The eagle's wing: A story of the Colorado

by B. M. Bower

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.