It was between two and three o'clock in the afternoon of the day in which Mirapolis went placer mad when word came to the Reclamation-Service headquarters that the power was cut off and that there were no longer men enough at the mixers and on the forms to keep the work going if the power should come on again.

Handley, the new fourth assistant, brought the news, dropping heavily into a chair and shoving his hat to the back of his head to mop his seamed and sun-browned face.

"Why the devil didn't you fellows turn out?" he demanded savagely of Leshington, Anson, and Grislow, who were lounging in the office and very pointedly waiting for the lightning to strike. "Gassman and I have done everything but commit cold-blooded murder to hold the men on the job. Where's the boss?"

Nobody knew, and Grislow, at least, was visibly disturbed at the question. It was Anson who seemed to have the latest information about Brouillard.

"He came in about eleven o'clock, rummaged for a minute or two in that drawer you've got your foot on, Grizzy, and then went out again. Anybody seen him since?"

There was a silence to answer the query, and the hydrographer righted his chair abruptly and closed the opened drawer he had been utilizing for a foot-rest. He had a long memory for trifles, and at the mention of the drawer a disquieting picture had flashed itself upon the mental screen. There were two figures in the picture, Brouillard and himself, and Brouillard was tossing the little buckskin sack of gold nuggets into the drawer, where it had lain undisturbed ever since—until now.

Moreover, Grislow's news of Brouillard, if he had seen fit to publish it, was later than Anson's. At one o'clock, or thereabout, the chief had come into the mapping room for a glance at the letters on his desk. One of the letters—a note in a square envelope—he had thrust into his pocket before going out.

"It looks as if the chief had gone with the crowd," said Leshington when the silence had grown almost portentous, "though that wouldn't be like him. Has anybody found out yet who touched off the gold-mounted sky-rocket?"

Grislow came out of his brown study with a start. "Levy won't tell who gave him those nuggets to put in his window. I tried him. All he will say is that the man who left the sample is perfectly reliable and that he dictated the exact wording of the placard that did the business."

"I saw Harlan, of the Spot-Light, half an hour ago," cut in Anson. "He's plumb raving crazy, like everybody else, but there is something faintly resembling method in his madness. He figures it that we government people are out of a job permanently; that with the discovery of these placers—or, rather, with the practically certain rediscovery of them by the mob—Mirapolis will jump to the front rank as a gold camp, and the Reclamation Service will have to call a halt on the Buckskin project."

Leshington's long, plain-song face grew wooden. "You say 'practically certain.' The question is: Will they be rediscovered? Bet any of you a box of Poodles's Flor de near Havanas that it's some new kind of a flip-flap invented by J. Wesley and his boomers. What do you say?"

"Good Lord!" growled Handley. "They didn't need any new stunts. They had the world by the ear, as it was."

"That's all right," returned Leshington; "maybe they didn't. I heard a thing or two over at Bongras's last night that set me guessing. There was a piece of gossip coming up the pike about the railroad pulling out of the game, or, rather, that it had already pulled out."

Once more silence fell upon the group in the mapping room, and this time it was Grislow who broke it.

"I suppose Harlan is getting ready to exploit the new sensation right?" he suggested, and Anson nodded.

"You can trust Harlan for that. He's got the valley wire subsidized, and he is waiting for the first man to come in with the news of the sure thing and the location of it. When he gets the facts he'll touch off the fireworks, and the world will be invited to take a running jump for the new Tonopah." Then, with sudden anxiety: "I wish to goodness Brouillard would turn up and get busy on his job. It's something hideous to be stranded this way in the thick of a storm!"

"It's time somebody was getting busy," snarled Handley. "There are a hundred tons of fresh concrete lying in the forms, just as they were dumped—with no puddlers—to say nothing of half as much more freezing to solid rock right now in the mixers and on the telphers."

Grislow got up and reached for his coat and hat.

"I'm going out to hunt for the boss," he said, "and you fellows had better do the same. If this is one of Cortwright's flip-flaps, and Brouillard happened to be in the way, I wouldn't put it beyond J. Wesley to work some kind of a disappearing racket on the human obstacle."

The suggestion was carried out immediately by the three to whom it was made, but for a reason of his own the hydrographer contrived to be the last to leave the mapping room. When he found himself alone he returned hastily to the desk and pulled out the drawer of portents, rummaging in it until he was fully convinced that the little buckskin bag of nuggets was gone. Then, instead of following the others, he took a field-glass from its case on the wall and went to the south window to focus it upon the Massingale cabin, standing out clear-cut and distinct in the afternoon sunlight on its high, shelf-like bench.

The powerful glass brought out two figures on the cabin porch, a woman and a man. The woman was standing and the man was sitting on the step. Grislow lowered the glass and slid the telescoping sun tubes home with a snap.

"Good God!" he mused, "it's unbelievable! He deliberately turns this thing loose on us down here and then takes an afternoon off to go and make love to a girl! He's crazy; it's the seven-year devil he talks about. And nobody can help him; nobody—unless Amy can. Lord, Lord!"