slipped past him and went straight to Rawley, who was pulling at his tie,
which had gone crooked. She was pale, breathless with the fear that looked out
of her big eyes.
“Oh, you must go--_now_,” she breathed, clasping her two hands around his arm.
“You think he’s just like any other bully, all bluster. He’ll kill you, just
as sure as you stand here. Grandfather, too. Uncle Jess will shoot you in the
back--oh, _anyway_! He’s the worst of the Indian blood; once you rouse him,
there’s _nothing_ he’ll stop at! Get him away, Uncle Peter! It isn’t brave, to
stay and be killed. It’s the worst kind of cowardice; the kind that is afraid
to show itself. Uncle Peter!”
“We’re going, Nevada. I know Young Jess. A rattlesnake’s a prince alongside
him when he’s mad. Son, you should have left him to me. I can handle him
pretty well, no matter how mad he gets. Come along; he’ll not be above potting
you from ambush, Injun style.”
He left the porch at the farther end, pulling Rawley after him; and much as
Rawley hated the thought of retreat, he was forced to believe that Nevada and
Peter, neither of them timid souls, must know what they were talking about.
Nevada disappeared, with no word of farewell to Rawley. Young Jess could be
plainly heard bawling at Gladys because his “shells” had been misplaced.
Peter chuckled.
“One of the kids shot himself through the hat, a month or so ago,” he
explained his amusement. “Since then the guns are kept unloaded. Jess is
hunting cartridges; God bless Gladys for a poor housekeeper!”
He still held a firm grip on Rawley’s arm, leading him down the path to the
river. But suddenly, keeping an ear cocked toward the sounds behind him, he
swung away from the trail toward the bluffs.
“He’s found them, from the way things have quieted down, back there. He’ll be
hot on your trail, now--unless Nevada can stop him, which I doubt. He’s Injun
enough to hold women in contempt when it comes to a show-down. Here.”
He pulled Rawley down between two great, upstanding bowlders standing black
against the stars. Rawley felt a movement of Peter’s arm, and knew that Peter
had pulled a gun from somewhere and was aiming it across a ridge of rock.
Rawley himself could hear nothing but the crying of the wakened baby in the
shack, the yelp of a kicked dog.
For a long time, it seemed to Rawley, they waited. He could not hear a sound.
But Peter still held his gun leveled across the rock before them, and Rawley
could feel how Peter’s muscles were tensed for a struggle.
Two greenish lights showed faintly as a star-beam struck the eyeballs of a
dog. A shuffling sound approaching through the weedy gravel, a sniffling at
Peter’s hand. Rawley felt a crimple down his spine, though he did not think
that he was afraid.
A pebble plunked into something close beside him, and the dog shied off with a
faint, staccato yelp. Young Jess, then, was close. A muttered curse reached
the ears of the two between the bowlders. Immediately afterward, Nevada’s
whisper came distinctly.
“I think he’s hidden here, somewhere in the rocks. His car is down in the
canyon, but he wouldn’t go that way--he’d expect you to follow. Watch the dog.
He hasn’t any gun--I know. Can you creep back toward the hill--”
“Sh-sh. You call him. Quiet, as if you was scared. Make out you’re sweet on
him--”
“I can’t. He knows--I hate him. We quarreled to-day. I hate his snobbish
ways--I told him so.”
“Call his name if you run onto him. Then duck. I’ll--”
“Sh-sh--he may be near!”
The two were standing close together, just beyond the bowlder that reared its
bulk beyond Peter. Rawley bit his lip, straining his ears to hear more.
“You call him. He won’t s’spect--” Young Jess urged in a whisper.
“He’d be a fool if he didn’t. I tell you he knows--”
“He’s stuck on yuh. That makes a fool--”
“Sh-sh. He’s not--”
Inch by inch, Rawley was drawing himself backward, until now he was free of
the bowlder and Peter. From the sounds, he knew that the two were standing
close to the rock. He thought that they were facing the river, though he could
not be sure. It did not greatly matter. He inched that way until he could
faintly distinguish two upright blots in the darkness of the bowlder’s shadow.
Upon the taller of the two he launched himself, reaching instinctively for the
gun he knew was there. His hand closed on the cool steel of the barrel, and he
gave a mighty wrench as he went down. Young Jess, caught unawares from behind,
had no chance to save himself. Rawley landed full on his back, his chest
forcing the face of Young Jess into the gravel. His left hand gripped the back
of Jess’s neck.
“Peter, please take this fighting squaw to the house and lock her up
somewhere. Then come back here. I want to have a talk with you before I go,”
he said hardly. “I can handle this vermin, but I leave the squaw to you.”
“As you like,” Peter’s voice was noncommittal. “Come, Nevada.”
Rawley had expected some outburst from her, some bitter reply to his taunt.
But she went away with Peter and spoke no word to any one. So Rawley pulled
off his necktie and tied Young Jess’s hands behind him, and made himself a
smoke while he waited Peter’s return.
“I’ll git you, and I’ll git you right!” gritted Young Jess, when Rawley had
his cigarette going. “You better kill me now, or you’ll see the day you’ll be
begging me to kill yuh. I’ll ketch yuh and take yuh back in the mine, an’
I’ll--” He amused himself for some minutes, making up the programme of his
revenge. He would finish, he decided, by building a bed of powder kegs and
placing Rawley full length upon it, with a ten-foot fuse spitted just before
Young Jess bade him good-by.
“You ought to have lived fifty years ago,” Rawley commented indifferently, and
blew smoke in his face. “Why don’t yuh squeal for that old buzzard of a dad?
Maybe he could help yuh out, right now.”
Young Jess, having just made up his mind to shout for Old Jess to come, shut
his mouth so hard his teeth clicked like a dog cracking a bone.
“Any fool can plan the things he’d _like_ to do,” Rawley taunted. “What counts
is the fact that you’re on your back, right now, and that I put you there--and
you with a gun in your hands! I could kick you in the slats and make you howl
like a kicked pup. I could drive your teeth in, so you’d feed yourself in the
back of your head the rest of your life! Don’t talk to _me_--about what you’d
like to do! I’m liable to experiment on yuh, just to see how it works.”
Then Peter returned, and further social amenities were postponed to some
future meeting.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“YOU TELL HOOVER I SAID SO!”
Las Vegas awoke one morning to find itself in the public eye. Destiny had so
decreed when it permitted Las Vegas to become the town nearest to the proposed
dam site at Boulder Canyon,--the largest governmental project undertaken for
many a day. The Panama Canal, said the orators (and no doubt they spoke the
truth), had not cost so much as it would cost to dam the Colorado River, to
conserve its tremendous power, to control its flood waters and put the river
to work tamely watering long rows of cotton, potatoes, great fields of grain.
Long enough had it gone leaping down through the wildest, most gorgeous
scenery in the country. Now it must be harnessed to new industries and become
the servant of plowboys, the friend of prospectors. It must pull trains across
the desert which it was to transform into tilled farms. It must keep several
States vibrant with the hum of machinery. It must make of the town of Las
Vegas a city worthy the name. One can’t blame Las Vegas for being particularly
interested in that phase of the project.
The town lay fairly under the eye of the Eagle,--and of the sun, whose light
the magic alchemy of the desert transmuted into soft tints on the mountains,
into a faint lavender glow on the desert. The air was still, with a little nip
to it that would later soften to a lazy warmth. A stranger to the desert,
standing on the depot platform, would have thought that he might walk quite
easily to Charleston Mountains, standing bold and stark against the western
sky line.
Down the flag-draped main street, coming from the side door of the little
post-office, a huge, good-natured negro leaned against a pushcart piled high
with dingy, striped canvas mail sacks. When he passed, certain belated
citizens swung out to the edge of the pavement and took longer steps, knowing
that the train was on time, and that the crowd would already be edging out
upon the platform. Automobiles with flags standing perkily from headlight
braces went careening past, to swing up into the parking space, trying their
nonchalant best to look as if they were not going to hold governors and high
officials of the Federal Government and carry them safely down to Boulder
Canyon, the most popular dam site on the Colorado.
A group of small boys dressed in white came marching down the street, stubbing
toes over the uneven places because they must keep their eyes on the music
while they played the uncertain strains of a march. They were very sleek as to
hair, very shiny as to cheeks and very solemn, those boys. Their mothers and
their fathers and their teachers were going to detect any false note or
flatted sharp and tell them about it afterwards. Besides, there aren’t many
boys who ever get a chance to stand on the platform and play when the
Governor’s train comes in--and be the only band on the job. They felt the deep
responsibility attendant upon the honor and thought feverishly of certain
spots in the music where they weren’t quite sure they could make it; not with
the whole town standing around listening.
They fumbled their instruments, stood hipshot and consciously unconcerned
while they waited for the train. Their leader glanced around the group,
encountered certain anxious pairs of eyes fixed upon his face, and made an
impulsive change in the programme. “The Star-Spangled Banner” was appropriate
and customary for such occasions, but there were treacherous high notes which
a certain scared boy might play flat, and other places where the slide
trombone was in danger of skidding. He gave them a piece they could play with
their eyes shut and was rewarded by hearing long sighs of relief here and
there among the musicians.
So it happened that when the train had slid into the station and the Governors
and high officials had descended from the private car, Rawley caught the
familiar air, “I’m forever blow-ing bubbles” floating out over the heads of
the assembled citizens of Las Vegas. If the tune wabbled here and there, what
matter? Governors and high officials can hear better music anywhere,--but they
never will hear a more sincere effort to please, made by more loyal hearts
than skipped beats under the white jackets of the “kid band” of Las Vegas.
I’m dreaming dreams, I’m scheming schemes,
I’m building castles high--
Rawley caught himself humming the words to himself and thought, in a heartsick
way, of Nevada, only twenty-five miles from him, so far as miles went,--a
million miles away in her thoughts.
“I’ve talked Boulder Canyon Dam until I wonder sometimes if it isn’t Bubble
Canyon, maybe,” a certain governor confided to him under his breath. “Do you
reckon this is a civic confession the kids are making, or what?”
“The civic air castle--nearest the kids can come to it,” Rawley grinned. “Wait
till you hear this town stand up on its hind legs and tell you how they feel
about it. They talk Boulder Canyon in their sleep, I reckon. It’s no bubble to
_this_ bunch! If the rest of the country had half the enthusiasm this town has
got, they’d be hauling concrete to the river to-day!”
“Instead of the Commission, huh? Well, I wish they were.”
A man pushed out of the fringe of common citizens who came merely to look upon
assembled greatness and faced Rawley, smiling with his eyes.
“Uncle Peter!” Rawley gripped his hand and did not know that his eyes searched
the crowd, wistfully, seeking a face--
“No, she didn’t come,” Peter informed him. “I want to get a chance to talk
with the men in your outfit who count the most. Not on paper, but with the
government. Can you fix it for me, boy?”
“Has anything happened?” Rawley drew him anxiously aside.
“No--I just want to get at the right men. I want you there, of course.” Peter
glanced here and there at the men who were smiling, shaking hands, speaking
pleasant phrases.
“All right. Of course every minute is mortgaged, I suppose, to the town. But
I’ll get you--”
“An hour will do me,” Peter stated modestly, and Rawley suppressed a grin.
Looking him over surreptitiously, Rawley decided that he could be very proud
indeed of Uncle Peter. Even amongst governors and such, Peter could hold his
own with that quiet dignity which nothing seemed able to ruffle, that poise
which came of being very sure of his own mind and of what he wanted. A great
man looked from one to the other curiously, and Rawley immediately introduced
Peter to him. Then he caught the eye of another, and presently that man was
shaking hands very humanly with Peter Cramer, who looked so much like George
Rawlins King, of the Reclamation Service. Before he quite realized what was
taking place, Peter was absorbed into the party of great men, and a flustered
waitress in the depot dining room was hastily making room at a table and
laying another knife and fork purloined from the lunch room outside.
The reception committee probably revised at the last minute their arrangements
for seating the party in the decorated automobiles. Some one must have been
crowded; but Peter rode in comfort in a big car in company with some of the
nation’s important men, though this was not what he had gotten an early
haircut for. He had seen the river in all its moods and under all conditions;
it seemed strange to him now, no doubt, to be sight-seeing it with men who had
heretofore been no more than names to be read in headlines in week-old
newspapers. But no one suspected it,--unless perhaps some member of the
reception committee wondered how he had broken in. However, as a guest of the
Colorado River Commission, seven governors and railroad presidents, no mere
local committee dared flicker an eyelid.
“It has to be done this way--whatever it is you want to do,” Rawley muttered
once in Peter’s ear at the river, when he caught Peter looking boredly at the
bold cliffs of Boulder Canyon. “You couldn’t get a look-in, just coming up and
trying for an interview. As soon as we get back, and before the banquet up
town, I’ve arranged for you to talk to the Commission. I told the chief,” he
added drily, “that it was more important than anything else he’d hear. I
gambled on that, because I know you. And a little nerve goes a long way,
sometimes. We’re going to cut this short as possible and get back to the car
early. Then--you’ll have to boil down your hour, Peter. There won’t be more
than half that much time for whatever it is you want to say.”
“It may pay this Colorado River Commission,” said Peter laconically, “to miss
their supper to-night, and even cut out some of the speeches they’ve got ready
to hand out to Vegas citizens. As I understand it, the Commission was created
for the purpose of investigating claims, collecting all data and adjusting
rights pertaining to the Colorado River. They’d better take a piece of bread
and butter in their hands and eat it while they listen to what I’ve got to
say.” He paused and added significantly, “You tell Hoover I said so.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
THE VULTURE MAKES TERMS WITH THE EAGLE
Rawley had them rounded up in the private car--governors and high officials
and newspaper representatives--lighting cigars, cigarettes and pipes and
eyeing, their curiosity politely veiled, the big, broad-shouldered man with
the brown skin and piercing blue eyes, who stood at one end of the car waiting
for them to settle themselves into easy, listening attitudes. This was
informal,--but if they were to believe that keen young man, George Rawlins
King, it was going to be pretty important; and, what appealed to most of them
like a window opened in a stifling room, fresh and untalked. It is impossible
to eat, sleep and live with one subject for months without feeling a tingle of
relief when some entirely new angle crops up,--something that hasn’t been
argued, weighed and considered a hundred times. The Colorado River Commission
was on the job,--heart, soul and mind. But that did not preclude secret sighs
of anticipation when the Commission faced something wholly new to every
member.
Not a man among them knew Peter Cramer. Not one had ever heard the name. He
looked a man of the desert, every inch of his six-feet-and-something-over. He
might turn out to be a bore; he did not look like a boor. He did not wear his
hair in the prevailing fad; it grew thick to the nape of his neck and was
trimmed there neatly by some barber who remembered how they used to cut hair.
His dark suit was incontestably made to his measure,--but it had been made
before the War. You don’t get such material nowadays. At least, men of the
desert do not get it. His hands, as he shuffled a few slips of paper, showed
how hardly they had been used. They were the hands of a laborer, scrubbed
meticulously clean, the nails trimmed painstakingly,--with a pocket-knife, one
could guess. So there he stood, towering above them all, with pre-War clothes,
the hands of a laborer, the eyes of a thinker.
The car became very still. Every man there looked at Peter. And one man’s eyes
held love, sympathy and a shade of anxiety. To this moment, Rawley King could
only guess at what his Uncle Peter was going to say. There was a little prayer
in Rawley’s heart, in his eyes. A modern, young-man prayer, “God, don’t let
him pull a boner!” It would be well if all the prayers in all the churches
were as sincere.
“Gentlemen of the Colorado River Commission” (Peter began in his deep, even
voice that carried far) “you do not know me, and I do not know you. I thank
you for consenting to listen to me. When I am done, you may thank me for
consenting with myself to talk to you. In the words of a certain wise
man--whose wisdom I wish I might borrow as I borrow his words--‘I am not a
clever speaker in any way at all; unless, indeed, by a clever speaker they
mean a man who speaks the truth. You will not hear an elaborate speech dressed
up with words and phrases. I will say to you what I have to say, without
preparation and in the words which come first, for I believe that my cause is
just. So let none of you expect anything else.’ If I could better that
statement, make it more forceful, I should hesitate. Gentlemen, they stand for
absolute honesty of purpose. Let them stand for me now, as they stood for
Socrates--but I hope with happier effect.
“Fifty-four years ago, I was born within sight and sound of the Colorado River
and within sight of the cliffs of Black Canyon. The river has been a part of
my life. The wilderness hedged me in, mile upon mile. When I was ten, so long
ago as that, I was taught the use of a rifle that I might help defend lives
and property from hostile Indians and renegade white men. My mother is the
granddaughter of a chief, and the daughter of a Spanish nobleman who voyaged
up from Mexico before white men had seen this country. I am therefore
one-fourth Indian,--a son of the desert. My father was a white man of good
blood.
“When I was a boy and helped in my father’s mine at Black Canyon, I was urged
to greater labor by the great plan my father had conceived in his long labor
at the placer claims. He would save his gold until he had enough and more than
enough. Then, when he had gold enough, he would dam the flow of the Colorado
River and get the gold that lies in the river bed, washed down through the
ages.
“That plan became the splendid dream of my life, Gentlemen of the Commission.
The stupendousness of the idea took root in my very soul. I would stand and
watch the river hurrying past, and I would think how best it might be done,
and I would picture the river held back, halted in its headlong course to the
sea.
“When I was fifteen I was studying, in a small, groping way, the engineering
feat of damming the river at Black Canyon. I knew that I had a tremendous
problem before me. I knew that the problem was doubled by the need of secrecy,
which had been impressed upon me from the time I was a child. No one had
thought of getting the gold from the river bed. The river was too swift, its
currents too treacherous. I used to watch the steamboats warp up against the
sweep of that current, to make the landing at El Dorado. That gave me an idea
of the giant strength we should have to combat, to conquer. No one ever
suspected the purpose that grew within the minds of the ‘squaw man’ Cramer and
his breed boys, mining at Black Canyon. Deliberately we fostered the belief in
our commonplace lives, our lack of ambition, our ignorance. That belief,
gentlemen, was a necessary factor in our ultimate success.
“Studying alone--for my younger brother avoids thinking when possible, and my
father gave himself up wholly to the thought of getting the gold--I felt the
need of help from our great engineers. I could not take the time for college,
for studying in the schools that turn out engineers. I am a man of the desert,
as you see me. What I know I have learned by reading when others slept. I
could not give my working hours to study, for they were sold to the need of
getting gold to build the dam in order to get more gold! I alone realized the
magnitude of the undertaking; to me they looked for the wit to accomplish
their desire. And I remembered, gentlemen, the engineering problem solved by
half-savage peoples; their power is gone, but their engineering feats remain
to testify for them. I remembered the pyramids, some of the wonderful old
cathedrals of Europe, the marvelous ruined cities of the Incas, the Aztecs,--I
counted myself a savage who must think for himself, and I went at the problem
of making the splendid dream a reality.
“Gentlemen, when I was yet a boy I was experimenting with explosives. I was
studying the resistance of granite, the lifting power of black powder; I was
preparing to build the dam. Before I had books on the subject, I had measured
so many cubic feet of granite and had heaved it a certain distance with so
many pounds of black powder. Over and over again I did it, in spare time when
I was not working in the underground placer claims by the river.
“I will be brief, gentlemen, but I want to be understood by each one of you
before I stop talking. I told my father, when I was in my teens, that we must
have a million dollars before we could hope to carry out his idea. I told him
that we must have enough, or lose what we had. I showed him where failure to
dam the river would mean a total loss of time, money, labor. I convinced him
that I knew what I was talking about. I hope that I can convince you.
“Gentlemen, in order to dam the Colorado River and mine the gold in its bed,
for a distance of, say, a mile or two, you must make sure first of all of the
means, second of the secrecy of your plan, and third of the practicability of
the project. We had placer ground of unsuspected riches; an underground
watercourse with gravel bed, carrying placer gold. This gave us the means. We
simulated poverty and ignorance and a paucity of ambition, which gave us
immunity from suspicion that we had a secret to keep. And I made it my
business, gentlemen, to study the practical engineering problem.
“I had long ago chosen the spot for the dam; a point in the canyon where the
granite cliffs rise highest. I drew charts--” Peter glanced toward Rawley, and
his eyes twinkled “--of a system of underground workings which, when filled
with black powder augmented by light charges of dynamite, would break the
granite walls and heave them into the river. I worked upon the principle that
it would be better to use too much than not enough, and for fifteen
years--yes, for longer than that--I have been buying and storing black powder.
To-day, gentlemen, I have in place explosives which, with hush money that I
was compelled to pay for the secret, have cost approximately one hundred
thousand dollars. _In place!_ Wired, tamped with heavy cement, ready to go.
_Ready to shoot!_”
He looked from face to face, smiling while he waited for the information to
sink in. He saw certain newspaper men poise pencils before they set down the
sum, then scribble furiously.