In his room again, Rawley unlocked his desk and got the two books which were his “legacy.” He was young, and for all his technical training the spirit of romance called to his youth. There was something particularly important, something urgent in the admonition that he should read the Scriptures. Rawley’s training was all against vague speculations. Your mining engineer fights guesswork at every stage of his profession.
He sat down with the books in his hand and began to reason the thing out cold-bloodedly, as if it were a problem in mineral formations. He undid the clasp of the Bible, opened it and looked through all the leaves, seeking for some hidden paper. He spent half an hour in the search and discovered nothing. There was no message, then, hidden in the Bible. His grandfather must have meant the actual reading of the text itself.
Then he remembered the paper filled with references, hidden in the pocket of the diary. There might be something significant in that, he thought. He opened the diary, took out the paper and glanced down the list of references. They were scattered all through the book and there were sixty-four of them.
He opened the Bible again and began to look for the first one—I Kings, 20:3. The leaves stuck together, they turned in groups, they seemed determined that he should not find I Kings anywhere in the book. Daniel, Joshua, Jeremiah, Zechariah and Esther he peered into; there didn’t seem to be any Kings.
He muttered a word frequently found in the Bible, laid the book down and went to the living room, to the big, embossed Family Bible that had his birth date in it and the date of his father’s death; and pictures at which he had been permitted to look on Sunday afternoons if he were a good boy. His mother had gone out to some meeting or other. He had the room to himself and he could read at his leisure.
It struck him immediately that this Bible had not been much read either. But the leaves were thick enough to turn singly, the print was large, and if I Kings were present he felt that he had some chance of finding it. With pencil and paper beside him, and with the list of references in one hand, he therefore set himself methodically to the task. And he was twenty-six, and the blood of the adventurous Kings beat strongly in his veins. So when he had found the book and the chapter which headed the list, he ran his finger down the half-column to the third verse; and this is what he read:
Thy silver and thy gold is mine; thy wives also and thy children, even the goodliest, are mine.
Rawley was conscious of a slight chill of disappointment when he had written it down in his fine, beautifully exact, draftsman’s handwriting. But he went doggedly to work on the next reference nevertheless:
Psalms, 73:7. Their eyes stand out with fatness; they have more than heart could wish.
This was no more promising, but he had promised to read, and this seemed to him the most practical method of getting at his grandfather’s secret purpose and thoughts. So he settled himself down to an evening’s hard labor with book and paper.
He was just finishing the work when he heard his mother’s footsteps on the porch. Rather guiltily he closed the Bible and folded his notes, so that his mother, coming into the room, found Rawley standing before a large window, thoughtfully gazing out into the dark while he stuffed tobacco in his pipe. His mother was a religious woman and a member of the church, but she took her religion according to certain fixed rules. Reading the Bible casually, apparently for entertainment, would have required an explanation,—and Rawley did not want to explain, least of all to his mother.
He listened with perfunctory interest to her account of the evening’s edifications (a Swedish missionary having lectured in his own tongue, with an interpreter) and escaped when he could to his room. He wanted to be alone where he could try and guess the riddle his grandfather had placed before him.
That there was a message of some kind hidden away in the Scriptural quotations, Rawley felt absolutely certain. In the first place, they did not seem to him such passages as a devout person would cherish for the comfort they held. Moreover, certain verses had been repeated, although the text itself did not seem to justify such emphasis. Precious metals, and journeyings into rough country, he decided, was the dominant note of the citations and the net result was confusing to say the least. If his grandfather really intended that he should discover any meaning in the jumble, he should have furnished a key, Rawley told himself disgustedly, some time after midnight, when he had read the quotations over and over until his head ached and they seemed more meaningless than at first.
But his grandfather had told him emphatically that there was a lot in the Bible, if he read it carefully enough. There might have been in the statement no meaning deeper than an old man’s whim, but Rawley could not bring himself to believe it. Somewhere in those verses a secret lay hidden, and Rawley did not mean to give up until he had solved the problem.
At daylight the next morning Rawley awoke with what he considered an inspiration. He swung out of bed and with his bathrobe over his shoulders made a stealthy pilgrimage into the old-fashioned library where the conventional aggregation of “works” were to be found in leather-bound sets. Squatting on his haunches, he inspected a certain dim corner filled with fiction of the type commonly accepted as standard. He chose a volume and returned to bed, leaving one of his heelless slippers behind him in his absorption in the mystery.
He crawled back into bed and read Poe’s “Gold Bug” before breakfast, giving particular attention to the elucidation of the cipher contained in the story. The general effect of this research work was not illuminating. Poe’s cipher had been worked out with numbers, whereas Grandfather King had carelessly muffled his meaning in many words; unless the book, chapter and verse numbers were intended to convey the message in cipher similar to Poe’s.
This possibility struck Rawley in the middle of his shaving. He could not wait to put the theory to the test, but hastily wiped the razor, and the lather from one side of his face, opened his grandfather’s old Bible at the index and began setting down the number of each book above its name in the reference list. Thus, I Kings, 20:3 became the numerals 11-20-3.
He was eagerly at work at this when his mother called him to breakfast. His mother was a woman who worked industriously at being cultured. She had a secret ambition to be called behind her back a brilliant conversationalist. Breakfast, therefore, was always an uncomfortable meal for Rawley whenever his mother had attended some instructive gathering the evening before.
While he ate his first muffin, Rawley listened to a foggy interpretation of the Swedish lecturer’s ideas upon universal brotherhood. Rather, he sat quiet while his mother talked. Then he interrupted her shockingly.
“Say, Mother, do you know whether Grandfather ever read Poe?”
A swallow of coffee went down his mother’s “Sunday throat.” It was some minutes before she could reply, and by that time Rawley had decided that perhaps he had better not bother his mother about the cipher. He patted her on the back, begged her pardon for asking foolish questions, and escaped to his own room, where he spent the whole day with “The Gold Bug” opened before him at the page which contained Poe’s rule concerning the frequency with which certain letters occur in the alphabet.
That evening there was a fine litter of papers scribbled over with letters and numbers, singly and in groups. Rawley could not get two words that made sense. The thing simply didn’t work. If his grandfather had ever read Poe’s “Gold Bug”, he certainly had not used it for a pattern.
He went back to his sixty-four Bible verses and began studying them again. But he could not see any reason why Grandfather King should claim any one’s wives and children, whose “eyes stand out with fatness.” The third and fourth verses were intelligible;
Proverbs, 2:1. My son, if thou wilt receive my words, and hide my commandments with thee.
II Chronicles, 1:12. Wisdom and knowledge is granted unto thee; and I will give thee riches, and wealth, and honor, such as none of the kings have had that have been before thee, neither shall there any after thee have the like.
Even the next three lent themselves to a possible personal meaning:
Psalms, 2:10. Be wise now therefore, oh ye kings; be instructed, ye judges of the earth.
I Chronicles, 22:16. Of the gold, the silver, and the brass, and the iron, there is no number. Rise, therefore, and be doing and the Lord be with thee.
Deuteronomy, 11:11. But the land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven.
After that, he was all at sea.
He picked up the little Bible and opened it again. It must be there that the message was hidden; and Rawley felt very sure, by now, that the Bible quotations held the secret. The book opened at the eleventh chapter of Deuteronomy. Here was a verse marked,—a verse made familiar to Rawley in his hours of exhaustive study. Only a part of the verse was marked, however, by a penciled line drawn faintly beneath certain words.
With a sudden excitement Rawley seized a fresh sheet of paper and wrote down the marked passage, “The land whither ye go to possess it is a land of hills and valleys.”
Painstakingly then he began at the beginning of the reference list and worked his way once more through book, chapter and verse. But this time he used his grandfather’s Bible and copied only such parts of the verse as were underscored. Now he was on the right track, and as he wrote his excitement grew apace. From a hopeless jumble, the verses conveyed to him this message:
... Gold is mine ... more than heart could wish. My son, if thou wilt receive my words and hide my commandments with thee ... I will give thee riches, and wealth ... such as none of the kings have had that have been before thee. Be wise now, therefore, be instructed. Of the gold ... there is no number. The land whither ye go to possess it is a land of hills and valleys. Do this now, my son. Go through ... the city which is by the river in the wilderness ... yet making many rich. In the midst thereof ... a ferry-boat ... which is by the brink of the river. Take victuals with you for the journey ... turn you northward into the wilderness ... to a great and high mountain ... cedar trees in abundance ... scattered over the face of ... the high mountain. In the cliffs ... there is a path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture’s eye hath not seen. Come to the top of the mount ... pass over unto the other side ... westward ... on the hillside ... a very great heap of stones ... joined ... to ... a dry tree. Go into the clefts of the rocks ... into the tops of the jagged rocks ... to the sides of the pit ... take heed now ... that is ... exceeding deep. It is hid from the eyes of all living ... creep into ... the midst thereof ... eastward ... two hundred, fourscore and eight ... feet ... ye shall find ... a pure river of water ... proceed no further ... there is gold ... heavier than the sand ... pure gold ... upon the sand. And all the gold ... thou shalt take up ... then shalt thou prosper if thou takest heed ... I know thy poverty, but thou art rich ... take heed now ... On the hillside ... which is upon the bank of the river ... in the wilderness ... there shall the vultures also be gathered ... ye shall find ... him that ... is mine enemy ... his mouth is full of cursing ... under his tongue is mischief and vanity ... be watchful ... the heart is desperately wicked ... He that keepeth his mouth keepeth his life ... I put my trust in thee. Now, my son, the Lord be with thee and prosper thou.
His first impulse was to find Johnny Buffalo. He folded the paper, slipped it safely into a pocket and reached for his hat. He had neglected to ask the Indian just where he meant to make his camp, but he felt sure that he could find him. Indeed, when he stopped in the path halfway to the front gate and looked toward the west wing, he could just discern a figure standing on the porch. So he crossed the grass plot and in a moment stood before Johnny Buffalo.
Again his mood impelled him to the manner that most appealed to the old Indian, nephew of a chief of his tribe. He waited for a space before he spoke. And when he did speak it was in the restrained tone which had won the Indian’s confidence the evening before.
“I have read,” he stated quietly, “and I know what it is that Grandfather meant. If we can go inside I’ll read it to you.”
“The door is locked.” Johnny Buffalo pointed one finger over his shoulder. “It is a new lock put there by your mother. She does not want me to go in.”
Rawley pressed his lips tightly together before he dared trust himself to speak. He looked at the barred door, thought of the room he had seen, its furnishings enriched by a hundred little mementoes of the past that belonged to his soldier grandfather. He had a swift, panicky fear that his mother would call in a second-hand furniture dealer and take what price he offered for the stuff. That, he promised himself, he would prevent at all costs.
“Come into my room, then,” he invited. “I want to read you what I discovered.”
“No. The house is your mother’s. We will go to my camp.”
So it was by the light of a camp fire, with the Mississippi flowing majestically past them under the stars, that Rawley first read as a complete document the Scriptural fragments that contained his grandfather’s message. Away in the northeast the lights of St. Louis set the sky aglow. Little lapping waves crept like licking lips against the bank with a whispery sound that mingled pleasantly with the subdued crackling of the fire. Across the leaping flames, Johnny Buffalo sat with his brown, corded hands upon his knees, his black braids drawn neatly forward across his chest. His lean face with its high nose and cheek bones flared into light or grew shadowed as the flames reached toward him or drew away. His lips were pressed firmly together, as if he had learned well the lesson of setting their seal against his thoughts.
“There is one point I thought you might be able to tell me,” Rawley said, looking across the fire when he had finished reading. “This ‘City which is by the river in the wilderness’—and ‘In the midst thereof a ferryboat which is by the brink of the river.’ Do you know what place is meant by that? Is it El Dorado, Nevada? Because Grandfather’s diary tells of going up the river to El Dorado. And I remember, now, there was some kind of Bible reference written over the name. I don’t remember what it was, though. I didn’t look it up. We’ll have to make sure about that, for the directions start from that point. It says we’re to go through the city which is by the river, and turn northward—and so on.”
The Indian reached out a hand, lifted a stick of wood and laid it across the fire. His eyes turned toward the river.
“Many times, when the air was warm and the stars sat in their places to watch the night, my sergeant came here with me, and I gathered wood to make a fire. Many hours he would sit here in his chair beside the river. Sometimes he would talk. His words were of the past when he was the strongest of all men. Sometimes his words were of El Dorado. It is a city by the river, and a ferryboat is in the midst thereof. It has made many rich with the gold they dig from the mountains. I think that is the city you must go through.”
“There isn’t any city now,” Rawley told him. “It’s been abandoned for years. I don’t think there’s a town there, any more.”
“There is the place by the river,” Johnny Buffalo observed calmly. “There is the great and high mountain. There is ‘the path that no man knoweth.’”
“Yes, you bet. And we’re going to find it, Johnny Buffalo. I’ve got a chance to go out that way this month, to examine a mine. I didn’t think I’d take the job. I wanted to go to Mexico. But now, of course, it will be Nevada, and I’ll want you to go with me. Do you know that country?”
A strange expression lightened the Indian’s face for an instant.
“When I killed my first meat,” he said, “I could walk from the kill to the city by the river. My father’s tent was no more distant than it is from here to the great city yonder. Not so far, I think. The way was rough with many hills.”
Impulsively Rawley leaned and stretched out his arm toward the Indian.
“Let’s shake on it. We will go together, and you will be my partner. Whatever we find is the gift of my grandfather, and half of it is yours when we find it. I feel he’d want it that way. Is it a go, Johnny Buffalo?”
Something very much like a smile stirred the old man’s lips. He took Rawley’s hand and gave it a solemn shake, once up, once down, as is the way of the Indian.
“It is go. You are like my sergeant when he held me in his arms and gave me water from his canteen. You are my son. Where you go I will go with you.”