“What’d yuh want to go and let it all out to him for?” he half whimpered. “Now he’ll want a share—and there might not be more ’n five or six millions in the hull damned river bed! And you know ’s well as I do, Peter, that our dam is liable as not to go out, next high water. We won’t have many months to work in, mebby. I—I want a word with yuh, Peter. I—I want a word with yuh, that’s all. I guess mebby you know what you’re up to, but—”
“Shut up!” Peter snapped the verbal whip again. His eyes turned briefly toward Rawley. “What’s been let out, you did yourself, dad.” (Rawley thought that Peter hesitated over the last word.) “I have never breathed one word of our plan. Slave? What have I been slaving for, all these years? Do you think I have not endured everything but dishonor, for the sake of the millions we plan to get? And Nevada—what about her? Hasn’t she done the work of a man and slaved over her studies, so that she could help, too? It’s you, letting go your tongue and raving like a fool, that has betrayed the secret. You’ve done it. This man didn’t know or suspect a thing, till you let it out, accusing me of telling!”
The old man looked uneasily from one to the other. Peter stared unrelentingly at him. Rawley, stealing a glance at his face, thought that he knew now the kind of man his Grandfather King had been in his old, fighting days.
“Now, he’ll have to know.” Peter’s voice relaxed the tension. It was as if he had suddenly determined to accept the situation and make the best of it,—and the most. “He can be trusted, I think. He’ll have to be trusted, after your blathering.”
Old Jess turned his predatory eyes on Rawley, and his beard moved to a sinister smile beneath.
“You’re a big man, Peter—and it ain’t but a few steps to the edge!” He tilted his head backwards toward the river. There was no possibility of mistaking his meaning. But he added a sentence to clinch it: “She never gives up a body—the Colorado don’t!”
Peter’s grin was a withering thing to face. Again the old man cringed, and his eyes shifted like a cornered rat.
“I’ll remember that, if you open your mouth again. I’m strong—and the river never gives up a dead man. You keep that in mind, will you?” Peter insisted ominously.
“He shan’t have none of my share,” Old Jess shrilled, his voice cracking with anger and fear. “It was my idee, before you was born, Peter. You shan’t rob me in my old age—you shan’t, now! I’ll be the first one to pick up the gold—that’s been understood, since you was big enough to talk. An’ he better not let it out to anybody! I’ll kill him if he does—you mark me, Peter! I’ll kill any man that stands in my road to them millions I been watching over all these long years—scrabbling the gold together, ounce by ounce, till I’ve got enough to do it! A million dollars—but I’ll reap a thousand dollars for one. You mark what I say; I’ll kill anybody that tries to horn in—It’s mine, every bit of it!”
“In that case,” said Peter contemptuously, “you can go ahead and get it.”