On the street men were guessing wild. An explosion had taken place,—every one knew that. The majority guessed that the powder magazine at Searchlight had blown up; though as a matter of fact they were not certain that Searchlight had a powder magazine.
The more impulsive were already tearing down the road in automobiles, without any very definite notion of where they were headed for. As is customary in such cases, every man who had a tongue had also an opinion which he was eager to impart to somebody, and was unable to find any one who would listen to him.
Into this confusion the A. P. man burst like a rocket shot off accidentally. He was on his way to the telegraph office on the second floor of the depot, and he meant to arrive there ahead of the others so that he could be sure of a clear wire to cover the story. Besides, he had been impressed with the need of haste in warning people below. Yet he found time to shout the news to a group of men as he passed them.
“Colorado’s dammed!” he cried, and did not wait to explain how it should be spelled. Wherefore Las Vegas guessed harder than ever until men less hurried arrived from the banquet hall and told just what had happened. Immediately thereafter, every man who owned a car cranked up and got going in the direction of Black Canyon. The Governor of the State stayed a while to give certain orders and to make sure that they would be promptly obeyed.
Peter laid a detaining hand upon the arm of a shrewd young lawyer whom he knew slightly, and who had studied him intently while Peter explained to the banqueters the commotion. The young lawyer instinctively drew aside from the throng, to a clear space where confidences might be indulged in. But Peter was brief.
“Here’s a check. It’s good for ten thousand. You advertise that people with smashed windows and so on can have the damage made good. Get a contractor, have him investigate all complaints, and then fix things up. I’ll see you in a day or so. I’m going to the river to see what’s happened. You attend to the damages here.”
He did not wait until the lawyer consented to accept the job, but left him standing there, the check in his hands, an unlighted cigar in his mouth. Peter was just climbing into the big car that drew up to the curb for him, when the A. P. man—his name was Jerry Newton, by the way—sprinted a half-block and landed on the running board.
“Sent out a general alarm,” he puffed, “and got the news to headquarters. Cramer’s speech—wrote it during the feed. Had a hunch I might have to make it snappy. Needles and Yuma will get word to the ranchers—if the big splash holds off a couple of hours they think they can reach everybody, practically. Anybody got a cigar? Never had time to eat a bite.”
“You’re out of luck, then,” Peter informed him. “No chance till breakfast, now.”
Rawley swung round upon them from the front seat, where he was to pilot the driver. His voice was strained and unnatural.
“The—folks would know enough to get out of danger, wouldn’t they, Uncle Peter?”
“They would,” Peter said grimly, “if they had any warning.”
“You don’t think it was an accident, surely!” As Rawley spoke, others leaned to listen for Peter’s reply.
“I know I found a doctor,—he’s going to follow at our tail light. I hid the battery where Jess and the old man couldn’t find it. The rest we’ll know when we get there.” Peter’s exultation had left him completely. He sat back in a corner of the wide seat and said no more. And by that, Rawley knew that Peter was worried.
The reporter was saying that Needles had reported every window in town broken by the concussion.
“Of course they counted, in the five minutes they must have had before you wired,” Rawley exclaimed irritably. If Peter was worried over the folks in the basin, then Rawley knew that there was cause. He told the driver to “hit ’er up, the road’s good”, and thereby gained some minutes and gave some great men a jolting.
They left the road to Black Canyon and went on to Nelson. They could drive to the river that way, and one glance would tell them whether the dam was holding. That was important. The Governor of the State having called for help, it was necessary to see first of all what the river was doing below the dam,—if dam there were.
Several cars fell in behind them, no doubt cognizant of the fact that the Governor, Peter and the great engineer were in the first automobile, and that they knew where they were going. So it was a swift procession that swung up over the summit and down into El Dorado Canyon.
The September moon was lingering upon a mountain top, loath to withdraw its gaze from the crippled river he had watched over all these ages long. Peter was first out of the car, which, for reasons readily apprehended, he had stopped well up the wash. If the dam was holding so long, there would be a great, engulfing wave when it broke, and the longer the dam held, the greater the flood.
“The river’s high for this time of year, on account of the storms in the mountains,” the chief engineer of the party informed them superfluously, since the occurrence was sufficiently unusual to have excited comment before now. “She’s running close to fifty thousand second feet,—or was, when we left Needles yesterday.” He turned to Peter with courteous criticism; not for him was it to censure or judge, but he ventured a remark nevertheless which betrayed his own personal belief.
“You should have waited until the edge of winter before you let that charge loose. This is an unusual year, I grant; but with your knowledge of the river, you must know the danger of attempting to dam it while there is so great a discharge.”
The group hurried its pace to listen, but Peter, in the lead, seemed wholly unconscious of criticism and listeners alike. He was absorbed by his own thoughts, his own fears.
“It was madness to do it now, in any case,” he agreed simply. “For years we’ve talked of shooting it during September, when the water begins to lower definitely for the winter months. That would give us the longest possible time for strengthening the dam. If this wasn’t a sheer accident, it was done by a madman,—the vulture who feared the Eagle would snatch away his feast. I know of no better simile. Gentlemen, I fear you will have to cope with a madman who ran amuck when he discovered my absence and feared that I would betray the whole scheme to the government. He could see nothing but disaster in that. If he deliberately blew up the dam, it was with a crazy notion of forestalling the government. I don’t know; I hid the battery.”
He was leading them up on the high bank on the north side of the wash by a narrow trail he knew. Even in his haste he remembered that the lives of great men must not be placed in danger, and he had not needed the reminder of the engineer that it was a risky proceeding, blowing in the dam at the height of this sporadic high water. Not so high as to overflow its banks, it is true, but with not too wide a margin of safety, either.
No man there knew better than Peter what an unexpected breakage would do, no man there felt more keenly the elements of disaster, once his first exultation over their disbelief had passed; a flare of triumph over the wise ones. Peter had been on that river just yesterday. His launch was still at Needles, where he had left it to take the train for Barstow. He had arrived in Las Vegas on the train which brought the private car of the Commission. He had planned it so, to be sure of seeing them, and also to conceal his errand from the two Cramers, whose rage would not have stopped at murder, it is likely, had they known what was in his mind.
When Peter had embarked in his launch, the river was running forty-three thousand second feet. He had looked at the gauge. He had not known how the government gauge had read at Needles when his train left there, but he did not doubt the word of the engineer. There had been unusual, heavy storms in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah. An edge of it had swept his own State. To attempt to dam that sweeping flood was, as he had named it, madness.
Once up the bank they walked rapidly. Rawley, glancing back, saw other automobiles stop behind their car, and men trailing after them up the bank. It was a somewhat circuitous route; he wondered if his party would follow Peter so patiently if they knew that they could have driven to the water’s edge. They were walking half a mile when they might have ridden. But Peter was taking no risk.
They reached the high bank of the river just as the moon slipped—like the face of a boy who has been peering over a stone wall and who has lost his footing—dropped suddenly out of sight, and left the river dark, the far hills gilded tantalizingly with its white light. The party halted.
“She’s dammed,” Peter said tersely.
“I can hear it running,” some one objected.
“I know every sound of this river,” said Peter impatiently. “I’ve listened to it all my life. You hear a seepage fighting the rocks in the channel. It’s no bigger than a trout stream now. This way, gentlemen.”
In the blackness before dawn, made blacker to them by the sudden desertion of the moon, Peter struck into the burro trail Rawley knew so well.
The familiar path brought a sharp longing for Nevada, whom he had left in anger some months before. Of course she had not been plotting with Young Jess against him! Once his hurt pride let him think clearly, Rawley knew that she had been trying to save him. She would naturally suppose that they had gone straight toward the canyon, and she was encouraging Jess to waste time looking among the rocks, never dreaming that they were there. Many a time Rawley cursed the King temper for letting him taunt her with her Indian blood. He had wanted to hurt. His instinct had led him to the words that would sting sharpest, even though she believed him as much Indian as herself.
Men before him and behind were talking—short-breathed over the pace Peter was unconsciously setting them—of the dam, its probable strength and the danger of a disastrous flood if it held a while and then failed to hold. Rawley walked among them, thinking of Nevada, wondering if she would ever forgive him for what he had said to her. Strangely enough, of Young Jess’s hate and promised revenge he did not think at all. Nevada’s resentment, her forgiveness,—these were the things that mattered. The dam was an incident, a job for others to handle. Rawley’s whole thought was of persuading a girl to forget a dozen words which he had spoken in blind fury.
Then, looking across at the piled hills beyond the river (the hills of Arizona), the white radiance faded, chilled, merged into the crepuscule that threatened to deepen again to darkness. The moon was retreating before the coming of the sun.
The twilight brightened, pulled lavender and rose from the dawn and spread over the hills a radiant, opal-tinted veil. The great men stopped and faced the dawn, and forgot the problems set by the great Teacher for human minds to solve, and, in the solving, grow to greater things. The Governor removed his hat and stood, head bared, waiting for the coming of the sun. The heralds flung banners of royal purple and gold. The hills laid aside the thin veil of enchantment and spread a soft carpet of gray and brown.
The King appeared, a ruddy disk with broad bars of purple cloud before his face. The heavens blazed with the glory of a new day. Somewhere behind them, in hidden mesquite bush, a mocking bird began singing reverently its morning aria.
Eyes left the savage wonder of the wilderness greeting the dawn and dropped to the crippled Colorado.
In a dark canyon drab bars of silt stretched like gigantic crocodiles upon the river’s bed, with the shiny humps of moss-slimed bowlders in between. Rosy pools of still water reflected the barbaric dawn clouds above. Ridges of water-worn gravel. A thin swift current was fighting the huge rocks in the channel with a great splutter and turmoil of spray flung up. Smaller streams were worming impatiently aslant the river bed to join the stream fighting so valiantly in the channel.
Already the main current was yielding, choked by the neighbor mountain that had suddenly assailed it from above. Against the rocks the sun painted inexorably the mark of its surrender.
Peter looked down upon the river bed and saw his splendid dream come true. For a moment his exultation returned. He looked at the Governor.
“I believe, sir, that the Cramer Dam is a complete success!” A ringing note of pride was in his voice.