The Green Forest tribune., 1916-06-30


 perings with the shelter people and the railroad the Little Susan" had be- come 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. BrouiIlard 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 ob- tained 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 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 mproyements-and the voluntary surrender. by the other par 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 we'll 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 knellac that there was a Spanish graz 6Tsnral nunai laasment which had at one ti-InId -'vnnId " do Jy,osjto at least delay the Ely to this Send u. It haGt6een sst'a t9oseof 9bjectionat know; Out a1tJf rnel legai, P z a7.aif7e'rle' 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 Mi | 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 simple matter of informa- tion 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 it was only as 1t came from the hand of traitor, who could and would delib- 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. If 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 am supposed to be, that is precisely the message 1 ought to send" he unused refectiyely. Tt 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 a crime; that and the fact that I 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 busi- ness 1 am afraid Cartwright has the inside track. If I could only get a lit tie clear-sighted daylight on the damn able tangle!"
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