“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.