was made and |
signed he did not ring at once for a
messenger. Instead, he put the two,
the original and the cipher, under a
paper weight and sat glooming at them
searching blindly for. some, alternative
to the final act of 'treachery which
would be consummated in the sending
of the wire.
Since, by reason of Cortwright's tam
perings with the. smelter people and
the railroad, the Little Susan" had be-
come a locked treasure vault, the en-
gineer, acting upon his own initiative
had tried the law. AS soon as he had
ascertained that David Massingale had
been given sixty days longer to'live.
solely because the buccaneers chose
to take his mine rather than his
money, Brouillard had submitted the
facts in the case to a trusted lawyer
friend in the East.
This hope had pulled in two like
frayed cord. Massingale must pay the
bank or lose all. Until he had OBJ
tanned possession Of the promissory
notes there would be no crevice in
which to drive any legal wedge And
even then, unless some pressure could
be brought to bear upon the grafters
to make them disgorge, there was no
chance of Massingale's recovering
more than his allotted twothirds Of
the stock; in other words, he would
still stand committed to the agreement
by which he had bound himself to
make the grafters a present, in fee
simple, of one-third of his mine.
Brouillard had written one more let
ter to the lawyer. In it he had asked
how David Massingale could be unas-
sailably reinstated in his rights as the
sole owner of the Little Susan" The
answer had come promptly and it was
explicit. "Only by the repayment of
such sums as had been actually ex-
pended in the reorganization and on
the betterments-for the undermining
machinery and mprovements-and the
| NY IuO OIuOI pal
ties to the agreement, Of the stock in
dispute" the lawyer had written; and
Brouillard had smiled at the thought
Of Cartwright voluntarily surrendering
anything which was once well within
the grasp of his pudgy hands.
Failing to start the legal wedge,
Brouillard had dipped-also without
consulting Massingale-into the mat
ter of land titles. The Little Susan"
was legally patented under the land
laws, and Massingales title, If the
mine were located upon government
land, was without a flaw. But on a
former reclamation project Brouillard
had been brought in contact with some
of the curious title litigation growing
out Of the old Spanish grants; and in
at least one instance he had seen a
government patent invalidated there
by.
AS man in reasonably close touch
with his superiors in Washington, the
chief Of construction knew that there
was a Spanish grant involvement
which had at one time threatened ito
at least delay the Niquoia project. How
1t had been settled finally he did not
know; but after the legal failure he
had written to mana college class
mate of his own-in the bureau of land
statistics, asking for data which would
: enable him to locate exactly the Nj
quoia-touching boundaries of the great
Coronida grant. To this letter no re-
ply had as yet been received. Brouil-
lard had cause to know with what
slowness a simple matter of informa-
ton can ooze out of department bu-
reau. The letter-which, after all,
might contain nothing helpful-lin-
gered on the way, and the crisis, the
turning point beyond which there
could be no redemption in revival of
the speculative craze, had arrived.
Brouillard took up the draft of the
Washington telegram and read it over.
He was cooler now, and he saw that 1t
was only as it came from the hand of
a traitor, who could and would DELHI
erately wreck the train of events it
might set in motion, that it became
betrayal. Writing as the commanding
officer in the field, he had restated the
facts-facts doubtless well known in
the department-the probability that
congress would intervene and the hold
the opposition was gaining by the sus-
pension Of the work on the dam. II
the work could be pushed energetically
and at once, there was a possibility
that the opposition would become dis
couraged and voluntarily withdraw.
Would the department place the men
and the means instantly at his dis.
posal?
"If I were the honest man I am
supposed to be, that is precisely the
message l ought to send" he unused
reflectively. 1T is only as the crooked
devil in possession Of me will drive me
to nullify the effort and make it of no
effect that it becomes crime; that
and the fact that can never be sure
that the Cartwright gang hasn't the
inside track and will not win out in
spite of all efforts. That is the touch
stone of the whole degrading bust