The eagle's wing: A story of the Colorado

by B. M. Bower

Rawley was sufficiently impressed to borrow the trident, which was barbed and could kill as easily as it could capture. So, when the fire had died and the rocks had cooled a little, he went down into the pit.

A blowhole it was, such as is frequently found in a country so torn by volcanic action. As he descended he read the signs at a glance,—signs which to a layman would have meant nothing whatever. Beneath all this, said the rocks to Rawley, there should be gold. His pulse quickened as he worked his way downward, seeking foothold precariously where he might. The thought that Grandfather King, of all the millions of men in the world, was the only one who had ever dared these depths, thrilled him with pride. Not even the Indians had known of it, he was sure. He wondered how his grandfather had managed the snakes, and then it occurred to him that Grandfather King might have discovered this place late in some season after the snakes had been overcome by their winter lethargy.

He breathed freer when his feet crunched in coarse gravel and he knew that he had reached the bottom. He had encountered no snakes, which he considered good luck, especially since he had needed hands and feet and all his great strength to negotiate the descent, and had been compelled to abandon the trident before he had gone fifty feet. As nearly as he could estimate, the blowhole was well over two hundred feet in depth, and there were places where he had no more than comfortable room for his body. The flashlight hung on a thong around his neck showed him how terrific had been the explosion that had torn this crevice open to the surface.

Rawley stood in a cavern probably ten feet high and extending farther than his light could penetrate in two directions, which his pocket compass showed him as east and west. So far the code was correct. The width he estimated as being approximately thirty feet, although the walls drew in or receded sharply, as the formation turned hard or soft. He faced toward the east and went forward, pacing three feet at a stride, his flashlight throwing a white brilliance before him.

Seventy-two strides down the high, tunnel-like cavern brought him to the “River of pure water.” There he stopped and stood, turning his light here and there upon the walls, the water, the gravel. His heart, that had been beating exultantly as his hopes rose higher, slumped and became a leaden weight.

Gold had been there. Of that he had no doubt whatever. But the placer had been mined,—gutted and abandoned. He apprehended at once the truth; that here was an underground stream, one of the sunken rivers for which the desert country is famous—that, or a small branch of a sunken river. There must be some other point of ingress, one of which Grandfather King had no knowledge. Some one had come in by the other route and had taken the gold. The work had been done systematically, by miners who knew what they were about. A glance at the workings told him that.

Rawley turned his light down the stream. As far as its rays could pierce the dark of the cavern, the placer workings extended. He went on, following the windings of the stream and its natural tunnel. Now that he had discovered his grandfather’s potential riches, the legacy which he had confidently believed was a fortune, Rawley was determined to see just where the watercourse would lead him.

He thought that he must have followed it for a mile or more, although it could have been farther. All the way along, the gravel had been worked and the gold taken out. A suspicion had been growing in his mind, and quite suddenly it crystallized into certainty. He walked into a larger cavern, the full extent of which he could not see from that point. There he stopped and considered.

Near at hand, all around him, black cans were piled. He did not need the second glance to tell him what it was he had run into. Here was the secret hoard of black powder which the Cramers had been gathering together for years. Here was the powder that would, in the space of a breath, tear down two mountain sides and halt the flow of a great river,—if what they hoped and dreamed should come to pass.

The Cramers, then, had taken the gold which Grandfather King had discovered. Here was a part of it, no doubt, transformed into tons of explosive. Rawley’s grin was sardonic as he surveyed the piled cans. It would be a bitter ending for their quest that he must show to Johnny Buffalo, he thought.