Chapter XIV: The Night Alarm

Before he was halfway to his cabin he came upon the runaway horse, peacefully cropping the grass in a little hollow between the high hills. It was but the work of a moment to catch it, and, after satisfying himself that the animal was free from injuries, Nash adjusted the saddle and sprang into it.

Arrived at the camp, he turned the horse into the stable where the others were kept, but concluded then to take the saddle up to the cabin, where it would be safer.

Finishing with supper and lighting the lamp in the big room of the cabin, which he used as an office, Nash noticed a piece of paper in the middle of the floor. He picked it up and unfolded it. Then he frowned and looked around the room, as if expecting to find the owner watching him. Traced upon the paper was a small but excellent map of the entire Los Angeles Aqueduct route, showing the intake at Owens Lake. The different elevations, the telephone stations were marked in red ink, while the numerous tunnels, beginning with the long one at Elizabeth and ending with the Reever Bore above San Fernando, were denoted by heavy crosses.

Nash studied the map for a long time. “Now, where in the world did this come from?” he muttered. “It’s an exceedingly clever drawing.” Suddenly he lifted his head and whistled. “By Jove, that’s it! It fell from the saddle pocket.”

He examined the saddle, which he had dragged to one corner. Sure enough, there was a pocket under one of the flaps. He drew out several other drawings; one of them proved to be an enlarged map of Camp Forty-seven. Under it was written, in pencil, and partly erased:

“I think his name is Elliot Nash. Let me know positively.”

The signature was obliterated.

Nash returned the papers to the pocket. Then he went back to his chair before the long table, where some blue prints were unrolled.

“I wonder if those maps belong to the girl, or to the person owning the saddle?” he asked himself. “They’re not the kind used by any of the engineering corps. They’re prepared especially on the finest kind of paper. And some one has written my name upon one of them.” He took in a deep breath, and reached for his pencil. “Well,” he mused, “I’ll ask the girl--when we’re better acquainted.”

He was still poring over his figures at ten o’clock, when one the subforemen came hurriedly in with the information that a big water main had burst and threatened to flood out a part of the freshly laid conduit.

“Never heard of such a thing in this weather,” Nash said, catching up hat and coat.

“Came all of a sudden,” the other announced. “The watchman telephoned in. I’ve been trying to get you for the past fifteen minutes, but your wire must be out of order.”

In ten minutes, Nash, accompanied by the man who had brought the news, was upon the scene. The sight was enough to make his blood boil. Several hundred feet of concrete, laid that day, was washed out. He managed to get the water shut off, and then hurried to inspect the pipe. The bright moonlight proved his first suspicions correct.

“Bring that torch here!” he called to one of the men.

The torch was brought. Nash knelt down and examined the broken length of cast-iron pipe.

“Just as I thought!” he muttered. “It’s been smashed--probably with a sledge.” He turned to the subforeman. “Where’s the regular watchman on this job?”

The man was called and questioned. No additional light was shed upon the case; the watchman had seen no one in the vicinity of the pipe, and the sound of escaping water and falling concrete was his first intimation of anything wrong. Nash felt that the man was telling the truth.

These water mains had been laid long before the actual construction work on the aqueduct had been started; this undertaking, together with the stringing of telephone and electric-light wires--all preliminary to the main project--had cost the city of Los Angeles more than two millions of dollars. Water, to the different construction camps, was a valuable asset, since the great part of the work lay through arid mountains and vast stretches of the Mohave Desert.

While Nash was puzzling over the situation, a shout interrupted, and one of the men came running up with a sledge hammer he had discovered a couple of hundred feet up the slope.

“That’s the answer!” exclaimed Nash. “Find the owner of this, and we’ll have the man who smashed our pipe.”

Before leaving the scene, he spoke again to the subforeman:

“You’d better double your watchmen from now on. We can’t afford to take any risks. There’s five hundred dollars’ worth of a conduit ruined to-night. Tell your men to hold any suspicious strangers they may run across. If necessary, shoot first, and ask questions afterward.”