year? He made
the preliminary survey for an inlet railroad over the mountains, and put
a few more stones on Braithwaite's dam. As they say out on the Western
edge of things, Sanderson died with his boots on; got into trouble with
somebody about a camp-following woman and was shot."

"Two," checked the assistant in geology. "Who was the third?"

"An elderly, dyspeptic Scotchman named Macpherson. He took up the work
where Sanderson dropped it; built the railroad over the mountain and
through Arcadia Park to the headquarters at the dam, and lived to see
the dam itself something more than half completed."

"And what happened to Mr. Macpherson?" queried Gardiner.

"He was killed a few weeks ago. The derrick fell on him. The accident
provoked a warm discussion in the technical periodicals. A wire guy
cable parted--'rusted off,' the newspaper report said--and there was a
howl from the wire-rope makers, who protested that a rope made of
galvanised wire couldn't possibly 'rust off.'"

"Nevertheless, Mr. Macpherson was successfully killed," remarked the
professor dryly. "That would seem to be the persisting fact in the
discussion. Does none of these things move you?"

"Certainly not," returned the younger man. "I shall neither fall into
the river, nor stand under a derrick whose guy lines are unsafe."

Gardiner's smile was a mere eye wrinkle of good-natured cynicism. "You
carefully omit poor Sanderson's fate. One swims out of a torrent--if he
can--and an active young fellow might possibly be able to dodge a
falling derrick. But who can escape the toils of the woman 'whose hands
are as bands, and whose feet----'"

"Oh, piff!" said the Kentuckian; and then he laughed aloud. "There is,
indeed, one woman in the world, my dear _Herr_ Professor, for whose sake
I would joyfully stand up and be shot at; but she isn't in Colorado, by
a good many hundred miles."

"No? Nevertheless, Breckenridge, my son, there lies your best chance of
making the fourth in the list of sacrifices. You are a Kentuckian; an
ardent and chivalric Southerner. If the Fates really wish to interpose
in contravention of the Arcadian scheme, they will once more bait the
deadfall with the eternal feminine--always presuming, of course, that
there are any Fates, and that they have ordinary intelligence."

Ballard shook his head as if he took the prophecy seriously.

"I am in no danger on that score. Bromley--he was Sanderson's assistant,
and afterward Macpher