sides of hills, and returned to their camp for fresh supplies and a day or two
of rest. The “great and high mountain” in the distance had seemed to recede
before them as they walked. They had been three days in reaching its base.
Another two days had served to take them over the top and down on the other
side westward. There their trail seemed to end, for that side of the mountain
was almost entirely covered with loose rubble of decomposed rock. There were
no cliffs or jagged rocks anywhere that they could see.
Since Peter had burned the code, and the list of references was in St. Louis
with Grandfather’s Bible, they were compelled for the present to depend
altogether on memory. But Rawley could repeat the code from beginning to end
without hesitation. The only explanation, then, of their failure was that
either he had made a mistake somewhere in writing down the marked passages or
Grandfather King had marked them wrong.
Rawley astonished Nevada somewhat by asking to borrow her Bible. But when he
received it he could not remember the references, so that he was no better off
than before. One thing was certain: the only great and high mountain within
sight of El Dorado, looking north, with “Cedar trees in abundance scattered
over the face of the high mountain” had no cliffs upon its western side. When
the mountain itself failed to measure up with the description, the whole code
fell flat. It was a big country, and it was a rough country. A man might spend
a lifetime in the search.
“My sergeant did not lie,” Johnny Buffalo contended stubbornly. “He was a
great man. He did not make mistakes. When he said the gold was there, in the
clefts of the jagged rocks, it was there. He said it.”
“He said it--fifty years ago,” Rawley retorted rather impatiently. “I didn’t
see any gold formation anywhere on that mountain. It’s true that ‘Gold is
where you find it’; but it leaves earmarks in its particular neighborhood for
the man who knows how to read the signs. If there is any gold on that
mountain, some one carried it there.”
“There is gold where my sergeant said there is gold,” Johnny Buffalo insisted.
“I shall look until I find.”
“You will need winter quarters, then,” Rawley observed grimly, rummaging for
his sweater. October was hard upon them, and the wind was chill. “Tell you
what, Johnny. I’ll have to get out and earn some more money, anyway. I have a
dandy offer that came in the last mail. It’s a big job, and it ought to net me
a thousand dollars, easy. You remember that spring we passed, back here three
or four miles? It isn’t far from the trail. There’s plenty of wood, and a
little prospecting there might turn up something. I noticed as we came through
that the country looked pretty good. I’ll help build you a cabin there and get
you fixed up for winter. Then I’ll go and report on this mine--and come back,
maybe, after I’m through. Peter’ll see that you have everything you need while
I’m gone.”
Johnny Buffalo nodded approval. “All winter I will hunt for the gold my
sergeant gave you,” he declared. “He said it was on the high mountain. I shall
find it.”
Rawley had long ago learned that argument was a waste of time and breath. All
the while they were building the cabin, Johnny Buffalo talked of finding the
gold while Rawley was gone; and Rawley did not discourage him. He was saving a
secret for the old man, and he was in a hurry to have it complete before he
must leave.
Rawley’s mother had offered for sale the furniture and belongings of the west
wing, and Rawley had surreptitiously bought them for a fair price through the
friendly dealer who had known him since Rawley was a child. The things were
stored ready for shipping. Rawley wrote for them; and on the day when the
truck was to bring them to the end of the road nearest Johnny’s winter
quarters, he encouraged Johnny to start on a two-day trip to the mountain.
Peter and Nevada arrived with the burros before Johnny had much more than
walked out of sight.
Never mind what it cost those three in haste and hard work. When Johnny
Buffalo dragged himself wearily to the cabin at dusk on the second day, he
walked into an atmosphere poignantly familiar. Even the wheel chair had
arrived with the rest of the things. That, however, Rawley had left crated and
stored in the little shed adjoining the cabin. Everything else he had unpacked
and arranged as he had seen them in the west wing.
Peter and Nevada had lingered, waiting for the old man’s return; but after all
they lacked the courage to follow him when he went inside. He was gone a long
while. The three sat out on a rock before the cabin and watched the moon slide
up from behind a jagged peak across the river. They did not talk. Splendid
dreams held them silent,--dreams and their conscious waiting for Johnny
Buffalo.
Even when he came from the cabin there was no speech amongst them; Johnny
Buffalo looked as though he had been talking with angels.
A few days after that, Rawley went away to his work, content because he had
wheedled from Nevada a promise to write to him and keep him informed of Johnny
Buffalo’s welfare and the progress of the dam. He expected to return in a
month. But instead of coming he wrote a long letter.
He had finished the mine report and was about to leave for Washington, he
said. The president of the School of Mines where he had studied wrote him,
asking if he would not offer his services to the government, which was badly
in need of men for research work. Minerals hitherto in little demand had
suddenly become tremendously important,--for while the country was not yet at
war it was quietly preparing for such an emergency. He told Nevada that, much
as he disliked to change his plans, it was too good a chance to pass up, even
if his loyalty to the government did not impel him to accept the tacit offer.
He would come in contact with some of the biggest men in the game, he wrote.
In April, when war was actually declared, Rawley was already thoroughly shaken
down into his job. He still wrote twice a month to Nevada, but his letters
became shorter,--as if they were written in stray minutes snatched from his
duties. An interesting assortment of postmarks Nevada collected during the
ensuing two years. Every State in the Union that could flaunt a mineral
product seemed to be represented. Her replies were usually about two jobs
behind him, so that letters with the Nelson, Nevada, postmark trailed
patiently after Rawley wherever he went.
During the war, his mother saw him just once, when he happened to be passing
through St. Louis and could stop over for a few hours. Johnny Buffalo, Peter,
and Nevada saw him not at all.
CHAPTER TWENTY
NEVADA ANALYZES
On a certain day in June, Rawley left his car at Nelson and started afoot down
the trail to Cramers. Although the war was over he was still in the service of
the government. A bit leaner, a bit harder-muscled, steadier of eye and of
purpose, with a broader vision, too. Rawley had been making good.
After more than two years away from this particular point on the Colorado, old
emotions came sweeping back upon him as he caught sight of this bold peak or
that wild gorge, familiar landmarks along the trail. Halfway to Cramers, he
turned aside and followed a dim trail that went climbing tortuously up a
narrow canyon and so reached a bold hillside where the cabin of Johnny Buffalo
squatted snugly beside the spring.
Johnny was absent,--probably still hunting for the gold, Rawley thought, as he
grinned to himself. After so long a time spent wholly in service to others,
with the weal of his country always in the front of his mind, the search for
his grandfather’s gold mine seemed a shade less important than it had been two
years ago. He had the Bible and the old diary with him, but that was partly to
please Johnny Buffalo and because he thought the books might be interesting to
Peter. For himself he had not much hope of finding the cleft in the rocks; for
Johnny Buffalo the quest would be a wholesome object in life. Johnny Buffalo
would continue the search from no selfish motive, but in a zeal for Rawley’s
welfare. There was a difference, Rawley thought, in the way you go at a thing.
He left a note for Johnny on the table and went on down the hill and back into
the trail to the river. At the edge of the basin he stopped and surveyed the
somewhat squalid huddle of buildings, wondering why it was he felt almost as
if this were a home-coming. Perhaps it was a fondness for his Uncle Peter, and
because Nevada had kept the place fresh in his mind with the letters she had
written him.
Two strange dogs were added to the hysterically barking pack that rushed out
at him as he drew near. Five children instead of four grouped themselves and
stared. Gladys appeared in the open doorway of her cabin; a fatter Gladys,
with another baby riding astride her hip. The tribe of Cramer was waxing
strong.
He was sure that Gladys recognized him, but with the stolidity of the race
which dominated her nature, she merely stared and gave no sign of welcome.
Rawley kicked a dog or two that seemed over-serious in their intentions and
kept straight on. When he reached the hard-trodden zone immediately before the
cabin, he lifted his hat and spoke to Gladys.
“Hullo,” she grinned fatuously. “We don’t see you for a long time.”
Anita came to the door, looked out and nodded with an imperturbable gravity
that always disconcerted Rawley. He asked for Peter and Nevada. Peter was at
work, Gladys told him vaguely. And the clicking of a typewriter in the rock
dugout told him where Nevada might be found.
Rawley was amazed, almost appalled at the agitation with which he faced her.
In the press of his work, of meeting strange people and seeing strange places,
he had thought the image of Nevada was blurred; a charming personality dimmed
by distance and the urge of other thoughts, other interests. But when he held
her hand, looked up into her eyes as she stood on the step of the porch, he
had a curious sensation of having been poignantly hungry for her all this
while. He found himself fighting a desire to take her in his arms and kiss her
red mouth that was smiling down at him. He had to remind himself that he
hadn’t the right to do that; that Nevada had never given him the faintest
excuse to believe that he would ever be privileged to kiss her.
He sat in the homemade chair on the porch and, because looking at Nevada
disturbed him unaccountably, he stared down at the river while they talked. He
wondered if Nevada really felt as unconcerned over his coming as she sounded
and looked. She was friendly, frankly pleased to see him,--and he resented the
fact that she could speak so openly of her pleasure. She could have said to
any acquaintance the things she said to him, he told himself savagely; she was
like all her letters, friendly, unconstrained, impersonal. It amazed him now
to remember that he had been delighted with her letters. If at first he had
wished them more diffident, as if she felt the sweet possibilities of their
friendship, he had come to thank the good Lord for one sensible girl in the
world. Nevada had no nonsense, he frequently reminded himself. She didn’t
expect the mushy love-making flavor in their correspondence. He could feel
sure of Nevada.
Now it maddened him to feel so sure of her; so sure of her composed
friendliness that left no little cranny for love to creep in. She liked
him,--in the same way that she liked Peter. He could even believe that she
liked him almost as well as she liked Peter; that he stood second in her
affections before all the world. Covertly he studied her whenever the
conversation made a glance into her eyes quite natural and expected. She met
each glance with smiling unconcern,--the most disheartening manner a lover can
face.
“You’ve grown, Cousin Rawley,” she said. “Yes, I’ve got your home name on my
tongue--from Johnny Buffalo, I suppose. Well, you _have_ grown. I don’t mean
your body alone, though you have filled out and your shoulders look broader
and stronger, somehow, even though you may not weigh a pound more. But you’ve
grown mentally. There’s a strength in your face--an added strength. And your
eyes are so _much_ different. You keep me wondering, in between our talk, what
is in your mind--back of those eyes. That’s a sure sign that a great, strong
soul is looking out. It’s been an awful two years, hasn’t it?”
“It has,” Rawley answered quietly, his mind reverting swiftly to several close
squeaks from the enemy at home.
“Two years ago you’d have said ‘You _bet_!’ just like that. ‘It has’ wouldn’t
have seemed expressive enough. That’s what I’m driving at. Now you can just
say ‘It has’, and something back of your eyes and your voice gives the punch.
Cousin Rawley, you can cut out all exclamatory phrases from now on, if you
like. The punch is there. I’ve seen other men back from service. One or two
had that same reserve power. The others were merely full of talk about how
they won the war. It’s funny.”
Rawley did not think it was funny. She had lifted his heart to his throat with
her flattering analysis and had dropped it as a child drops a toy for some
fresher interest. He was all this and all that,--and she had seen other men
return with the same look. Right there Rawley silently indulged himself in his
strongest exclamatory phrase in his vocabulary.
Nevada had turned her head to call something in Indian, replying to her
grandmother’s shrill voice. She did not see what lay back of Rawley’s eyes at
that moment,--worse luck.
“Well, I wanted to get in and help. Gladys and Grandmother knitted sweaters
and socks, and so did I. I wanted to be a Red Cross nurse--was there a girl in
America who didn’t?--but Uncle Peter wouldn’t let me go. He said I was needed
here, to help hold things together. But I’ll tell you what I did do. I went
into the old diggings and mined. I found a stringer or two they hadn’t
bothered with, and I mined for dear life and sent every last color to the Red
Cross. Uncle Peter was helping, too--I mean giving all he could--but I wanted
to do something my own self. And do you know, Cousin Rawley, Grandmother got
right in with me and shoveled gravel to beat the cars! I didn’t write you
about it--it seemed so little to do. And besides, I didn’t realize then the
importance of living up to you. But with that--that Sphinxlike strength you’ve
acquired, I’ll just inform you that your Injuns were on the job.”
“I knew it, anyway. And you did more good than your personal service in
hospital could have done. It took money to keep the nurses going that were on
the job, remember.”
“Two years ago,” mused Nevada, “you’d have called me on that Sphinx remark and
for calling myself Injun. Yes, you have grown. You can keep to the essential
point much better than before. Well, and how is Johnny Buffalo? I haven’t seen
him for a week.”
“Nor I for over two years. I left a note on his table. Nevada, how long has he
had that wheel chair of Grandfather’s standing across the table from his own?”
Nevada looked at him studyingly until Rawley, for all his vaunted strength,
found his eyes sliding away from the directness of her gaze.
“Cousin Rawley, if you have grown hard, you won’t sympathize with Johnny
Buffalo, or understand. For more than a year, now, he has believed that his
sergeant comes and sits in that chair to keep him company. He really believes
it. You mustn’t laugh at him, will you?”
Rawley was staring down at the always hurrying river. He said nothing.
“Just don’t laugh at Johnny,” Nevada urged. “And don’t argue with him. It’s a
_comfort_ to him to believe that. He doesn’t always keep the chair at the
table. Sometimes it is by the window, or close to the fire when I go there. I
think he moves it just as he would if your grandfather were living there with
him.”
“That’s nonsense!” Rawley spoke sharply.
“It’s a comfort to Johnny Buffalo,” Nevada observed calmly. “I’m glad I saw
you first, if that is your attitude. Johnny Buffalo has been brighter and
happier, ever since he first thought he saw your grandfather walk in at the
door and stand smiling down at him. He insists that his sergeant has his legs
back, and that not a day passes but he comes and sits awhile with him.
He--there’s something he won’t tell me, but he’s very anxious to see you,
especially. I think it is something concerning your grandfather.”
“Oh, well, if it’s any comfort to the old man--” Rawley frowned, but his tone
was yielding.
“Then do, please, act as if you believed your grandfather is there when Johnny
says he is there! You needn’t pretend to see him. I never do. I always say I
can’t see him; and then Johnny Buffalo tells me just how he looks, and what he
says. It pleases him so! He will be sure to have his sergeant meet you, Cousin
Rawley. And you must pretend to believe. He’s just waiting for you to come, so
that something important can take place. He wouldn’t even tell Uncle Peter
what it is.” Nevada leaned dangerously toward Rawley and laid a hand on his,
apparently as unconscious of the possible results as is a child who picks up
an explosive.
“Promise me, Cousin Rawley, that you’ll be careful not to hurt Johnny’s
feelings.” Her hand closed warmly over his.
Rawley’s silence was not the stubbornness she seemed to think it. He was
holding his teeth clamped together, trying to reach that quiet strength of
soul she had naïvely credited him with possessing. He had tried to hold
himself together, to refrain from making a fool of himself, and she had
mistaken the effort for strength of soul, he thought with secret chagrin. Oh,
as to Johnny Buffalo--
“I should feel very badly if I knew that I had hurt any one’s feelings,” he
said. “Least of all, Johnny Buffalo. If he can be happy with an hallucination,
I shall not disturb his happiness. But that means a mental letting go,
according to my way of thinking. When he takes to having delusions, he’s
weakening. I don’t like that. I can’t be with him, you see. I have a few days
to myself, and then I must be on the job again.”
“Oh. I thought you would be here for awhile, anyway.”
Rawley tried to extract some comfort from Nevada’s tone of regret. But her
regret was, after all, too candid to mean anything especial, he feared. He did
not make the mistake of asking her if she really minded his going again so
soon.
“How is the dam coming along?” That, at least, would be a sane subject, he
hoped.
“Oh--it’s coming along. I believe they’re all across the river, to-day.”
She did not seem eager to pursue that subject, either. He began to wonder more
than ever what was in her mind. Something she would not talk about, he knew.
But presently she pulled herself out of her preoccupation.
“Can you imagine that sliding volume of water being halted in all its hurry
and made to stop running to the gulf; thwarted in its whole purpose?” she
asked dreamily. “I’ve watched it all my life. Sometimes it’s savage and boils
along, with driftwood and débris of all kinds--I saw it at Needles, once, in
flood time. It was awful. Then to think how three men have lived beside it and
planned and worked for years and years, to stop all that tremendous movement
and pen it up in the hills and--it seems to me that it’s like life. It goes
hurrying along, too, for years and years, and its power is devastating and
awful, sometimes. And then--after all, it’s so easy to stop it.”
“Yes,” said Rawley, his thoughts forced back again to things he would like to
forget. “It’s easy to stop it. Like that.” He snapped his fingers. “A man
standing so close to me our shoulders rubbed was stopped in the middle of a
sentence. We were talking. I asked him something about the mine. He was
telling me. A cable broke, and the end of it snapped our way and caught him in
the head. Life stopped right there, so far as he was concerned. He wasn’t
given time to finish what he was saying.”
Nevada was staring at him, her lips parted, the easy flow of her thoughts
halted by the horror of the picture he had drawn with a few quiet words. So
few words--spoken so quietly, she thought fleetingly.
“I--didn’t know--right beside you! It might have--Weren’t you hurt?”
Rawley lifted a hand to his cheek, where a fine, white line was drawn.
“The tip of one strand flicked me there,” he said. “Made a nasty gash.”
The pallor in Nevada’s face deepened. She shivered as if a sudden chill had
struck her skin.
“Well,” said Rawley, after a further five minutes of staring at the river.
“I’ll be getting back. Tell Peter I’ll be down again. Or if he can take the
time, have him come up, will you?”
“Why don’t you call him father?” Nevada asked him. “You aren’t ashamed of him,
are you?”
Rawley looked at her, the truth on the tip of his tongue. But he closed his
lips a bit more firmly, smiled down at her and shook his head.
“Peter and I understand each other,” he told her enigmatically and went away.
He quite agreed with Nevada. Even in times of peace, life could almost be
called devastating.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE TRUTH ABOUT RICHES
“To-morrow,” said Johnny Buffalo, with a transparent air of triumph, “we will
go to the cleft in the rocks, by the path which no man knoweth, and you shall
go down into the deep pit and find the gold.”
“What’s that?” Rawley looked up from crowding tobacco into his pipe after a
most satisfying supper. “You found it, did you?”
“My sergeant led me to the place,” Johnny Buffalo stated gravely. “There was a
mistake. The great and high mountain which holds the gold was not that
greatest mountain which we can see. There were cedar trees scattered over the
face of the mountain when my sergeant found the gold. That was many years ago.
Now there are no cedar trees or trees of any kind. That is why we could not
find the place. One year ago, my sergeant came and led me to the spot.”
“Is the gold there?” Rawley leaned forward, studying the old Indian through
half-shut eyes.
“I did not go down into the pit. My sergeant would not permit me to go. He
says that you will go, and that you will there learn the truth about riches.
He told me that I must not go down and look, for it would not be good that I
should see what will be revealed to you.” Johnny Buffalo spoke as if he were
reciting a lesson. His face was turned toward the empty wheel chair, drawn
before the open window.
Rawley frowned over the lighting of his pipe. The mystical message made little
impression on his mind, but he did worry over the Indian’s implicit belief in
it. His promise to Nevada bound him to silence on the subject of
hallucinations, however, even though he had in mind several things which he
would like to say.
Johnny Buffalo, sitting straight-backed with his hands spread palm down on his
knees, related all the incidents of his life during the past two years. Queo
had been accused of other murders, and after a particularly heinous one at the
Techatticup mine had disappeared altogether. Once Johnny Buffalo had seen him
and had taken a shot at him, but again the gun had kicked,--or perhaps his aim
was not too good. He had missed. Once his cabin had been robbed of food, and
he suspected the outlaw of committing the depredation. Of the tribe of Cramer
he would say little. Not once in the two years had he been in their camp, he
said. Peter and Nevada came often to see him. They were good to him. His
sergeant had come, and he had seen him. His sergeant sometimes spoke to him.
Perhaps Rawley would see him.
Rawley did not think so, but he refrained from voicing his doubt. As tactfully
as possible he avoided the subject and told some of his own adventures, to
which Johnny Buffalo listened with polite attention. It was plain to Rawley
that his mind was given up to another matter, and that he was merely waiting
with his Indian patience until he could guide his adopted son to the secret
cleft on the side of the mountain.
“No man has been before us,” he declared emphatically, when Rawley questioned
him. “Bushes have grown in the cleft until I could not have found it or
suspected that a cleft was there if my sergeant had not shown me the spot. The
cleft is there. I have seen it. The bushes are very old, and there is much
dead wood. There is the great heap of stones, and there has been a dead tree.
But it is gone many years and only the root is left to show that it once stood
joined to the great heap of stones. When the sun comes I will show you.”