“All but your share’s mine, Peter. Yours and Young Jess’ and Nevada’s. This feller better not think—”
“He only thinks you’re a fool,” Peter told him harshly. “Stay and watch your gold, then. It might float off!” He motioned with his head toward home, and Rawley obeyed the signal and started ahead of him down the trail, wondering a good deal over the encounter.
“Looks like I’m driving you off,” Peter remarked after a bit. “But I’m merely bringing up the rear. Old Jess is not all there. I’ll tell you all about it, now he’s told so much. I had half a mind to, anyway, if I could get him and Young Jess to agree. You’re a mining engineer. I kind of wanted your opinion and advice. It is out of your line, probably; but technical training helps. I never had any, myself. Old Jess is a slave driver, all right. And now he’s half crazy, and I wouldn’t want to go off and leave him with the women. If a stranger happened along and roused his suspicion, there’s no prophesying what might happen.”
“It sounds pretty wild, to me, all his talk,” Rawley returned after a minute. “I can easily believe the old man’s crazy. I can’t seem to get any sense out of it; millions of gold—and all that. Uncle Peter, were you just stringing him along—because he’s crazy?”
Peter laughed queerly. “I can’t wonder at your thinking so,” he said. “Sit down here, and I’ll tell you the straight of it.”
It was the flat rock which they had reached. The shouts of the children, the barking of the dogs and the crying of the baby came to them in one indistinguishable chorus from across the small flat. In the deepening dusk they would not be noticed and interrupted.
“Away back, before I was born,” Peter began, “Jess had mining claims here. Placer, and he was doing pretty well at it, I imagine. He bached here beside the river, and an idea came to him one day that has stuck to him like a burr ever since. That idea, boy, has ruled this bunch, has driven us like dogs. It’s a big one—the only big idea he ever had, so far as I know.
“Old Jess got to thinking how much gold must lie at the bottom of the river, washed down through all the centuries of time, through Colorado, even through Wyoming, where its main tributaries rise. When you think of it, the thing gets hold of you. And the more you think, the stronger it holds. He thought how tremendously rich and powerful he’d be if he could just get at that gold out there. But you see the old river; she holds what she’s got. And in flood time—
“Well, it wasn’t long before he began to figure out how he could get at that gold. And he got the idea of throwing a dam across the canyon here, and backing up the water. I don’t think he ever told any one, but he kind of quizzed around and decided finally that it would cost a lot of money. A million dollars, we made it at a rough guess. So he began to save his gold, instead of gambling and carousing with it down in El Dorado and at the fort. For that matter, I believe the old man always was a grasping, avaricious individual. It’s his nature—I’ve seen it demonstrated all my life.
“We’re all living fairly decently now, son. But until I was old enough to assert myself a bit, he almost starved us, he was so keen on saving that million. Even now I have to have a run-in with him, every so often, about the money that goes for living expenses. But he can afford it. He’s got his million, and then some.”