with a tray of food such as fever patients may have; tea, toast, a bit of
fruit--mostly juice. Behind her waddled her grandmother; Rawley could not yet
believe in the reality of the relationship between this high-bred white girl
and the old squaw. In the back of his mind he thought there must be some joke;
or at least, he told himself, looking at the two closely, Nevada must be one
of the tribe by adoption. He had heard of such things.
And there was her Uncle Peter, who was a white man in looks, in personality,
everything. Yet Uncle Peter had flared proudly, “We may be breeds--but we
aren’t brutes.” He could only have meant himself and Nevada. He looked at her,
his eyes going again to the squaw with her gray bangs, the red kerchief, her
squat shapelessness.
Her fear of him seemed to have evaporated upon reflection. Her curiosity
concerning him had not, evidently. She set down the tray and stared at him
with a frank fixity that reminded Rawley of the solemn regard of the sloe-eyed
baby riding astride Aunt Gladys’ slatternly hip.
“You feed Johnny Buffalo, Grandmother,” Nevada directed. “He used to live in
this country when he was a boy. You can’t tell--you might be old
acquaintances.” She smiled, patted the old woman on a cushiony shoulder and
approached Rawley, who was suddenly resigned to his helplessness.
“Grandmother rather holds herself above full-blood Indians,” she whispered.
“She’s only half Indian, herself. I don’t want her to snub your partner; he
looks so lonely, somehow. What is it?”
“He’s grieving over my grandfather’s death,” Rawley told her, his own voice
dropped to an undertone that would not carry. “Until I proposed this trip he
didn’t want to live. He’s better, out here.”
“I do hope--”
A shrill ejaculation from the squaw brought Nevada’s head around. “What is it,
Grandmother?”
The old woman started a singsong Indian explanation, and Nevada smiled. “She
says they do know each other. She remembers him when he was a boy and was
lost. So that’s fine. He can hear about all his old playmates and his
family.” She turned her back on them as if the duties of hostess sat more
lightly on her shoulders, since one of the patients could visit with her
grandmother.
“I’m wondering what happened, up the trail.”
Nevada thoughtfully cooled the tea with the spoon and looked at him
speculatively. “Uncle Peter can tell you better than I can--since I was not
permitted to go along. Besides, the less talking you do now, I believe, the
less danger there is of complications. Neither wound is so bad of itself,
Uncle Peter says. It’s having your head hurt, along with the broken bone in
the arm. Unless you are very quiet for a day or two, there may be fever; and
fevered blood makes slow healing. That’s Uncle Peter’s theory, and it must be
correct. He has books and studies all the time--when he isn’t working. Then,
of course, there’s the danger of infection from the outside; but he has been
very careful in the dressings. Johnny Buffalo,” she added after a minute, “is
worse off than you are. His shoulder blade is badly smashed. And then he’s so
much older.”
She was talking, he knew, to prevent him from doing so. And since his head
felt like a nest of crickets, all performing at once, he was content to let
her have her way. Across the room he could hear the intermittent murmur of the
two Indians, the voice of the grandmother droning musically, with sliding,
minor inflections as she recounted, no doubt, the history of the old man’s
family and friends.
He watched Nevada pour and sweeten a second cup of tea and did a swift mental
calculation in genealogy. Jess Cramer, he knew, was a white man. The husband
of Gladys, bearing the name of Grandfather King’s enemy, must be a son of the
old man and of this half-breed squaw. Very well, then, old Jess Cramer’s
children would be one quarter Indian--Peter, Jess and Nevada’s mother
(granting that Nevada was a blood relative). Nevada’s father must have been
white,--a Scotchman, by the name, and by Nevada’s clear skin and coppery hair.
Well, then, Nevada was--A knife thrust of pain stabbed through his brain, and
he could not think. Nevada set down the cup hastily and laid cool fingers on
his temple. He lifted his right hand and held her fingers there. The throbbing
agony lessened, grew fainter and fainter. After all, what did it matter--the
blood in those fingers? They were cool and sweet and soothing--
He thought Nevada had lifted her hand and was gently removing the bandage from
his head. But it was Uncle Peter, and Nevada was not there, and it was dark
outside. In another room a clock began to strike the hour. He counted nine. It
was strange; he could not remember going to sleep with her fingers pressed
against the pulse beat in his temple. Yet he must have slept for hours. He
closed his eyes and then opened them again, staring up with a child-like
candor into the man’s bent face.
“I know. You look like Grandfather,” he said thickly. And when Peter’s eyes
met his, “It’s your eyes. Grandfather had eyes exactly like yours. And there’s
something about the mouth--a bitterness. Gameness, too. Grandfather had his
legs off at the knees, for fifty years. Called himself a hunk of meat in a
wheel chair. God, it must be awful--a thing like that, when the rest of you is
big and strong--but you’re not crippled that way. Oh, Johnny! Are you awake?”
He heard a grunt. “I’ve got it--what you meant at first, about seeing your
sergeant. Uncle Peter looks like--”
A hand went over his mouth quite unexpectedly and effectually. He looked up
into the eyes like Grandfather King’s and found them very terrible.
“Fool! Never whisper it. Am I not the son of Jess Cramer? It had better be so!
Better not see that I am like his enemy--and rival.” He leaned close, his eyes
boring into the eyes so like his own. “One word to any one that would slur my
mother, and--” he pressed his lips together, his meaning told by his eyes.
“She came to me to-day, chattering her fear. Old Jess Cramer lives with other
thoughts, and his eyes are dim at close range. Never come close to him, boy.
Never recall the past to him. It would mean--God knows what it would mean. My
mother’s life, maybe. And then his own, for I’d kill him, of course, if he
touched her.”
Rawley blinked, trying to make sense of the riddle. Then his good hand went
out and rested on Peter’s arm, that was trembling under the thin shirt sleeve.
“Uncle Peter!” His lips barely moved to form the words, and afterward they
smiled. “The blood of the Kings! I’m glad--”
“Are you?” Peter bent over him fiercely. “Proud of a man who went away and
left my mother--”
“He had to go,” Rawley defended hastily. “He meant to come back in a month’s
time. But he was shot through the legs, and in hospital for months, and then
sent home a cripple. After that he lost his legs altogether. How could he come
back? Johnny can tell you.”
Peter pulled himself together and redressed the long, angry gash on Rawley’s
head. Johnny Buffalo, having slowly squirmed his body to a position that gave
him a view of Rawley’s cot, watched them unblinkingly, his wise old eyes
gravely inscrutable. When he had finished, Peter strode to the door and stood
there looking out. Rawley had a queer feeling that he was looking for
eavesdroppers.
“What you say will make my mother happier,” he told Rawley, coming back and
speaking in his usual calm tone of immutable reserve. “She seemed very bitter
to-day when she talked with me. She has always thought your grandfather went
away knowing he would never come back. And she has proud, Spanish blood in her
veins--”
“Anita, by ----!” Rawley’s jaw dropped in sheer, crestfallen amazement.
“Did he tell you?” Peter eyed him queerly.
“It’s the diary. The beautiful, half-Spanish girl, all fire and life--he
described her like that. And--”
“Well, they change as they grow old.” Peter’s lips twitched in a grin. “The
beautiful Spanish señoritas get fat and ugly, and the Indian women are more
so. Your grandfather’s fiery Spanish girl had nothing to pull her up the hill.
Monotony, hardships--one can’t wonder if the recidivous influences surrounding
her all these years pulled her down to the dead level of her mother’s people.
Take this Indian here--” he tilted his head toward Johnny Buffalo--“he was
taken out of it when he was a kid. Now, aside from certain traits of dignity
and repression, I imagine he’s more white than Indian.”
Rawley nodded. “Lived right with Grandfather all his life and has studied and
read everything he could get his hands on. He’s better educated than lots of
college men; aren’t you, Johnny?”
“Yes. I think very much, of many things which Indians do not know. I do not
talk very much. And that is wisdom also.”
“Mother had nothing from books. When her youth went and she began to take on
weight, she dropped her pretty ways and became like the squaws. I remember,
and it used to hurt my pride to see her slip into their ways. I was--white.”
His mouth shut grimly.
Rawley lay looking into his face, trying to realize the full significance of
this amazing truth. His grandfather’s son, and Anita’s. His own uncle. With
Indian blood, but his uncle nevertheless. If Grandfather King had known--
“He’d have been proud,” he said aloud, “to have a son like you. He always
wanted--and my father was a weakling, physically, I mean. He died when I was
just a kid. Grandfather called him a damned milksop, because he wanted to work
in a bank. Johnny can tell you a lot about Grandfather--your--father.” He
lowered his voice, mindful of Peter’s warning. And then, “Does Nev--does your
niece know about it?”
“She does not. The fewer who know it, the better for all concerned. There will
be four of us, as it is. There mustn’t be five. Why make the lives of two old
people bitter? Old Jess--I’ve a brother, Young Jess--thinks I am his son. He
needs me, and Nevada needs me. We’ve hung together, in spite of the mixed
breed you see us. Jess is Injun in looks and ways. Nevada’s mother was all
white. Jess married a mission half-breed girl, and their kids are Injun to the
bone. Belle, Nevada’s mother, married a Scotchman--good blood, I always
thought, from his looks and actions. Nevada’s--Nevada.”
He said it proudly, and Rawley felt his blood tingle with something of the
same pride.
From the other bed Johnny Buffalo spoke suddenly. “Anita, your mother, is my
cousin. The daughter of my aunt. My blood is mingled with the blood of my
sergeant’s son. My heart is now alive again and life is good. My sergeant has
gone where he can walk on two feet, and I am left to care for his son and his
grandson. I now see that God is very wise.”
“He is?” Peter pulled down his heavy, black brows and the corners of his lips.
“I’ve spent a good deal of time wondering about that. There’s Nevada--and
one-eighth Indian. Is that--”
“Oh, what the devil difference does that make?” Rawley gave a flounce that
made him groan. But in the midst of it he managed to growl, “You said it
yourself; Nevada’s--Nevada.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
RAWLEY THINKS THINGS OUT
At intervals of fevered wakefulness during that night, Rawley went over and
over the astonishing state of affairs. The hour and the temperature that was
almost inevitable conspired to twist and exaggerate the truth, to give him an
intolerable sense of kinship with the slovenly, platter-faced Gladys, the
stolid obesity of the old squaw, and of a hopeless abyss between himself and
Nevada. They were related, somehow. They must be, since her Uncle Peter was
also his uncle. Uncle Peter, he thought, had been terribly wronged, and he
must somehow make amends, must remove the handicap of that savage blood. In
the morning he must tell Gladys that he was her cousin; why, that made him
Indian, too! No wonder his hair was so black, and he loved the wilderness with
such a passion. He was part Indian, that was why. Johnny Buffalo was some
relation; how Rawley’s mother would hate that!
What he did not know was that he talked about it, with Johnny Buffalo awake
and listening in the bed against the farther wall, and with Peter awake, too,
in a bed he had made for himself on the porch. He remembered that Peter came
and gave him a drink, and that it did not seem to matter so much, after that.
He slept late into the morning, after the opiate, and awoke to a saner point
of view.
As before, Nevada and her grandmother brought trays of food and helped the two
helpless ones to eat. With the knowledge Peter had given him, Rawley looked
with more interest at the old lady, covertly trying to see the slim little
half-caste Spanish girl whom Grandfather King had found “the joy of his
heart.” On the whole, Rawley could not feel that his grandfather would have
gone on loving, in any case. And he could not get away from the fact that
Anita had consoled herself with considerable expedition.
“You aren’t such a hero, after all,” Nevada bantered him, bringing him out of
his revery with a laugh. “You’re looking abominably well, this morning, for a
young man who was brought in dead only yesterday. And after all, you did not
kill Queo. Uncle Jess and Uncle Peter went up to the spot last evening, just
before dark, to identify him beyond all doubt, and--he’d disappeared. They
found where he had lain behind the rock, and they knew he was wounded, by the
blood.” She shivered involuntarily. “But he wasn’t anywhere to be found. Uncle
Peter feels quite put out. He looked at Queo when he went up after you, and he
felt sure the man was dead. So now, if he lives, he’ll be more venomous than
ever.”
“Then I’m sorry I hit him at all,” Rawley declared. “But I had to. He was
after the grub, all right. He thanked me for carrying it up to the trail for
him. Then he plugged me--I didn’t duck quite soon enough. So--I always hate to
be killed, like that,” he finished whimsically.
“That sounds like Uncle Peter,” Nevada observed. “Your voice, I mean.
Grandmother, don’t you think Mr. King looks and talks like Uncle Peter?”
Rawley tried not to look as startled as he felt. The pillowy (after all, one
letter would have called her willowy in the old days, so that not so much had
been changed) Anita walked deliberately over to them, advancing one side at a
time, like a duck that travels in a leisurely mood. She laid her cushioned
knuckles on her bulging hips and regarded Rawley steadfastly.
“Mebby he look--a lil bit,” she conceded with a superb indifference. “Peter,
he t’inner--a lil bit. More darker. More--like his fadder, Jesse.”
“Yes-s--he does look more like Grandfather, of course. But I do think Mr. King
looks like them both.” Nevada spoke with a perfect sincerity which sent the
spirits of three persons up a notch or two.
Rawley laughed. “Well, maybe we’re some relation--away back,” he said
recklessly. “A Cramer, connected with my family, was known to have come West,
years ago. I remember reading it in some old record. But I’m afraid I can’t
claim he was very closely related. In fact, I rather think he wasn’t.” His
eyes met the eyes of old Anita, and he almost thought he saw a gleam of
approval in them. He could not be sure.
Of the look in the eyes of Peter, who was standing in the doorway, he was much
more positive. The color came into his face as their eyes met. After all,
others were sure to notice the resemblance, and there must be some explanation
ready.
“I’m sure that’s it.” Nevada laughed softly. “You’re a fourth or fifth cousin,
perhaps. Likenesses do travel that way. I wonder if Grandfather would know.”
“I wouldn’t want to ask him,” her Uncle Peter observed in his grim way. “Why
stir the old man up for days, just to satisfy idle curiosity?” He laid his
hand on Nevada’s head, smoothing back a lock of her hair with a gesture
inexpressibly tender. “On the strength of the fifth-cousin relationship, seems
like we might drop the Mr. King. Father hates to think of his past,--a quarrel
with his family brought him West, as nearly as I can make out. What do folks
call you, young man, when they know you well?”
“Oh, Rawley is what I grew up under. George Rawlins King is my name. I wish
you would call me Rawley. Then I could say Uncle Peter, and Nevada,
and--Grandmother, maybe, if Mrs. Cramer will let me.”
“Uncle me all you please,” grinned Peter. “And Nevada is down on all the
school maps. If you don’t mind, when you do meet father, let it be as George
Rawlins. Your last name might or might not recall a family quarrel. But--we
spare him excitement as much as possible. And while you’re here, the outfit
will call you--Rawlins.”
“Well, then I’ll explain to Aunt Gladys,” said Nevada, as if they were
planning a secret for fun; and yet there was a certain look of anxiety, too,
in her face. “I think I can manage her--but then she never says much to
Grandfather, anyway. They don’t like each other very well,” she explained to
Rawley. “Grandfather was angry when Uncle Jess married her, and while they
never quarrel, it is merely toleration. Aunt Gladys won’t tell.”
Rawlins then lay for a long time thinking how strangely the pattern is woven
into the woof of Life. With the sun shining and the noise of playing children
outside, the unexpected turn of events seemed more natural. So much had
happened in the past twenty-four hours that Rawley found himself checking up,
as he called it, on events and emotions engendered by the sudden crises. He
glanced across at the other bed and found Johnny Buffalo awake and seemingly
comfortable; wherefore he made bold to ask a few questions.
“Johnny, I thought I had those women hidden around a bend in the trail. How
did Queo manage to spot them so as to try a shot? I’ve been wondering about
that first rifle shot. Are you sure it was fired at us?”
“I am sure. You were not hidden altogether. I, myself, could see heads, though
I could not see the trail. Queo was higher. I think that little point was too
low.”
“Well, that accounts for it. I lost my bearings down there, then. Part of the
ridge was hidden, I know. I thought it was the place where he was located. He
shot wide, anyway.” He lay looking at a Las Vegas merchant’s calendar,
reviewing still the immediate past.
“There’s another thing that just struck me this morning. How did Grandfather
know that Jess Cramer was located here on the river? Jess was a soldier at the
fort, I thought, when Grandfather saw him last. It’s in the diary.”
“I think you should read again more carefully, my son. My sergeant spoke to me
often of Jess Cramer. He had found gold here at this canyon. He was often at
the fort, spending his gold in the games of chance. Jess Cramer played not for
sport, but to win. A sergeant’s pay was not large, and my sergeant spent many
hours in searching for such gold as Jess Cramer brought with him to the fort.
My sergeant had won a little. He kept it and searched for more of the same. It
was not only for Anita that the two quarreled. A woman and gold make hatreds
that do not die. He did not tell me all. He longed for a son who would take up
the search. Or so I believed. I did not know that he had found his gold. I
thought that the nuggets he gave to you he had won at cards from Jess Cramer.
He told you that he picked them up. My sergeant does not lie. So I know that
he had found the gold he had sought, and that if you obeyed him you would
learn the secret he had kept from me.”
“He had a son,” Rawley muttered, “and he’d have been proud of him if he had
known about him. Johnny, I can’t help thinking that Peter is more
Grandfather’s son than my father was.”
Johnny Buffalo meditated, staring at the ceiling.
“There was love,” he said softly at last. “My sergeant did not love the mother
of your father. I could see in his eyes when he looked upon her that his
thoughts were not with her, and that his heart was far away.”
They lay for a long time silent. Each thought that the other slept, he lay so
still. But of a sudden Rawley reached up his uninjured hand and pushed back
the bandage that was slipping over his eye. The movement betrayed not so much
protest against a physical discomfort as the impatient mind that seeks in vain
for the correct answer to a puzzle.
But Johnny Buffalo did not sleep. He lay staring at the ceiling, his mouth
closed firmly with lines beside it which nature draws to show when the soul is
weary. But there was no longer any bitterness there, though there was pain.
The hollow eyes glowed steadily, as if the old man had found a light ahead
somewhere in the blackness of his grief. Once, a gentle snore drew his
attention, and he turned his head and stared for a long while at the young,
unlined face with the bandage drawn diagonally above it. For Rawley the Great
Game had only begun; his stakes were piled before him, to win or to lose. The
old Indian wondered gravely how that Game would be played. Wisely?
Bravely,--he was sure. Honestly,--he hoped.
CHAPTER TWELVE
RAWLEY PLAYS THE GAME
How wisely, how honestly, how bravely he would play the Great Game, Rawley
unconsciously indicated that evening, when Peter sat alone with the two, after
Nevada and her grandmother had given them their supper and gone away. Peter
had declared himself rather proud of his surgical skill, and had almost
yielded to Rawley’s importunities that he might get up and dress in the
morning and help take care of Johnny Buffalo. But Peter had his father’s
firmness, after all.
“I took five stitches in that gash on your head,” he explained. “Queo uses
slugs to knock over an elephant. I’m not so sure your skull isn’t cracked. You
talk rather crack-brained, sometimes.” (That was Peter’s first joke with
them.) “Best wait until we’re sure, anyway.”
Rawley gave an embarrassed kind of laugh and sent an involuntary, inquiring
glance at Johnny Buffalo.
“I wish you’d lock the door, Uncle Peter, and then bring me my coat. I’ve got
something on my mind other than a cracked skull and embroidered hide.
“Now, to make the thing clear to you, Uncle Peter, I’ll have to say that
Grandfather left here expecting to come back--and I hope you told your mother
what happened.”
Peter nodded.
“Well, there Grandfather was, helpless. It made him kind of proud and bitter,
and he sort of held himself away from folks. But he was disappointed because
my father was sickly and didn’t take to anything outdoors, and I never met him
face to face, or spoke a word to him, until the night before he died. Of
course nobody dreamed he was going--I don’t think he did, or Johnny, even.
“At any rate, he sent for me. And he said I was all King, and he had waited to
make sure. He talked a little and gave me his old diary and an old Bible his
mother had given him. He told me to read the Bible--that there was a lot in
it, if I read it carefully. It was the last talk I had with him. He died in
the night.
“Well, the point I’m getting at is this: Grandfather had a secret--about a
mine out here. He had it all described, in a kind of code that sure had me
guessing blind for awhile. I found a long list of Bible references, you
see--no one would ever think of wading through the bunch, unless it was a
preacher, maybe; and he wouldn’t need to. It took me a while to catch on to
the fact that they meant something. Grandfather, you must know, wasn’t
religious. Anything but. So the crux of the matter was those references looked
so darned dry and innocent, and they were the only thing I could find to work
on. Johnny, there, made it mighty plain to me that I’d better work on
_something_. I tried Poe’s cipher, and I looked up all the references. I will
say that just reading verse after verse, according to the references, they
make snappy reading; murder and bloodshed and bigamy and the wrath of God. And
names I couldn’t pronounce, of tribes headed out on the warpath. It was great
stuff--not.
“But finally I dug into the little old Bible Grandfather had carried around
with him--and hadn’t read, or the book’s a liar--and I got this. I want to
read it to you: I dug it out by writing down words and phrases in all the
verses, that Grandfather had marked. I’ll read it as if it were
altogether--which it wasn’t, by a long shot:
“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.