“Yep. And thereby hangs a tale. Mr. Cavanaugh—Red, I mean—has found state documents down at Santa Fe showing that the San Juan used to be navigable. But the confounded dumb Indians swear it can’t be navigated. If boats can go down the stream, even during part of the year, the river bed belongs to the Federal government. If the stream can’t be navigated, the Navajos own the bed. That’s the law! While the argument continues, nobody can lease uranium or oil land near the river. Red says that, one of these days, he’s going to prove that—oops! I’m talking too much!”
Pepper clammed up for the first time they could remember. He said hardly a word until he dropped them off at Hall’s motel.
“I don’t get it,” Quiz said to his chum as they walked up a graveled path from the road to the rambling adobe building.
“Don’t get what?” Sandy wanted to know.
“This uranium hunting business Pepper’s got himself into. I read in Time a while back that the Federal government stopped buying uranium from prospectors in 1957. Since then, it has bought from existing mills, but it hasn’t signed a single new contract. Cavanaugh doesn’t own a uranium mill. So why is he snooping around, digging into state documents and antagonizing the Indians?”
“I only met him once, when he snooted our exhibit as a judge at the regional science fair,” Sandy replied. “Can’t say I took to him, under the circumstances.”
“There’s something phony about that man. If only I could remember ... something to do with football, I think.” Quiz scratched his head, but no more information came out.
They found Mr. Hall, dressed as usual in faded levis and denim shirt, sitting with several other guests of the motel on a wide patio facing the setting sun.
“Well, here are my roustabouts,” the little man cried with a flash of those too-perfect teeth. “I was beginning to be afraid that you had lost yourselves in the desert.”
He introduced them to the owners of the place, two maiden ladies from Minnesota who plainly were having the time of their middle-aged lives here on the last frontier. The Misses Emery, as alike as two wrinkled peas, showed the boys to their room, a comfortable place complete with fireplace and an air conditioner.