A high-keyed snarl brought the two sharply facing the crag. Bearing down upon them with his fists flailing the air in a kind of impotent fury came old Jess Cramer, like a vulture fighting for his feast. Rawley had seen the old man at a short distance, but he had never before stood face to face with him. He would cheerfully have missed the meeting now. Old Jess craned his long neck toward him, his bleak, blue-gray eyes venomous. But it was Peter to whom he spoke—screamed, rather.
“Told ye it’d come to this, didn’t I? You would take ’em in and pet ’em up, and treat ’em better’n you do your own kin! Think so much of ’em you had to go and show ’em what we’re doing and why! Reckon when we touch ’er off and git the damned river penned back, you’ll beg ’em on your knees to go down and claw out gold till they wear their fingers to the bone!
“What have I slaved for and worked for and hoarded for, all these years? To let you give away the gold when we git it? Is this the kind uh thing I raised ye for? Take in the first stranger that comes snoopin’ around the place, and bring him sight-seein’ up here to our dam! You—!”
Rawley had thought the miners he sometimes worked among could curse, but he stood agape before the blistering vituperations of this gray-bearded old man. He looked at Peter, wondering how any man with the King blood could have endured his fancied father’s vile tongue all these years. Peter stood with a face of iron, his eyes terribly blue and hard, and listened impersonally to the frenzied outburst.
“That’s enough, now. Shut up and listen to me!”
It was like snapping a whip in the face of a roaring lion. Old Jess had stopped merely to gasp fresh air into his lungs so that he could go on. He glared at Peter, weakened and cringed. The fire that had flared in his eyes died as suddenly. He looked toward the river, looked at Rawley and his glance slid away from the two of them.
“What’d yuh want to go and let it all out to him for?” he half whimpered. “Now he’ll want a share—and there might not be more ’n five or six millions in the hull damned river bed! And you know ’s well as I do, Peter, that our dam is liable as not to go out, next high water. We won’t have many months to work in, mebby. I—I want a word with yuh, Peter. I—I want a word with yuh, that’s all. I guess mebby you know what you’re up to, but—”
“Shut up!” Peter snapped the verbal whip again. His eyes turned briefly toward Rawley. “What’s been let out, you did yourself, dad.” (Rawley thought that Peter hesitated over the last word.) “I have never breathed one word of our plan. Slave? What have I been slaving for, all these years? Do you think I have not endured everything but dishonor, for the sake of the millions we plan to get? And Nevada—what about her? Hasn’t she done the work of a man and slaved over her studies, so that she could help, too? It’s you, letting go your tongue and raving like a fool, that has betrayed the secret. You’ve done it. This man didn’t know or suspect a thing, till you let it out, accusing me of telling!”
The old man looked uneasily from one to the other. Peter stared unrelentingly at him. Rawley, stealing a glance at his face, thought that he knew now the kind of man his Grandfather King had been in his old, fighting days.
“Now, he’ll have to know.” Peter’s voice relaxed the tension. It was as if he had suddenly determined to accept the situation and make the best of it,—and the most. “He can be trusted, I think. He’ll have to be trusted, after your blathering.”
Old Jess turned his predatory eyes on Rawley, and his beard moved to a sinister smile beneath.
“You’re a big man, Peter—and it ain’t but a few steps to the edge!” He tilted his head backwards toward the river. There was no possibility of mistaking his meaning. But he added a sentence to clinch it: “She never gives up a body—the Colorado don’t!”
Peter’s grin was a withering thing to face. Again the old man cringed, and his eyes shifted like a cornered rat.
“I’ll remember that, if you open your mouth again. I’m strong—and the river never gives up a dead man. You keep that in mind, will you?” Peter insisted ominously.
“He shan’t have none of my share,” Old Jess shrilled, his voice cracking with anger and fear. “It was my idee, before you was born, Peter. You shan’t rob me in my old age—you shan’t, now! I’ll be the first one to pick up the gold—that’s been understood, since you was big enough to talk. An’ he better not let it out to anybody! I’ll kill him if he does—you mark me, Peter! I’ll kill any man that stands in my road to them millions I been watching over all these long years—scrabbling the gold together, ounce by ounce, till I’ve got enough to do it! A million dollars—but I’ll reap a thousand dollars for one. You mark what I say; I’ll kill anybody that tries to horn in—It’s mine, every bit of it!”
“In that case,” said Peter contemptuously, “you can go ahead and get it.”
“All but your share’s mine, Peter. Yours and Young Jess’ and Nevada’s. This feller better not think—”
“He only thinks you’re a fool,” Peter told him harshly. “Stay and watch your gold, then. It might float off!” He motioned with his head toward home, and Rawley obeyed the signal and started ahead of him down the trail, wondering a good deal over the encounter.
“Looks like I’m driving you off,” Peter remarked after a bit. “But I’m merely bringing up the rear. Old Jess is not all there. I’ll tell you all about it, now he’s told so much. I had half a mind to, anyway, if I could get him and Young Jess to agree. You’re a mining engineer. I kind of wanted your opinion and advice. It is out of your line, probably; but technical training helps. I never had any, myself. Old Jess is a slave driver, all right. And now he’s half crazy, and I wouldn’t want to go off and leave him with the women. If a stranger happened along and roused his suspicion, there’s no prophesying what might happen.”
“It sounds pretty wild, to me, all his talk,” Rawley returned after a minute. “I can easily believe the old man’s crazy. I can’t seem to get any sense out of it; millions of gold—and all that. Uncle Peter, were you just stringing him along—because he’s crazy?”
Peter laughed queerly. “I can’t wonder at your thinking so,” he said. “Sit down here, and I’ll tell you the straight of it.”
It was the flat rock which they had reached. The shouts of the children, the barking of the dogs and the crying of the baby came to them in one indistinguishable chorus from across the small flat. In the deepening dusk they would not be noticed and interrupted.
“Away back, before I was born,” Peter began, “Jess had mining claims here. Placer, and he was doing pretty well at it, I imagine. He bached here beside the river, and an idea came to him one day that has stuck to him like a burr ever since. That idea, boy, has ruled this bunch, has driven us like dogs. It’s a big one—the only big idea he ever had, so far as I know.
“Old Jess got to thinking how much gold must lie at the bottom of the river, washed down through all the centuries of time, through Colorado, even through Wyoming, where its main tributaries rise. When you think of it, the thing gets hold of you. And the more you think, the stronger it holds. He thought how tremendously rich and powerful he’d be if he could just get at that gold out there. But you see the old river; she holds what she’s got. And in flood time—
“Well, it wasn’t long before he began to figure out how he could get at that gold. And he got the idea of throwing a dam across the canyon here, and backing up the water. I don’t think he ever told any one, but he kind of quizzed around and decided finally that it would cost a lot of money. A million dollars, we made it at a rough guess. So he began to save his gold, instead of gambling and carousing with it down in El Dorado and at the fort. For that matter, I believe the old man always was a grasping, avaricious individual. It’s his nature—I’ve seen it demonstrated all my life.
“We’re all living fairly decently now, son. But until I was old enough to assert myself a bit, he almost starved us, he was so keen on saving that million. Even now I have to have a run-in with him, every so often, about the money that goes for living expenses. But he can afford it. He’s got his million, and then some.”
“What?”
“He’s been saving every grain he could scrape together, for fifty years, Rawley. And it’s a good claim—group of claims, rather. No one in the country has ever dreamed that we’ve done more than scratch a living here. Some day, when your arm is well, I’ll show you. Yes, he has his million.
“For a long time, now—several years—we’ve been getting ready for the dam. That tunnel you saw is part of the work. When you’re better, I’d like to take you through our workings and see what we’ve done and what we expect to do. Maybe you can give us some advice. We’ve had to use our own wits, because we can’t consult with experts, in the very nature of things. We are not,” he said cynically, “the only vultures in the world. The country would be black with them. And when all’s said and done, we have first right. Why, look at El Dorado! Men sat down there and cursed their luck—and looked straight at the richest gold mine in the world! This canyon was here, everything was here, ready for them to go to work and get the gold just as we are going to do. But nobody thought of it. Sheep—that’s what men are. Not one in a thousand does any thinking outside the beaten path. Nobody had dammed the river to get the gold; they had no precedent to follow—no bell wether to show them the way. So nobody ever thought of the possibility of doing it. Old Jess, I must say, shot up head and shoulders above the ruck when he conceived the idea. His avariciousness and dwelling on that one thought all these years have given him a mental twist. He’d kill any man who seemed to be standing in his way. He’s gone too far now—he has lived with that air castle too long. But my God, think what a castle he’s built!” Peter’s voice was vibrant with emotion. Here, as with Old Jess, was the dream of a lifetime revealed.
“Yes—it’s a tremendous scheme,” Rawley admitted guardedly. “I’m afraid it won’t work, Uncle Peter. It doesn’t, somehow, seem feasible.”
“Why not?” Peter’s voice challenged him. “Merely because you hadn’t thought of its feasibility. Nobody thought of it. Why, you’re like all the rest, son. You can’t think constructively. You must have a precedent to hang onto with one hand, before you think out into the ocean of unguessed achievements. Fifty years ago, they would have shut you up in an asylum if you had declared it possible to telegraph without wires. How was the first telephone hooted? And history tells us that a large faction of religious people declared that anesthetics were contrary to the will of God, who meant that men should suffer.
“When I show you the canyon, back here, and explain to you how we mean to do it, you’ll have to admit the simplicity of the thing. And that’s it! The very simplicity of it has prevented men from grasping it.” He laughed scornfully. “What a to-do about building a dam they make! They must have government backing, and political wirepulling, and they must fiddle around for years with hundreds of men building a dam up from bedrock, with cement and stone! Wait until I show you what we mean to do! Simplest thing in the world—since we don’t want canals for irrigation and only want to get at the river below. Even if we did want to divert the water, instead of restraining it only, we could build our canals just the same, and at our leisure.
“But it’s all desert, above and below. Already I’ve bought any little rancher out, that might have his land flooded when we build our dam.” Peter laughed again triumphantly. “I’ll arrange to get possession before we’re ready to back up the water—”
“Will the government allow that?” Rawley’s tone was troubled. So great a hold had Peter’s argument taken upon him that he found himself fearing that the government might object.
Peter gave a contemptuous snort. “Give us a chance to rake the gold out of the river bed below here, and we can pay whatever fine or indemnity the government may see fit to levy,” he retorted. “But why should it object? We’ll be saving the folks away down below here a lot of trouble and loss from high water. They’ve been howling for flood control ever since the Imperial Valley began to be settled. The dams they’ve got don’t answer the problem. Sooner or later, the government, or somebody, will have to put a dam in the river, up this way. They will be mighty grateful, I should say, if we do it at our own expense while they’re talking about it.
“Then, if they want to, they can pay us for our trouble and go ahead and build their canals, or power plants, or whatever they want. All we want is the gold that has been washed down during a few thousand years.” He lifted his arm and pointed down to where the river could dimly be seen moiling and grumbling over its rocky bed.
“You see how rocky it is? Figure for yourself what a perfect trap for gold every bowlder makes! And there is gold! You don’t deny that, do you?”
“Why, no. I can’t deny the very probable presence of gold in considerable quantity.” This being rather in the nature of a professional question, Rawley instinctively leaned toward conservatism in his reply.
“Well, that’s our object. We feel it’s going to be worth the expense of building the dam. Other people may possibly want to make use of our dam, when they see it. In that case, we should be able to get back at least what money we are going to put into it. We’ll know, to a dollar. Nevada has got the education and training the rest of us lack and can tell us at a minute’s notice just what the work is costing us. That’s her job. And Old Jess has signed a contract with us three. The idea was his in the first place, and the claims that produced the gold to do the work with are his—most of them. He gets half of all the gold we take out. We repay, out of our share, one-half the expense of building the dam, and the three of us share equally in the rest. In other words—I suppose I’ve put it clumsily—he takes half the net proceeds, we divide the other half. And since we inherit, at his death, we are all satisfied.” He stood up and smiled down at Rawley in the half darkness of early night.
“So you see, son, why I won’t need any of that gold you and the Injun are looking for. I expect to be pretty well fixed myself, before so very long.”