“I should like to say just here, if I may, that many of the astonishing facts as Mr. Cramer has placed them before you I can vouch for from my own personal knowledge.” Rawley was on his feet, turned toward Peter’s audience. “Just before the war, I was permitted to look over the work on the Cramer Dam”—privately, Rawley liked the way Uncle Peter had dignified the dam by giving it a name which would hereafter identify it to the public—“which at that time was uncompleted. I did not approve of their project, but I will say that I was personally in sympathy with it.
“In considering the facts which Mr. Cramer has presented to you, I am taking the liberty of asking you to bear in mind that I am willing to vouch for their authenticity. And in explanation of my silence on the subject, I will say that I went to the Cramers and urged them to abandon their project, since it would interfere with the reclamation plans of the government. I did not know, until he stated their position in the matter just now, what stand they meant to take.”
He sat down, and his chief nodded approvingly. It was perfectly apparent to Peter that his cause would be none the worse for Rawley’s championship. He glowed to see how friendly they all were with Rawley. Also, it surprised his unsophisticated soul to observe the ease and familiarity with which these men comported themselves. Headliners in the newspapers, every one of them save the reporters themselves, he had half expected them to retain their platform manners in private. They were just men, after all, he decided, and turned to answer the questions of a great man as easily as he would have answered Rawley.
The committee of entertainment waited a bit for their guests of honor, that night. From the manner in which the talk slid into other and more accustomed channels the moment others entered the car, Peter gathered that Las Vegas would continue for a time in ignorance of what had been going on under its nose for so long. It tickled him to picture the amazement and incredulity when the Commission should make its announcement. Or perhaps Las Vegas would read it in the city papers first. They would be slow to believe that the obscure family of Cramers could put over a thing like that and keep it under cover all these years.
At the banquet in the town hall, Peter listened to Rawley’s dazed enthusiasm calmly while he watched the crowd. This was the first banquet which Peter had ever attended—a man confessing to fifty-four years and quoting Socrates!—and he was interested. But Rawley would not let him enjoy himself as he would like; instead, he must tell why and why and why; a tiresome job for Peter.
“Oh, I didn’t lack confidence, boy. I wanted your opinion without any influence from me. If I’d told you all I knew, that wouldn’t have helped me any. I wanted to know what you knew about it. Then I compared your ideas with mine.
“No, Jess and the old man don’t know what I’m up to. I talked to them, some, after you left. But they can’t see beyond the gold in the river. They’ll be mad, I expect. But we couldn’t go on the way we planned. You can’t fight the government, boy. The old Eagle is a real scrapper.
“Yes, Nevada knows I intended to fly a white flag. She’s willing. She sees, as I do, that you were right—”
Peter’s neighbor on the other side claimed him then; an engineer who wanted further details of just how Peter had planned to move a mountain and cast it into the river. Two men across the table left off eating and their talk to lean forward and listen, and the man next Rawley was frankly stretching his hearing across and catching as much of Peter’s elucidation as he could. So Rawley was obliged to content himself with his pride in Uncle Peter, who was plainly making an extremely favorable impression on certain governors and high officials. And it amused him secretly to observe Peter’s complete unconcern over his growing popularity and his childlike interest in the commonplace incidents of the banquet.
An ambitious reporter slipped up behind Rawley and asked him for the love of Mike to arrange an interview with Cramer. His tone was imploring.
“New dope—and oh, boy, it’s a hummer!” he confided in Rawley’s ear. “You know we pencil pushers are just about goofy, trying to get a fresh punch into this thing. This man, Cramer, is worth a million dollars to the project, just for the publicity there is in him. A dam under our noses—oh, boy!”
“He won’t talk,” Rawley discouraged him. “Taciturn is the word that describes him.”
“Taciturn? With that talk he put over this evening? I’ve got every word of it—it’s priceless. Arabian Nights ain’t in it. And believe me, King, it’s going on the wires complete, the minute we get the word to release it.”
“Let’s see,” Rawley mused. “You’re an A. P. man, aren’t you? Well, I’ll try and run Peter into a corner for you—but I won’t promise he’ll give you anything.”
“You, then! King, you’re wise—I can see it in your left eyebrow. You’ve got some ripping dope on this, and I know it. Say, if you’ll—”
The toastmaster had risen and was rapping a spoon against his plate. The ambitious scribe and the human beehive subsided, but Rawley observed that the reporter had pulled up a chair and was preparing to camp at his elbow and Peter’s. Well, why not? he thought headily. A man like Peter could go far in the world, give him a chance. And this might be the chance. A desert man who spoke calmly of budgeting a million dollars, the savings of a lifetime for three men, to spend in secret upon a project over which the whole nation was arguing, and who could make a talk like that the first time he ever faced great men was, to say the least, unusual.
He glanced sidelong at Peter, who had straightened and folded his arms, gravely prepared to give his full attention to the speakers. There would be no word out of him now, Rawley knew. As well expect a devout old lady to divulge her recipe for piccalilli in church. He turned his head and whispered behind his hand to the reporter:
“Stick around. I’ll do what I can.”
The reporter patted his shoulder gratefully, and Rawley came to attention, stifling a yawn. It was so like every other banquet, and the speeches were so like all the other speeches on the same subject! He listened with the same bored loyalty with which the workers in the Liberty Loan drives and all the other drives toiled through their patriotic programme night after night, day after day. It did not lessen their patriotism that the workers sometimes wearied of the same old arguments, the stereotyped appeals to the patriotism of the public. He wished that Peter might rise and say what he had said to the Commission, a couple of hours ago. That would open their eyes!
However, the speeches which were so old to the visiting great ones were not old to Las Vegas, and they were not old to Peter. There was the usual appeal for sympathy with the project under the direct supervision of the government, to which Peter listened closely, his head turned a bit sidewise so that he would not miss a word of it. The reporter was quietly sketching his profile on a small pad, but Peter never guessed that.
A tall, lean man from California was speaking. He was the fourth or fifth on the programme, and the audience was restive under his voice, wanting to hear from the greatest of the great men there. The greatest of the great men was listening courteously with half his mind, while the other half was divided between an aching desire to crawl into his berth and forget the whole darned thing for a few hours, and recasting a certain story which might be used with effect at the beginning of his talk,—unless Las Vegas was too familiar with it. His colleagues knew the thing backward; but then, when one has traveled much with a certain group, speaking valiantly at every stop in behalf of one’s cause, one’s colleagues are going to be bored anyway when one starts speaking, so that their desires are never considered. The same old stuff is always new,—provided one has always a new audience before one.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the speaker was crying enthusiastically, “you can’t get away from the fact that progress is ever marching onward. The hand of Opportunity is lifted, knocking at your door! Whether you open or not—upon that rests your future. You can’t get away from it. One day (and that day is not far distant, ladies and gentlemen), you will awake to find yourselves in the midst of great, growing industries. The mighty river at your very door, ladies and gentlemen, will be at work for the Nation! The full measure of her might, ladies and gentlemen, will be at your service! Can such a stupendous thing as that, ladies and gentlemen, be placed in the hands of private interests? I say, no!” (The tall, lean man did not say it, he thundered the words.) “I say, no man, no group of individuals, can do a thing like that! No man—”
A queer, sickening lurch of the building, forward and back, a shattering of windows drowned his voice completely. You know how it is when an earthquake intrudes upon your little thoughts, your infinitesimal activities. You suddenly know that you are nothing at all. Your very soul sickens before a mightier than thou. So it was at the banquet.
The tall, lean man’s plate leaped at him, and a custardy dessert which he had not touched,—on account of dyspepsia—was deposited on his clothing in splotches. He started for the door, enraged because every one else was also starting for the door.
Came a terrific, booming roar like the rolling up of the heavens into a scroll,—done carelessly and in haste. Women shrieked. Men shouted unintelligibly under the impression that they were doing something to quell the panic.
Peter, stunned for a minute, jumped upon the table, one heel crunching a dish of salted almonds devastatingly. His great voice boomed above the tumult and stilled it, while each person looked to see what and why he was speaking.
“Ladies and gentlemen, that’s all. There won’t be any more. Folks, like it or not, you’ve got a dam in the Colorado River! She’s dammed, right this minute. It’s an accident, a slip-up in the plans, but—she’s there. You just heard a chunk of Black Canyon go into the river. The man that made the last speech said it couldn’t be done. It is done. Now, the government will have to do whatever else is to be done. Ladies and gentlemen, you have just heard the Cramer Dam go in!”
That stopped the panic automatically. Men and women waited to hear more. They were accustomed to blasting, if that were all. They accepted Peter’s statement that this was all of it, though the women were still white, still inclined to clutch their husbands and sweethearts and wonder if they were going to faint. Las Vegas was dazed. The Colorado Commission was collectively looking at Peter through narrowed lids.
Peter glanced down into the measuring, weighing eyes of the greatest man present. He flushed at what he read there, and he answered the look.
“It’s my fault,” he said simply. “I ought to have tied ’em up, or brought ’em with me. I should have placed a guard over that dam. I did hide the battery—but they must have found it.”
At a sudden thought he threw out both hands in the gesture with which a strong man meets the inevitable.
“Gentlemen,” he cried, and his voice was a challenge. “Fate has decreed that the thing should go through! I had no knowledge of this, but—” his eyes darkened and twinkled, the endearing King smile softened his face suddenly “—gentlemen, if you will stop over a day, I should like to show you the Cramer Dam, completed!”
He looked at the great engineer who had questioned him during dinner.
“You said it couldn’t be done! I’m not a gambling man, Mr. Brown, but I’ll bet you fifty thousand dollars against fifty cents, that she’s there!”
The man he challenged looked up at him. Slowly, as his thought crystallized, the blood drained out of the engineer’s face, leaving it dead white. He turned to his chief, but his voice went to the farthest corner of the hall.
“My God! What if she holds a while! Warn Needles, Yuma—send out a general warning below! Tell the people to hunt the highest points they can reach! Gentlemen, if that damned Cramer Dam holds for forty-eight hours, there’ll be the greatest disaster in the history of the West!”
The A. P. man leaped chairs, bowled over men on his way to the door. After him came the banqueters in a senseless rush.