THE ISLE OF ARCADY
“Then the moon
shone out so broad and good
That the
barn-fowl crowed:
And the brown owl called
to his mate in the wood
That
a dead man lay in the road!”
WILL
WALLACE HARNEY.
Arcadia’s assets were the railroad,
two large modern sawmills, the climate and printer’s
ink. The railroad found it a patch of bare ground,
six miles from water; put in successively a whistling-post,
a signboard, a depot, townsite papers and a water-main
from the Alamo; and, when the townsite papers were
confirmed, established machine shops and made the
new town the division headquarters and base for northward
building.
The railroad then set up the sawmills,
primarily to get out ties and timbers for its own
lanky growth, and built a spur to bring the forest
down from Rainbow to the mills. The word “down”
is used advisedly. Arcadia nestled on the plain
under the very eavespouts of Rainbow Range. The
branch, following with slavish fidelity the lines of
a twisted corkscrew, took twenty-seven miles, mostly
tunnel and trestlework, to clamber to the logging
camps, with a minimum grade that was purely prohibitive
and a maximum that I dare not state; but there was
a rise of six thousand feet in those twenty-seven
miles. You can figure the average for yourself.
And if the engine should run off the track at the
end of her climb she would light on the very roundhouse
where she took breakfast, and spoil the shingles.
Yes, that was some railroad.
There was a summer hotel Cloudland on
the summit, largely occupied by slackwire performers.
Others walked up or rode a horse. They used stem-winding
engines, with eight vertical cylinders on the right
side and a shaft like a steamboat, with beveled cogwheel
transmission on the axles. And they haven’t
had a wreck on that branch to date. No matter
how late a train is, when an engine sees the tail-lights
of her caboose ahead of her she stops and sends out
flagmen.
The railroad, under the pseudonym
of the Arcadia Development Company, also laid out
streets and laid in a network of pipe-lines, and staked
out lots until the sawmill protested for lack of tie-lumber.
It put down miles of cement walks, fringed them with
cottonwood saplings, telephone poles and electric
lights. It built a hotel and a few streets of
party-colored cottages directoire,
with lingerie tile roofs, organdy façades and peplum,
intersecting panels and outside chimneys at the gable
ends. It decreed a park, with nooks, lanes, mazes,
lake, swans, ballground, grandstand, bandstand and
the band appertaining thereunto all of
which apparently came into being over night. Then
it employed a competent staff of word-artists and
capitalized the climate.
The result was astonishing. The
cottonwoods grew apace and a swift town grew with
them swift in every sense of the word.
It took good money to buy good lots in Arcadia.
People with money must be fed, served and amused by
people wanting money. In three years the trees
cast a pleasant shade and the company cast a balance,
with gratifying results. They discounted the
unearned increment for a generation to come.
It was a beneficent scheme, selling
ozone and novelty, sunshine and delight. The
buyers got far more than the worth of their money,
the company got their money and every one
was happy. Health and good spirits are a bargain
at any price. There were sandstorms and hot days;
but sand promotes digestion and digestion promotes
cheerfulness. Heat merely enhanced the luxury
of shaded hammocks. As an adventurer thawed out,
he sent for seven others worse than himself. Arcadia
became the metropolis of the county and, by special
election, the county-seat. Courthouse, college
and jail followed in quick succession.
For the company, Arcadia life was
one grand, sweet song, with, thus far, but a single
discord. As has been said, Arcadia was laid out
on the plain. There was higher ground on three
sides Rainbow Mountain to the east, the
deltas of La Luz Creek and the Alamo to the north and
south. New Mexico was dry, as a rule. After
the second exception, when enthusiastic citizens went
about on stilts to forward a project for changing
the town’s name to Venice, the company acknowledged
its error handsomely. When dry land prevailed
once more above the face of the waters, it built a
mighty moat by way of the amende honorable a
moat with its one embankment on the inner side of
the five-mile horseshoe about the town. This,
with its attendant bridges, gave to Arcadia an aspect
singularly medieval. It also furnished a convenient
line of social demarcation. Chauffeurs, college
professors, lawyers, gamblers, county officers, together
with a few tradesmen and railroad officials, abode
within “the Isle of Arcady,” on more or
less even terms with the Arcadians proper; millmen,
railroaders, lumberjacks, and the underworld generally,
dwelt without the pale.
The company rubbed its lamp again and
behold! an armory, a hospital and a library!
It contributed liberally to churches and campaign funds;
it exercised a general supervision over morals and
manners. For example, in the deed to every lot
sold was an ironclad, fire-tested, automatic and highly
constitutional forfeiture clause, to the effect that
sale or storage on the premises of any malt, vinous
or spirituous liquors should immediately cause the
title to revert to the company. The company’s
own vicarious saloon, on Lot Number One, was a sumptuous
and magnificent affair. It was known as The Mint.
All this while we have been trying
to reach the night watchman.
In the early youth of Arcadia there
came to her borders a warlock Finn, of ruddy countenance
and solid build. He had a Finnish name, and they
called him Lars Porsena.
Lars P. had been a seafaring man.
While spending a year’s wage in San Francisco,
he had wandered into Arcadia by accident. There,
being unable to find the sea, he became a lumberjack with
a custom, when in spirits, of beating the watchman
of that date into an omelet.
The indulgence of this penchant gave
occasion for much adverse criticism. Fine and
imprisonment failed to deter him from this playful
habit. One watchman tried to dissuade Lars from
his foible with a club, and his successor even went
so far as to shoot him to shoot Lars P.,
of course, not his predecessor the successor’s
predecessor, not Lars Porsena’s if
he ever had one, which he hadn’t. (What we need
is more pronouns.) He the successor of
the predecessor resigned when Lars became
convalescent; but Lars was no whit dismayed by this
contretemps in his first light-hearted moment
he resumed his old amusement with unabated gayety.
Thus was one of our greatest railroad
systems subjected to embarrassment and annoyance by
the idiosyncrasies of an ignorant but cheerful sailor-man.
The railroad resolved to submit no longer to such caprice.
A middleweight of renown was imported, who when
he was able to be about again bitterly
reproached the president and demanded a bonus on the
ground that he had knocked Lars down several times
before he Lars got angry; and
also because of a disquisition in the Finnish tongue
which Lars Porsena had emitted during the procedure which
address, the prizefighter stated, had unnerved him
and so led to his undoing. It was obviously,
he said, of a nature inconceivably insulting; the memory
of it rankled yet, though he had heard only the beginning
and did not get the But let that pass.
The thing became a scandal. Watchman
succeeded watchman on the company payroll and the
hospital list, until some one hit upon a happy and
ingenious way to avoid this indignity. Lars Porsena
was appointed watchman.
This statesmanlike policy bore gratifying
results. Lars Porsena straightway abandoned his
absurd and indefensible custom, and no imitator arose.
Also, Arcadia within the moat the island which
was the limit of his jurisdiction, became the most
orderly spot in New Mexico.
In the first gray of dawn, Uncle Sam,
whistling down Main Street on his way home from the
masquerade, found Lars Porsena lying on his face in
a pool of blood.
The belated reveler knelt beside him.
The watchman was shot, but still breathed. “Ho!
Murder! Help! Murder!” shouted Uncle
Sam. The alarm rolled crashing along the quiet
street. Heads were thrust from windows; startled
voices took up the outcry; other home-goers ran from
every corner; hastily arrayed householders poured
themselves from street doors.
Lars Porsena was in disastrous plight.
He breathed, but that was about all. He was shot
through the body. A trail of blood led back a
few doors to Lake’s Bank. A window was
cut out; the blood began at the sill.
Messengers ran to telephone the doctor,
the sheriff, Lake. The knot of men grew to a
crowd. A rumor spread that there had been an unusual
amount of currency in the bank over night a
rumor presently confirmed by Bassett, the bareheaded
and white-faced cashier. It was near payday;
in addition to the customary amount to cash checks
for railroaders and millhands itself no
mean sum and the money for regular business,
there had been provision for contemplated loans to
promoters of new local industries.
The doctor came running, made a hasty
examination, took emergency measures to stanch the
freshly started blood, and swore whole-heartedly at
the ambulance and the crowding Arcadians. He administered
a stimulant. Lars Porsena fluttered his eyes
weakly.
“Stand back, you idiots!
Bash these fools’ faces in for ’em, some
one!” said the medical man. He bent over
the watchman. “Who did it, Lars?”
Lars made a vain effort to speak.
The doctor gave him another sip of restorative and
took a pull himself.
“Try again, old man. You’re
badly hurt and you may not get another chance.
Did you know him?”
Lars gathered all his strength to a broken speech:
“No.... Bank ... Found
window ... Midnight ... nearly.... Shot me....
Didn’t see him.” He fell back on Uncle
Sam’s starry vest.
“Ambulance coming,” said Uncle Sam.
“Will he live, doc?”
Doc shook his head doubtfully.
“Poor chance. Lost too
much blood. If he had been found in time he might
have pulled through. Wonderful vitality.
Ought to be dead now, by the books. Still, there’s
a chance.”
“I never thought,” said
Uncle Sam to Cyrano de Bergerac, as the ambulance
bore away its unconscious burden, “that I would
ever be so sorry at anything that could happen to
Lars Porsena after the way he made me stop
singing on my own birthday. He was one grand old
fighting machine!”