“Nevada doesn’t care anything about me, Anita.”
At the word, the old squaw turned her head and stared at him fixedly. “You call that name. Where you know that name? Jess, he call me Annie.”
Rawley flushed, but there was no help for it now—or, yes, there was Johnny—
“Johnny Buffalo called you Anita,” he parried.
Anita shook her head slowly. “Jawge—your gran’fadder—he call me Anita too,” she said wistfully. “You ver’ much—like Jawge. I firs’ think—you are ghos’ of Jawge, when you come.”
“Grandfather was crazy about you,” slipped off Rawley’s tongue. “He spoke of you in his diary—a book where he wrote down things he did—things he thought.”
Anita stared down at the river.
“You tell me,” she commanded tersely. “All those things—Jawge think—about—Anita.”
Rawley’s hand went out and closed again over her wrinkled, work-hardened knuckles.
“The first was when he came up to El Dorado on the Esmeralda in ’66. He was leaning over the rail, watching the miners crowd down to the landing. He wrote, ‘I saw a young girl—I think she is Spanish. She has the velvet eyes and the rose blooming in her cheeks. She’s beautiful. Not more than sixteen and graceful as a fairy.’ What more he wrote of you I don’t know. He cut the pages from the book so no one could read it.”