minutes before she could reply, and by that time Rawley had decided that
perhaps he had better not bother his mother about the cipher. He patted her on
the back, begged her pardon for asking foolish questions, and escaped to his
own room, where he spent the whole day with “The Gold Bug” opened before him
at the page which contained Poe’s rule concerning the frequency with which
certain letters occur in the alphabet.
That evening there was a fine litter of papers scribbled over with letters and
numbers, singly and in groups. Rawley could not get two words that made sense.
The thing simply didn’t work. If his grandfather had ever read Poe’s “Gold
Bug”, he certainly had not used it for a pattern.
He went back to his sixty-four Bible verses and began studying them again. But
he could not see any reason why Grandfather King should claim any one’s wives
and children, whose “eyes stand out with fatness.” The third and fourth verses
were intelligible;
_Proverbs_, 2:1. My son, if thou wilt receive my words, and hide my
commandments with thee.
_II Chronicles_, 1:12. Wisdom and knowledge is granted unto thee; and I
will give thee riches, and wealth, and honor, such as none of the kings
have had that have been before thee, neither shall there any after thee
have the like.
Even the next three lent themselves to a possible personal meaning:
_Psalms_, 2:10. Be wise now therefore, oh ye kings; be instructed, ye
judges of the earth.
_I Chronicles_, 22:16. Of the gold, the silver, and the brass, and the
iron, there is no number. Rise, therefore, and be doing and the Lord be
with thee.
_Deuteronomy_, 11:11. But the land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land
of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven.
After that, he was all at sea.
He picked up the little Bible and opened it again. It must be there that the
message was hidden; and Rawley felt very sure, by now, that the Bible
quotations held the secret. The book opened at the eleventh chapter of
Deuteronomy. Here was a verse marked,--a verse made familiar to Rawley in his
hours of exhaustive study. Only a part of the verse was marked, however, by a
penciled line drawn faintly beneath certain words.
With a sudden excitement Rawley seized a fresh sheet of paper and wrote down
the marked passage, “The land whither ye go to possess it is a land of hills
and valleys.”
Painstakingly then he began at the beginning of the reference list and worked
his way once more through book, chapter and verse. But this time he used his
grandfather’s Bible and copied only such parts of the verse as were
underscored. Now he was on the right track, and as he wrote his excitement
grew apace. From a hopeless jumble, the verses conveyed to him this message:
... Gold is mine ... more than heart could wish. My son, if thou wilt
receive my words and hide my commandments with thee ... I will give thee
riches, and wealth ... such as none of the kings have had that have been
before thee. Be wise now, therefore, be instructed. Of the gold ... there
is no number. The land whither ye go to possess it is a land of hills and
valleys. Do this now, my son. Go through ... the city which is by the
river in the wilderness ... yet making many rich. In the midst thereof ...
a ferry-boat ... which is by the brink of the river. Take victuals with
you for the journey ... turn you northward into the wilderness ... to a
great and high mountain ... cedar trees in abundance ... scattered over
the face of ... the high mountain. In the cliffs ... there is a path which
no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture’s eye hath not seen. Come to the
top of the mount ... pass over unto the other side ... westward ... on the
hillside ... a very great heap of stones ... joined ... to ... a dry tree.
Go into the clefts of the rocks ... into the tops of the jagged rocks ...
to the sides of the pit ... take heed now ... that is ... exceeding deep.
It is hid from the eyes of all living ... creep into ... the midst thereof
... eastward ... two hundred, fourscore and eight ... feet ... ye shall
find ... a pure river of water ... proceed no further ... there is gold
... heavier than the sand ... pure gold ... upon the sand. And all the
gold ... thou shalt take up ... then shalt thou prosper if thou takest
heed ... I know thy poverty, but thou art rich ... take heed now ... On
the hillside ... which is upon the bank of the river ... in the wilderness
... there shall the vultures also be gathered ... ye shall find ... him
that ... is mine enemy ... his mouth is full of cursing ... under his
tongue is mischief and vanity ... be watchful ... the heart is desperately
wicked ... He that keepeth his mouth keepeth his life ... I put my trust
in thee. Now, my son, the Lord be with thee and prosper thou.
His first impulse was to find Johnny Buffalo. He folded the paper, slipped it
safely into a pocket and reached for his hat. He had neglected to ask the
Indian just where he meant to make his camp, but he felt sure that he could
find him. Indeed, when he stopped in the path halfway to the front gate and
looked toward the west wing, he could just discern a figure standing on the
porch. So he crossed the grass plot and in a moment stood before Johnny
Buffalo.
Again his mood impelled him to the manner that most appealed to the old
Indian, nephew of a chief of his tribe. He waited for a space before he spoke.
And when he did speak it was in the restrained tone which had won the Indian’s
confidence the evening before.
“I have read,” he stated quietly, “and I know what it is that Grandfather
meant. If we can go inside I’ll read it to you.”
“The door is locked.” Johnny Buffalo pointed one finger over his shoulder. “It
is a new lock put there by your mother. She does not want me to go in.”
Rawley pressed his lips tightly together before he dared trust himself to
speak. He looked at the barred door, thought of the room he had seen, its
furnishings enriched by a hundred little mementoes of the past that belonged
to his soldier grandfather. He had a swift, panicky fear that his mother would
call in a second-hand furniture dealer and take what price he offered for the
stuff. That, he promised himself, he would prevent at all costs.
“Come into my room, then,” he invited. “I want to read you what I discovered.”
“No. The house is your mother’s. We will go to my camp.”
So it was by the light of a camp fire, with the Mississippi flowing
majestically past them under the stars, that Rawley first read as a complete
document the Scriptural fragments that contained his grandfather’s message.
Away in the northeast the lights of St. Louis set the sky aglow. Little
lapping waves crept like licking lips against the bank with a whispery sound
that mingled pleasantly with the subdued crackling of the fire. Across the
leaping flames, Johnny Buffalo sat with his brown, corded hands upon his
knees, his black braids drawn neatly forward across his chest. His lean face
with its high nose and cheek bones flared into light or grew shadowed as the
flames reached toward him or drew away. His lips were pressed firmly together,
as if he had learned well the lesson of setting their seal against his
thoughts.
“There is one point I thought you might be able to tell me,” Rawley said,
looking across the fire when he had finished reading. “This ‘City which is by
the river in the wilderness’--and ‘In the midst thereof a ferryboat which is
by the brink of the river.’ Do you know what place is meant by that? Is it El
Dorado, Nevada? Because Grandfather’s diary tells of going up the river to El
Dorado. And I remember, now, there was some kind of Bible reference written
over the name. I don’t remember what it was, though. I didn’t look it up.
We’ll have to make sure about that, for the directions start from that point.
It says we’re to go through the city which is by the river, and turn
northward--and so on.”
The Indian reached out a hand, lifted a stick of wood and laid it across the
fire. His eyes turned toward the river.
“Many times, when the air was warm and the stars sat in their places to watch
the night, my sergeant came here with me, and I gathered wood to make a fire.
Many hours he would sit here in his chair beside the river. Sometimes he would
talk. His words were of the past when he was the strongest of all men.
Sometimes his words were of El Dorado. It is a city by the river, and a
ferryboat is in the midst thereof. It has made many rich with the gold they
dig from the mountains. I think that is the city you must go through.”
“There isn’t any city now,” Rawley told him. “It’s been abandoned for years. I
don’t think there’s a town there, any more.”
“There is the place by the river,” Johnny Buffalo observed calmly. “There is
the great and high mountain. There is ‘the path that no man knoweth.’”
“Yes, you bet. And we’re going to find it, Johnny Buffalo. I’ve got a chance
to go out that way this month, to examine a mine. I didn’t think I’d take the
job. I wanted to go to Mexico. But now, of course, it will be Nevada, and I’ll
want you to go with me. Do you know that country?”
A strange expression lightened the Indian’s face for an instant.
“When I killed my first meat,” he said, “I could walk from the kill to the
city by the river. My father’s tent was no more distant than it is from here
to the great city yonder. Not so far, I think. The way was rough with many
hills.”
Impulsively Rawley leaned and stretched out his arm toward the Indian.
“Let’s shake on it. We will go together, and you will be my partner. Whatever
we find is the gift of my grandfather, and half of it is yours when we find
it. I feel he’d want it that way. Is it a go, Johnny Buffalo?”
Something very much like a smile stirred the old man’s lips. He took Rawley’s
hand and gave it a solemn shake, once up, once down, as is the way of the
Indian.
“It is go. You are like my sergeant when he held me in his arms and gave me
water from his canteen. You are my son. Where you go I will go with you.”
CHAPTER FIVE
A CITY FORSAKEN
The storekeeper at Nelson stood on his little slant-roofed porch and mopped
his beaded forehead with a blue calico handkerchief. The desert wrinkles
around his eyes drew together and deepened as he squinted across the acarpous
gulch where a few rough-board shacks stood forlorn with uncurtained windows,
to the heat-ridden hillside beyond.
“It’s going to be awful hot down there by the river,” he observed
deprecatingly. “You’ll find the water pretty muddy--but maybe you know that.
Strangers don’t always; it’s best to make sure, so if you haven’t a bucket or
something to settle the water in, I’d advise you to take one along. I’ve an
extra one I could lend you, if you need it.”
“We have a bucket, thanks.” Rawley stepped into the dust-covered car loaded
with camp outfit. “El Dorado is right at the mouth of the canyon, isn’t it?”
The storekeeper gave him an odd look. “This is El Dorado,” he answered drily.
“This whole canyon is the El Dorado. There used to be a town at the mouth of
the canyon, but that’s gone years ago. Better take the left-hand road when you
get down here a quarter of a mile or so. That will take you past the
Techatticup Mine. Below there, turn to the right where two shacks stand close
together in the fork of the road. The other trail’s washed, and I don’t know
as you could get down that way. Car in good shape for the pull back? She’s
pretty steep, coming this way.”
“She’s pulled everything we’ve struck, so far,” Rawley replied cheerfully.
“Other cars make it, don’t they?”
“Some do--and some holler for help. It’s a long, hard drag up the wash. And if
you tackle it in the hot part of the day you’ll need plenty of water. And,”
the storekeeper added with a whimsical half-smile, “the hot part of the day is
any time between sunrise and dark. It does get _awful_ hot down in there! I
don’t mean to knock my own district,” he added, “but I don’t like to see any
one start down the canyon without knowing about what to expect. Then, if they
want to go, that’s their business.”
“That’s the way to look at it,” Rawley agreed. “I expect you’ve been here a
good while, haven’t you?”
The storekeeper wiped a fresh collection of beads from his forehead. He looked
up and down the canyon rather wistfully.
“About as many years as you are old,” he said quietly. “I came in here
twenty-five years ago.”
Rawley laughed. “I was about a year old when you landed. Seems a long while
back, to me.” He stepped on the starter, waved his hand to the storekeeper and
went grinding away down the steep trail through the loose sand. Johnny
Buffalo, sitting beside him, lifted a hand and laid it on his arm.
“Stop! He calls,” he said.
Rawley stopped the car, his head tilted outward, looking back. The storekeeper
was coming down the trail toward them.
“I forgot to tell you there’s a bad Indian loose in the hills somewhere along
the river,” he panted when he came up. “He’s waylaid a couple of prospectors
that we know of. A blood feud against the whites, the Indians tell me. You may
not run across him at all, but it will be just as well to keep an eye out.”
“What’s his name?” Johnny Buffalo turned his head and stared hard at the
other.
“His name’s Queo. He’s middle-aged--somewhere in the late forties, I should
say. Medium-sized and kind of stocky built. He’ll kill to get grub or tobacco.
Seeing there’s two of you he might not try anything, but I’d be careful, if I
were in your place. There’s a price on his head, so if he tries any tricks--”
He waved his hand and grinned expressively as he turned back to the store.
“He is older than that man thinks,” said Johnny Buffalo after a silence. “Queo
has almost as many years as I have. When we were children we fought. He is
bad. For him to kill is pleasure, but he is a coward.”
“If there is a price on his head he has probably left the country,” Rawley
remarked indifferently. “Old-timers are fine people, most of them. But they do
like to tell it wild to tenderfeet. I suppose that’s human nature.”
Johnny Buffalo did not argue the point. He seemed content to gaze at the hills
in the effort to locate old landmarks. And as for Rawley himself, his mind was
wholly absorbed by his mission into the country, which he had dreamed of for
more than a month. There had been some delay in getting started. First, he
could not well curtail the length of his visit with his mother, in spite of
the fact that they seemed to have little in common. Then he thought it wise to
make the trip to Kingman and report upon a property there which was about to
be sold for a good-sized fortune. The job netted him several hundred dollars,
which he was likely to need. Wherefore he had of necessity had plenty of time
to dream over his own fortune which might be lying in the hills--“In the cleft
of the jagged rocks”--waiting for him to find it.
Just at first he had been somewhat skeptical. Fifty years is a long time for
gold to remain hidden in the hills of a mining country so rich as Nevada,
without some prospector discovering it. But Johnny Buffalo believed. Whether
his belief was based solely upon his faith in his sergeant, Rawley could not
determine. But Johnny Buffalo had a very plausible argument in favor of the
gold remaining where Grandfather King had left it in the underground stream.
The fact that Rawley was exhorted to “take victuals for the journey” meant a
distance of a good many miles, perhaps, which they must travel from El Dorado.
Then, they were to go to the top of a very high mountain and pass over on the
other side. Johnny Buffalo argued that the start was to be made from El Dorado
merely because the mountain would be most visible from that point. It would be
rough country, he contended. The code mentioned cliffs and great heaps of
stones and clefts in jagged rocks, with a deep pit, “Hid from the eyes of all
living,” for the final goal. He thought it more than likely that Grandfather
King’s gold mine was still undiscovered. And toward the last, Rawley had been
much more inclined to believe him. He had read diligently all the mining
information he could get concerning this particular district, as far back as
the records went. Nowhere was any mention made of such a rich placer discovery
on--or in--a mountain.
He was thinking all this as he drove the devious twistings and turnings of the
canyon road. Another mine or two they passed; then, nosing carefully down a
hill steeper than the others, they turned sharply to the left and were in the
final discomfort of the “wash.” A veritable sweat box it was on this
particular hot afternoon in July. The baked, barren hills rose close on either
side. Like a deep, gravelly river bed long since gone dry, the wash sloped
steeply down toward the Colorado. Rawley could readily understand now the
solicitude of the storekeeper. The return was quite likely to be a time of
tribulation.
He had expected to come upon a camp of some sort. But the canyon opened
bleakly to the river, the hot sand of its floor sloping steeply to meet the
lapping waves of the turgid stream. At the water’s edge, on the first high
ground of the bank, were ruins of an old stamp mill, which might have been
built ten years ago or a hundred, so far as looks went.
He left the car and climbed upon the cement floor of the old mill. What at
first had seemed to be a greater extension of the plant he now discovered was
a walled roadway winding up to the crest of the hill. He swung about and gazed
to the northward, as the Bible code had commanded that he should travel. A
mile or so up the river were the walls of a deep canyon,--Black Canyon,
according to his map. Farther away, set back from the river a mile, perhaps
two miles, a sharp-pointed hill shouldered up above its fellows. This seemed
to be the highest mountain, so far as he could see, in that direction. If that
were the “great and high mountain” described in the code, their journey would
not be so long as Johnny Buffalo anticipated.
The nearer view was desolation simmering in the heat. A hundred yards away, on
the opposite bank of the wash, the forlorn ruins of a cabin or two gave
melancholy evidence that here men had once worked and laughed and
loved--perchance. He looked at the furnace yawning beside him, and at the
muddy water swirling in drunken haste just below. It might have been just here
that his grandfather had landed from the steamboat _Gila_ and had watched the
lovely young half-breed girl in the crowd come to welcome the boat and
passengers.
He started when Johnny Buffalo spoke at his elbow. How the Indian had reached
that spot unheard and unseen Rawley did not know. Johnny Buffalo was pointing
to the north.
“I think that high mountain is where we must go,” he said. “It is one day’s
travel. We can go to-day when the sun is behind the mountains, and we can walk
until the stars are here. Very early in the morning we can walk again, and
before it is too hot we can reach the trees where it will be cool.”
“We have a lot of grub and things in the car,” Rawley objected. “It seems to
me that it wouldn’t be a bad plan to carry the stuff up here and cache it
somewhere in this old mill. Then if your friend Queo should show up, there
won’t be so much for him to steal. And if we want to make a camp on the
mountain, we can come down here and carry the stuff up as we need it. There’s
a hundred dollars’ worth of outfit in that car, Johnny,” he added frugally.
“I’m all for keeping it for ourselves.”
Johnny Buffalo looked at the mountain, and he looked down at the car,--and
then grunted a reluctant acquiescence. Rawley laughed at him.
“That’s all right--the mountain won’t run away over night,” he bantered,
slapping his hand down on Johnny Buffalo’s shoulder with an affectionate
familiarity bred in the past month. “I’ve been juggling that car over the
desert trails since sunrise, and I wouldn’t object to taking it easy for a few
hours.”
Johnny Buffalo said no more but began helping to unload the car. It was he who
chose the trail by which they carried the loads to the upper level,
cement-floored, where no tracks would show. He chose a hiding place beneath
the wreckage of some machinery that had fallen against the bank in such a way
that an open space was left beneath, large enough to hold their outfit.
A huge rattlesnake protested stridently against being disturbed. Rawley drew
his automatic, meaning to shoot it; but Johnny Buffalo stopped him with a
warning gesture, and himself killed the snake with a rock. While it was still
writhing with a smashed head, he picked it up by the tail, took a long step or
two and heaved it into the river, grinning his satisfaction over a deed well
done.
Rawley, standing back watching him, had a swift vision of the old Indian
paddling solemnly about the yard near the west wing. There he was an
incongruous figure amongst the syringas and the roses. Here, although he had
discarded the showy fringed buckskin for the orthodox brown khaki clothes of
the desert, he somehow fitted into his surroundings and became a part of the
wilderness itself. Johnny Buffalo was assuredly coming into his own.
CHAPTER SIX
TRAILS MEET
By sunrise they were ready for the trail, light packs and filled canteens
slung upon their shoulders. The car was backed against the bluff that would
shade it from the scorching sunlight from early afternoon to sundown. Beside
it were the embers of a mesquite-wood fire where they had boiled coffee and
fried bacon in the cool of dawn. As a safeguard against the loss of his car,
Rawley had disconnected the breaker points from the distributor and carried
them, carefully wrapped, in his pocket. There would be no moving of the car
under its own power until the points were replaced. And Johnny Buffalo had
advised leaving a few things in the car, to ward off suspicion that their
outfit had been cached. Furthermore, he had cunningly obliterated their tracks
through the deep, fine sand to the ruins of the stamp mill. Even the keen,
predatory eyes of an outlaw Indian could scarcely distinguish any trace of
their many trips that way.
They crossed the wash, turned into the remnant of an old road leading up the
bank to the level above, and followed a trail up the river. Once Johnny
Buffalo stopped and pointed down the bank.
“The ferryboat went there,” he explained. “Much land has been eaten by the
river since last I saw this place. Many houses stood here. They are gone. All
is gone. My people are gone, like the town. Of Queo only have I heard, and him
the white men hunt as they hunt the wolf.”
Rawley nodded, having no words for what he felt. There was something
inexpressibly melancholy in this desolation where his grandfather had found
riotous life. Of the fortunes gathered here, the fortunes lost--of the hopes
fulfilled and the hopes crushed slowly in long, monotonous days of toil and
disappointment--what man could tell? Only the river, rushing heedlessly past
as it had hurried, all those years ago, to meet the lumbering little river
boats struggling against its current with their burden of human emotions, only
the river might have told how the town was born,--and how it had died. Or the
grim hills standing there as they had stood since the land was in the making,
looking down with saturnine calm upon the puny endeavors of men whose lives
would soon enough cease upon earth and be forgotten. Rawley’s boot toe struck
against something in the loose gravel,--a child’s shoe with the toe worn to a
gaping mouth, the heel worn down to the last on the outer edge: dry as a
bleached bone, warped by many a storm, blackened, doleful. Even a young man
setting out in quest of his fortune, with a picturesque secret code in his
pocket, may be forgiven for sending a thought after the child who had scuffed
that coarse little shoe down here in El Dorado.
But presently Johnny Buffalo, leading the way briskly, his sharp old eyes
taking in everything within their range as if he were eagerly verifying his
memories of the place, turned from the trail along the river and entered the
hills. His moccasined feet clung tenaciously to the steep places where
Rawley’s high-laced mining boots slipped. The sun rays struck them fiercely
and the “little stinging gnats” which Grandfather King had mentioned in his
diary were there to pester them, poising vibrantly just before the eyes as if
they waited only the opportunity to dart between the lids.