CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
THE EAGLE’S WING

Nevada was lying on the bed in Anita’s shack, trying to convince Rawley that the doctor knew what he was talking about. The doctor had declared that Nevada’s injuries were mostly superficial bruises and the nervous shock of sitting cramped in one position for hours, expecting every moment to be crushed to death. Nevada had seemed rather crestfallen when Rawley told her how simple a matter it had been to free her from the beam.

“The whole thing caught me unawares just when I had stopped a minute to rest,” she explained defensively. “I think I was half asleep when it happened, and of course my lamp was smashed too flat even to think of exploding. It was black dark, and I suppose it was natural to imagine that I was being crushed when I was merely held fast. I did not try to move. I was afraid the whole thing would come down on me. Of course, I should have thought of the cushions,—”

“You’d be a wonder if you had; even more of a wonder than you are.” Rawley took her hand in both of his and patted it, in a sublime disregard of the circumstances of his last visit to the basin. “I believe in omens, Nevada. Fate gave me a splendid one when I found you.” Rawley smiled at her mysteriously, his eyes twinkling.

“In the general wreck, my old pipe had landed from some cranny right on the desk beside you. You can’t make me believe that Fate didn’t mean something by that! The way I interpret it—”

“A freak accident,” interrupted Nevada, her cheeks showing alarming symptoms of a sudden attack of fever. “That old pipe! You didn’t take it, and I must have tucked it up somewhere until you came again. I suppose it rattled down.”

Rawley’s eyes had never been so blue. They were like looking down upon a sunlit sea. He dipped his fingers into the pocket of Nevada’s blouse and produced the pipe, turning it tenderly in his hands.

“God bless the day I learned to smoke!” he murmured, his eyes still dancing. “It may have rattled down—but I know it’s a good omen. It means—”

“Yes?” Nevada’s big eyes were upon his face. A faint tremor was in her lips, as if laughter and tears were fighting for the mastery.

“The omen says that you and I are going to get married within a week. Well within a week.” He was studying the pipe as a mystic studies the crystal. “It tells me that the hatchet is forever buried. This is the pipe of peace, and it passed from me to you. That means that you and I go through life together. Our trails never separate. It means—”

“Oh, hush!” Nevada cried sharply and struck at the pipe in his hand. “Our trails can’t lie together. We can’t marry, ever—ever! You know that as well as I do. We’re cousins.” She turned her face to the wall.

Rawley did not speak. He looked up from the pipe, straight into the eyes of Anita, sitting in a corner like a bronze Buddha disguised as a squaw.

Anita met his look with stolid obstinacy, never blinking, never a quiver in her face.

Rawley’s jaw squared a little as he continued to look at her. His body swayed forward, his eyes boring into her very soul. So had King, of the Mounted, looked when he demanded that Anita should choose between himself and Jess Cramer. Rawley did not know why he stared at her so. He only knew that the truth was there, hidden behind those unreadable eyes. He knew that the truth would give him Nevada the moment that truth was spoken. No lips but Anita’s might speak that truth; other lips were sworn to silence.

The old squaw whimpered under her breath. Her eyes flickered and could no longer look defiance into those terrible, commanding blue eyes,—the eyes of King, of the Mounted. Her hand went up to shield her face from the stare of them. She stirred uneasily in her chair. She spread her fingers, peering fearfully between them. The terrible blue eyes looked at her still. Slowly, painfully, scarce knowing that she did so, Anita pulled herself up from the chair and went forward as one goes to the bar of justice.

As a flame shoots up suddenly from dying embers, so did a flame dart out from the ashes of her youth. The stooped, gross old body straightened. Anita’s head went back. Her eyes glowed with a little of their old fire. Her voice rang clear, proud with the pride of ancestry unknown.

“Nevada,” she cried imperiously and spoke rapidly in Indian. “It is not true that you are his cousin. He is the grandson of a man I loved in my youth. He is the grandson of Sergeant George King, who was the father of Peter. I have been ashamed that you should know the truth. Now I am not ashamed, for I know that stolen love is more noble than a lie. The father of Peter, him I loved. He was a soldier and he went away. He promised to return in one month. In three months he had not come, nor sent me word. I was angry and I let the man he hated think that I loved him and not my soldier man. Then I went away, for my heart was sad. I would not follow my soldier man. I was proud. After a long time—after more than a year had passed I returned to El Dorado and I brought my child, who was Peter. I sought for news of my soldier, but there was none. He had not come, he had not sent me word. So I went to the man I hated. I told him that Peter was his son, which was a lie. I was very proud. I thought that some day my soldier would return and would see how I laughed at him and loved another. But I did not love. And Peter was not the son of the man my soldier hated. Now the young man comes and loves, and I am old. Soon I go to my soldier man. It is not right that others should have sorrow because of my lie.

“So now I speak what is true. I say that this young man is not of your blood. He is the grandson of the father of Peter, and Peter is his uncle. You are not his cousin. Now you will be his wife, and you will hate Anita for the sin of her youth.”

Nevada lay listening, gazing fixedly at her grandmother. She caught the gnarled old hand of Anita in both her own. She fondled it, kissed it, laughed softly with tears in her laughter.

“You will not hate Anita?” Tears spilled over the fat lids and trickled down the cheeks of the old squaw.

Whatever Nevada said, she spoke in Indian, stealing a shy glance now and then at Rawley. But her voice crooned caresses. Now and then she kissed the old hand she held in both her own.

Anita tucked in her bangs, drew two fingers across her cheeks to dry her tears and smiled. She turned heavily toward Rawley.

“My girl say, loves you more—I love your grandfadder. My girl make you good wife.”

“Hush, Grandmother! He doesn’t want a fighting squaw—”

“Don’t, eh?” Rawley got up and made for her.

At that moment Peter walked in upon them, unconscious of the fact that he was interrupting a very interesting conversation. Peter’s face was grave.

“Nevada, do you and mother know anything about Young Jess? Gladys is all upset over him. She thought he was down in the river with his father. She heard them talking about getting gold, and then the dam went, and she hasn’t seen him since. If he’s hiding,” he added sternly, “he may as well come out and show himself. I think it can be fixed up. The Governor wants to ask him some questions.”

“How could I know? I was penned in when the cabin fell to pieces,” Nevada countered. “They certainly said nothing to me, either one of them. I didn’t see them all afternoon or evening.”

Anita slowly lifted her hand to her face and gropingly tucked in her bangs. Her eyes were fixed dumbly on Peter’s face.

“Young Jess—by river,” she said reluctantly. “I walk in moonlight, no can sleep. Comes big shootin’. I fall down. Bimeby I hear Nevada—she call me come quick. I no see Jess no more. I come.” She recapitulated slowly. “Jess by river, look on river. Comes shoot. No see Jess no more. Nevada call loud. Jess no come.”

The eyes of the two men met significantly. Peter turned and went out, and Rawley followed him.

“Concussion,” Rawley said succinctly. “If he were on the edge of the bank, it would throw him off, very likely. It’s high, out here, and pretty steep. He went into the river, in that case.”

“Yes—some folks upriver came near getting it when we shot in the second dam,” Peter said tonelessly. “I sent a man up on a hill to wave back any stragglers, but the doctor had to do some patching on the crowd, nevertheless. Well, I’ll go and look along the river. He may be hurt, under the bank.”

Rawley did not think so, but he went with Peter and searched the bank thoroughly. Halfway down, caught behind a bowlder, he found Young Jess’s hat. He managed to retrieve it and bring it to Peter. Peter turned it over in his hand, looked at Rawley and nodded.

“It’s his,” he said shortly. “It’s all we’ll ever find.”

He turned away toward the shack, swung back suddenly and faced the tremendous heap of broken rock visible from midstream to the farther shore. He lifted both hands high above his head, his face twisted, his eyes black with sublime fury.

“Damn you!” he cried. “Curse the thought, born in greed, fostered in rapacity, that put you there! Curse the bitter years that brought you to pass! For the greed of the gold they would have filched, for the vulture’s eye that watched and waited all these years, to swoop down and snatch and grab, with never a thought for the rights of other men, I curse the thing I helped to make!

“Born in selfishness, you have defiled a mighty river that God meant should flow through the land and one day be a blessing to mankind. You have made of the river a monster. It is you that is driving women and little children from their homes! You, God damn you! You have been a traitor to the mind that brought you forth. You have destroyed the two who worked and waited, that you might pander to their greed. You have tried to destroy the dearest thing I have on earth, because I saw in you something big and beautiful—because I was fool enough to think that an idea spawned in devil-greed could live in noble achievement.

“Look at the slimy thing the vultures have made of the river! The leprous thing over which the vultures croaked—for a little while—croaked and went down and died! The Eagle would never stop the river, leave it a naked, stinking thing under the sky. For the good of mankind, the Eagle would have tamed the river, without destroying it. The Eagle would have had it run peacefully within its banks, helping without hurting. Now the river lies shamed in its bed—that magnificent stream!—and men flee from it in terror. The two who thought to feast in the slime—yes, and I, too, could stoop so low as to root for gold like a hog in the mire!—you have swept them to destruction, have cheated them at the last of their prey.

“But you have done your worst! I, who helped to make you what you are, who created you thought by thought, I will tear you down. For the thing you are, a monument to greed and self, I shall tear you down stone by stone until the river is once more sweeping majestically down to the sea. As God is my witness, this thing the vultures have created shall be forgotten. The Eagle’s wing shall shadow the Colorado, a river undefiled.”

His voice ceased. He stood, hands clenched beside him, jaw squared, staring at the dam that had been his dream. A dream fulfilled,—and hated in the fulfillment. His lips moved, muttering the prophecy of Johnny Buffalo:

“‘You will succeed, and fail in the succeeding. And from the failure,—’”

A gloved hand was laid in friendly fashion on Peter’s shoulder. He turned and looked into the eyes of his Governor.

“It takes a big man, a man of broad vision, to look upon his life’s work and dare to say what you have said,” the Governor told him kindly, the look of understanding in his eyes. “Don’t be down-hearted because your success has proved a failure. The Cramer Dam would hold, I believe, if we wanted it to hold. But you are right. It is not for the vulture, but for the Eagle to say what shall be done with the river. The country needs more men like you, Peter. You shall help to build another dam—and build it under the Eagle’s wing.”

Peter lifted his right hand and laid it upon the shoulder of his Governor. His eyes were very blue and very deep. So they stood for a space and looked into each other’s eyes.

“‘—And from the failure rise to greater things,’” Rawley repeated under his breath, his eyes shining.