The eagle's wing: A story of the Colorado

by B. M. Bower

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.