It was in the days after he had found on his desk a long envelope enclosing a certificate for a thousand shares of stock in the Niquoia Electric Power, Lighting, and Traction Company that Brouillard began to lose his nickname of "Hell's-Fire" among his workmen, with the promise of attaining, in due time, to the more affectionate title of "the Little Big Boss."

At the envelope-opening moment, however, he was threatened with an attack of heart failure. That Mr. Cortwright and his fellow promoters should make a present of one hundred thousand dollars of the capital stock of the reorganized company to a mere government watch-dog who could presumably neither help nor hinder in the money-making plans of the close corporation, was scarcely believable. But a hastily sought interview with the company's president cleared the air of all the incredibilities.

"Why, my dear Brouillard! what in Sam Hill do you take us for?" was the genial retort when the young engineer had made his deprecatory protest. "Did you think we were going to cut the melon and hand you out a piece of the rind? Not so, my dear boy; we are not built on any such narrow-gauge lines. But seriously, we're getting you at a bargain-counter price. One of the things we're up against is the building of another dam higher in the canyon for an auxiliary plant. In taking you in, we've retained the best dam builder in the country to tell us where and how to build it."

"That won't go, Mr. Cortwright," laughed Brouillard, finding the great man's humor pleasantly infectious. "You know you can hire engineers by the dozen at the usual rates."

"All right, blot that out; say that I wanted to do the right thing by the son of good old Judge Antoine; just imagine, for the sake of argument, that I wanted to pose as the long-lost uncle of the fairy-stories to a fine young fellow who hasn't been able to draw a full breath since his father died. You can do it now, Victor, my boy. Any old time the trusteeship debt your father didn't really owe gets too heavy, you can unload on me and wipe it out. Isn't it worth something to realize that?"

"I guess it will be, if I am ever able to get down to the solid fact of realizing it. But I can't earn a hundred thousand dollars of the company's stock, Mr. Cortwright."

"Of course you can. That's what we are willing to pay for a good, reliable government brake. It's going to be your business to see to it that the Reclamation Service gets exactly what its contract calls for, kilowatt for kilowatt."

"I'd do that, anyhow, as chief of construction on the dam."

"You mean you would try to do it. As an officer of the power company, you can do it; as an official kicker on the outside, you couldn't feaze us a particle. What? You'd put us out of business? Not much, you wouldn't; we'd play politics with you and get a man for your job who wouldn't kick."

"Well," said the inheritor of sudden wealth, still matching the promoter's mood, "you won't get me fired now, that's one comfort. When will you want my expert opinion on your auxiliary dam?"

"On our dam, you mean. Oh, any time soon; say to-morrow or Friday—or Saturday if that hurries you too much. We sha'n't want to go to work on it before Monday."

Being himself an exponent of the modern theory that the way to do things is to do them now, Brouillard accepted the hurry order without comment. Celerity, swiftness of accomplishment that was almost magical, had become the Mirapolitan order of the day. Plans conceived over-night leaped to their expositions in things done as if the determination to do them had been all that was necessary to their realization.

"You shall have the report to-morrow," said the newly created consulting engineer, "but you can't go to work Monday. The labor market is empty, and I'm taking it for granted that you're not going to stampede my shovellers and concrete men."

"Oh, no," conceded the city builder, "we sha'n't do that. You'll admit—in your capacity of government watch-dog—that we have played fair in that game. We have imported every workman we've needed, and we shall import more. That's one thing none of us can afford to do—bull the labor market. And it won't be necessary; we have a train load of Italians and Bulgarians on the way to Quesado to-day, and they ought to be here by Monday."

"You are a wonder, Mr. Cortwright," was Brouillard's tribute to the worker of modern miracles, and he went his way to ride to the upper end of the valley for the exploring purpose.

On the Monday, as President Cortwright had so confidently predicted, the train load of laborers had marched in over the War Arrow trail and the work on the auxiliary power dam was begun. On the Tuesday a small army of linemen arrived to set the poles and to string the wires for the lighting of the town. On the Wednesday there were fresh accessions to the army of builders, and the freighters on the Quesado trail reported a steady stream of artisans pouring in to rush the city making.

On the Thursday the grading and paving of Chigringo Avenue was begun, and, true to his promise, Mr. Cortwright was leaving a right of way in the street for the future trolley tracks. And it was during this eventful week that the distant thunder of the dynamite brought the welcome tidings of the pushing of the railroad grade over the mountain barrier. Also—but this was an item of minor importance—it was on the Saturday of this week that the second tier of forms was erected on the great dam and the stripped first section of the massive gray foot-wall of concrete raised itself in mute but eloquent protest against the feverish activities of the miracle-workers. If the protest were a threat, it was far removed. Many things might happen before the gray wall should rise high enough to cast its shadow, and the shadow of the coming end, over the miraculous city of the plain.

It was Brouillard himself who put this thought into words on the Sunday when he and Grislow were looking over the work of form raising and finding it good.

"Catching you, too, is it, Victor?" queried the hydrographer, dropping easily into his attitude of affable cynicism. "I thought it would. But tell me, what are some of the things that may happen?"

"It's easy to predict two of them: some people will make a pot of money and some will lose out."

Grislow nodded. "Of course you don't take any stock in the rumor that the government will call a halt?"

"You wouldn't suppose it could be possible."

"No. Yet the rumor persists. Hosford hinted to me the other day that there might be a Congressional investigation a little further along to determine whether the true pro bono publico lay in the reclamation of a piece of yellow desert or in the preservation of an exceedingly promising and rapidly growing young city."

"Hosford is almost as good a boomer as Mr. Cortwright. Everybody knows that."

"Yes. I guess Mirapolis will have to grow a good bit more before Congress can be made to take notice," was the hydrographer's dictum. "Isn't that your notion?"

Brouillard was shaking his head slowly.

"I don't pretend to have opinions any more, Grizzy. I'm living from day to day. If the tail should get big enough to wag the dog——"

They were in the middle of the high staging upon which the puddlers worked while filling the forms and Grislow stopped short.

"What's come over you, lately, Victor? I won't say you're half-hearted, but you're certainly not the same driver you were a few weeks ago, before the men quit calling you 'Hell's-Fire.'"

Brouillard smiled grimly. "It's going to be a long job, Grizzy. Perhaps I saw that I couldn't hope to keep keyed up to concert pitch all the way through. Call it that, anyway. I've promised to motor Miss Cortwright to the upper dam this afternoon, and it's time to go and do it."

It was not until they were climbing down from the staging at the Jack's Mountain approach that Grislow acquired the ultimate courage of his convictions.

"Going motoring, you said—with Miss Genevieve. That's another change. I'm beginning to believe in your seven-year hypothesis. You are no longer a woman-hater."

"I never was one. There isn't any such thing."

"You used to make believe there was and you posed that way last summer. Think I don't remember how you were always ranting about the dignity of a man's work and quoting Kipling at me? Now you've taken to mixing and mingling like a social reformer."

"Well, what of it?" half-absently.

"Oh, nothing; only it's interesting from a purely academic point of view. I've been wondering how far you are responsible; how much you really do, yourself, and how much is done for you."

Brouillard's laugh was skeptical.

"That's another leaf out of your psychological book, I suppose. It's rot."

"Is it so? But the fact remains."

"What fact?"

"The fact that your subconscious self has got hold of the pilot-wheel; that your reasoning self is asleep, or taking a vacation, or something of that sort."

"Oh, bally! There are times when you make me feel as if I had eaten too much dinner, Grizzy! This is one of them. Put it in words; get it out of your system."

"It needs only three words: you are hypnotized."

"That is what you say; it is up to you to prove it," scoffed Brouillard.

"I could easily prove it to the part of you that is off on a vacation. A month ago this city-building fake looked as crazy to you as it still does to those of us who haven't been invited to sit down and take a hand in Mr. Cortwright's little game. You hooted at it, preached a little about the gross immorality of it, swore a good bit about the effect it was going to have on our working force. It was a crazy object-lesson in modern greed, and all that."

"Well?"

"Now you seem to have gone over to the other side. You hobnob with Cortwright and do office work for him. You know his fake is a fake; and yet I overheard you boosting it the other night in Poodles's dining-room to a tableful of money maniacs as if Cortwright were giving you a rake-off."

Brouillard stiffened himself with a jerk as he paced beside his accuser, but he kept his temper.

"You're an old friend, Grizzy, and a mighty good one—as I have had occasion to prove. It is your privilege to ease your mind. Is that all?"

"No. You are letting Genevieve Cortwright make a fool of you. If you were only half sane you'd see that she is a confirmed trophy hunter. Why, she even gets down to young Griffith—and uses him to dig out information about you. She——"

"Hold on, Murray; there's a limit, and you'll bear with me if I say that you are working up to it now." Brouillard's jaw was set and the lines between his eyes were deepening. "I don't know what you are driving at, but you'd better call it off. I can take care of myself."

"If I thought you could—if I only thought you could," said Grislow musingly. "But the indications all lean the other way. It would be all right if you wanted to marry her and she wanted you to; but you don't—and she doesn't. And, besides, there's Amy; you owe her something, don't you?—or don't you? You needn't grit your teeth that way. You are only getting a part of what is coming to you. 'Faithful are the wounds of a friend,' you know."

"Yes. And when the Psalmist had admitted that, he immediately asked the Lord not to let their precious balms break his head. You're all right, Grizzy, but I'll pull through." Then, with a determined wrenching aside of the subject: "Are you going up on Chigringo this afternoon?"

"I thought I would—yes. What shall I tell Miss Massingale when she asks about you?"

"You will probably tell her the first idiotic thing that comes into the back part of your head. And if you tell her anything pifflous about me I'll lay for you some dark night with a pick handle."

Grislow laughed reminiscently. "She won't ask," he said.

"Why not?"

"Because the last time she did it I told her your scalp was dangling at Miss Genevieve's belt."

They had reached the door of the log-built quarters and Brouillard spun the jester around with a shoulder grip that was only half playful.

"If I believed you said any such thing as that I'd murder you!" he exploded. "Perhaps you'll go and tell her that—you red-headed blastoderm!"

"Sure," said the blastoderm, and they went apart, each to his dunnage kit.