The month of inaction which followed fretted Johnny Buffalo nearly as much as the companionship of the squaws had done. In his boyhood he had been trained to serve his sergeant. For fifty years that service had been uninterrupted by ill health or accident. It irked him now to lie idle and watch Rawley burn his fingers on the handle of the frying pan, or wash the dishes from which Johnny Buffalo had been fed.
The long days when Rawley was away with Peter were lonesome. There was nothing to do but to seek sedulously after comfort, which is so rare a thing in a camp beside the Colorado in summer that every little whiff of cool breeze is prized, every little change in the monotonous diet makes an impromptu banquet. Sometimes Nevada walked down to camp with things she herself had cooked; but Johnny Buffalo had taken care to insult Gladys and Anita so definitely that they refused to come near him.
“I am well enough now to walk,” he announced one evening, when he had insisted upon cooking the supper. “To-day I climbed to the top of that hill. In a sack on my shoulder I carried a rock that weighed twenty-five pounds. I am well. We can go now and find the gold.”
“You packed a rock up that hill?” Rawley laid his hands on his hips and squinted at the hill indicated. “You ought to get sun-struck for that. But if you think you’re up to it, we can hit the trail to the mountain about day after to-morrow. I’ll have to drive up to Nelson to-morrow to get more grub and the mail. You might borrow the burros from Peter and meet me at the mouth of the canyon. That will save time and give you a chance to try out your shoulder.”
Johnny Buffalo actually grinned and stepped more briskly than was his normal gait, as if he would prove himself as spry as any young man of twenty-six.
Thus for ten days they wandered through rocky gorges, and climbed the steep 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.