“An hour will do me,” Peter stated modestly, and Rawley suppressed a grin.
Looking him over surreptitiously, Rawley decided that he could be very proud indeed of Uncle Peter. Even amongst governors and such, Peter could hold his own with that quiet dignity which nothing seemed able to ruffle, that poise which came of being very sure of his own mind and of what he wanted. A great man looked from one to the other curiously, and Rawley immediately introduced Peter to him. Then he caught the eye of another, and presently that man was shaking hands very humanly with Peter Cramer, who looked so much like George Rawlins King, of the Reclamation Service. Before he quite realized what was taking place, Peter was absorbed into the party of great men, and a flustered waitress in the depot dining room was hastily making room at a table and laying another knife and fork purloined from the lunch room outside.
The reception committee probably revised at the last minute their arrangements for seating the party in the decorated automobiles. Some one must have been crowded; but Peter rode in comfort in a big car in company with some of the nation’s important men, though this was not what he had gotten an early haircut for. He had seen the river in all its moods and under all conditions; it seemed strange to him now, no doubt, to be sight-seeing it with men who had heretofore been no more than names to be read in headlines in week-old newspapers. But no one suspected it,—unless perhaps some member of the reception committee wondered how he had broken in. However, as a guest of the Colorado River Commission, seven governors and railroad presidents, no mere local committee dared flicker an eyelid.
“It has to be done this way—whatever it is you want to do,” Rawley muttered once in Peter’s ear at the river, when he caught Peter looking boredly at the bold cliffs of Boulder Canyon. “You couldn’t get a look-in, just coming up and trying for an interview. As soon as we get back, and before the banquet up town, I’ve arranged for you to talk to the Commission. I told the chief,” he added drily, “that it was more important than anything else he’d hear. I gambled on that, because I know you. And a little nerve goes a long way, sometimes. We’re going to cut this short as possible and get back to the car early. Then—you’ll have to boil down your hour, Peter. There won’t be more than half that much time for whatever it is you want to say.”
“It may pay this Colorado River Commission,” said Peter laconically, “to miss their supper to-night, and even cut out some of the speeches they’ve got ready to hand out to Vegas citizens. As I understand it, the Commission was created for the purpose of investigating claims, collecting all data and adjusting rights pertaining to the Colorado River. They’d better take a piece of bread and butter in their hands and eat it while they listen to what I’ve got to say.” He paused and added significantly, “You tell Hoover I said so.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
THE VULTURE MAKES TERMS WITH THE EAGLE
Rawley had them rounded up in the private car—governors and high officials and newspaper representatives—lighting cigars, cigarettes and pipes and eyeing, their curiosity politely veiled, the big, broad-shouldered man with the brown skin and piercing blue eyes, who stood at one end of the car waiting for them to settle themselves into easy, listening attitudes. This was informal,—but if they were to believe that keen young man, George Rawlins King, it was going to be pretty important; and, what appealed to most of them like a window opened in a stifling room, fresh and untalked. It is impossible to eat, sleep and live with one subject for months without feeling a tingle of relief when some entirely new angle crops up,—something that hasn’t been argued, weighed and considered a hundred times. The Colorado River Commission was on the job,—heart, soul and mind. But that did not preclude secret sighs of anticipation when the Commission faced something wholly new to every member.
Not a man among them knew Peter Cramer. Not one had ever heard the name. He looked a man of the desert, every inch of his six-feet-and-something-over. He might turn out to be a bore; he did not look like a boor. He did not wear his hair in the prevailing fad; it grew thick to the nape of his neck and was trimmed there neatly by some barber who remembered how they used to cut hair. His dark suit was incontestably made to his measure,—but it had been made before the War. You don’t get such material nowadays. At least, men of the desert do not get it. His hands, as he shuffled a few slips of paper, showed how hardly they had been used. They were the hands of a laborer, scrubbed meticulously clean, the nails trimmed painstakingly,—with a pocket-knife, one could guess. So there he stood, towering above them all, with pre-War clothes, the hands of a laborer, the eyes of a thinker.
The car became very still. Every man there looked at Peter. And one man’s eyes held love, sympathy and a shade of anxiety. To this moment, Rawley King could only guess at what his Uncle Peter was going to say. There was a little prayer in Rawley’s heart, in his eyes. A modern, young-man prayer, “God, don’t let him pull a boner!” It would be well if all the prayers in all the churches were as sincere.
“Gentlemen of the Colorado River Commission” (Peter began in his deep, even voice that carried far) “you do not know me, and I do not know you. I thank you for consenting to listen to me. When I am done, you may thank me for consenting with myself to talk to you. In the words of a certain wise man—whose wisdom I wish I might borrow as I borrow his words—‘I am not a clever speaker in any way at all; unless, indeed, by a clever speaker they mean a man who speaks the truth. You will not hear an elaborate speech dressed up with words and phrases. I will say to you what I have to say, without preparation and in the words which come first, for I believe that my cause is just. So let none of you expect anything else.’ If I could better that statement, make it more forceful, I should hesitate. Gentlemen, they stand for absolute honesty of purpose. Let them stand for me now, as they stood for Socrates—but I hope with happier effect.