THE EAGLE’S WING

By B. M. Bower

Good Indian

Lonesome Land

The Ranch at the Wolverine

The Flying U’s Last Stand

The Heritage of the Sioux

Starr, of the Desert

Cabin Fever

Skyrider

Rim o’ The World

The Quirt

Cow-Country

Casey Ryan

The Trail of the White Mule

The Voice at Johnnywater

The Parowan Bonanza

The Eagle’s Wing

The man in the distance ducked out of sight amongst the bowlders.

THE EAGLE’S WING

A STORY OF THE COLORADO

BY

B. M. BOWER

WITH FRONTISPIECE BY

FRANK TENNEY JOHNSON

BOSTON

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY

1924

Copyright, 1924,

By Little, Brown, and Company.

All rights reserved

Published February, 1924

Printed in the United States of America

To the American Eagle,

fighting always the Vultures of the earth;

whose protective wing extends even into the

desert lands; whose shadow has fallen upon

the great river, this story of the Colorado is

loyally inscribed.

B. M. B.

CONTENTS

THE EAGLE’S WING
CHAPTER ONE
KING, OF THE MOUNTED

On the wide south porch of the house where he had been born, Rawley King sat smoking his pipe in the dusk heavy with the scent of a thousand roses. The fragrant serenity of the great, laurel-hedged yard of the King homestead was charming after the hot, empty spaces of the desert. Even the somber west wing of the brooding old house seemed wrapped in the peace that enfolds lives moving gently through long, uneventful months and years. The smoke of his pipe billowed lazily upward in the perfumed air; incense burned by the prodigal son upon the home altar after his wanderings.

The old Indian, Johnny Buffalo, came walking straight as an arrow across the strip of grass beside the syringa bushes that banked the west wing. Rawley straightened and stared, the bowl of his pipe sagging to the palm of his hand. As far back as he could remember, none had ever crossed that space of clipped grass to hold speech with the Kings. But now Johnny Buffalo walked steadily forward and halted beside the porch.

“Your grandfather say you come,” he announced calmly and turned back to the somber west wing.

Sheer amazement held Rawley motionless for a moment. Until the Indian spoke to him he had almost forgotten the strangeness of that hidden, remote life of his grandfather. From the time he could toddle, Rawley had been taught that he must not go near the west wing of the house or approach the brooding old man in the wheel chair. As for the Indian who served his grandfather, Rawley had been too much afraid of him to attempt any friendly overtures. There had been vague hints that Grandfather King was not quite right in his mind; that a brooding melancholy held him, and that he would suffer no one but his Indian servant near him. Now, after nearly thirty years of studied aloofness, his grandfather had summoned him.

The Indian was waiting in the shadowed west porch when Rawley tardily arrived at the steps. He turned without speaking and opened the door, waiting for Rawley to pass. Still dumb with astonishment, a bit awed, Rawley crossed the threshold and for the first time in his life stood in the presence of his grandfather.

A powerful figure the old man must have been in his youth. Old age had shrunk him, had sagged his shoulders and dried the flesh upon his bones; but years could not hide the breadth of those shoulders or change the length of those arms. His eyes were piercingly blue and his lips were firm under the drooping white mustache. His snow-white hair was heavy and lay upon his shoulders in natural waves that made it seem heavier than it really was,—just so he had probably worn it in the old, old days on the frontier. His eyebrows were domineering and jet black, and the whole rugged countenance betrayed the savage strength of the spirit that dwelt back of his eyes. But the great, gaunt body stopped short at the knees, and the gray blanket smoothed over his lap could not hide the tragic mutilation; nor could the great mustache conceal the bitter lines around his mouth.

“Back from Arizona, hey?” he launched abruptly at Rawley, and his voice was grim as his face.

Rawley started. Perhaps he expected a cracked, senile tone; it would have fitted better the tradition of the old man’s mental weakness.

“Just got back to-day, Grandfather.” Instinctively Rawley swung to a matter-of-fact manner, warding off his embarrassment over the amazing interview.

“Mining expert, hey? Know your business?”

“Well enough to be paid for working at it,” grinned Rawley, trying unsuccessfully to keep his eyes from straying curiously around the room filled with ancient trophies of a soldier’s life half a century before.

“Not much like your father! I’ll bet he couldn’t have told you the meaning of the words. Damned milksop. Bank clerk! Not a drop of King blood in his body—far as looks and actions went. Guess he thought gold grew on bushes, stamped with the date of the harvest!”

“I remember him vaguely. He never seemed well or strong,” Rawley defended his dead father.

“Never had the King make-up. Only weakling the Kings ever produced—and he had to be my son! Take a look at that picture on the bureau. That’s what I mean by King blood. Johnny, give him the picture.”

The Indian moved silently to a high chest of drawers against the farther wall and lifted from it an enlarged, framed photograph, evidently copied from an earlier crude effort of some pioneer in the art. He placed it reverently in Rawley’s hands and retreated to a respectful distance.

“Taken before I started out with Moorehead’s expedition in ’59. Six feet two in my bare feet, and not an ounce of soft flesh in my body. Not a man in the company I couldn’t throw. Johnny could tell you.” A note of pride had crept into the old man’s voice.

“I can see it, Grandfather. I—I’d give anything to have been with you in those days. Lord, what a physique!”

The fierce old eyes sparkled. The bony fingers gripped the arms of the wheel chair like steel claws.

“That’s the King blood. Give me two legs and I’d be a King yet, old as I am—instead of a hunk of meat in a wheel chair.”

“It’s the spirit that counts, Grandfather,” Rawley observed hearteningly, his eyes still on the picture but lifting now to the old man’s face. “The picture’s like you yet.”

The old man grunted doubtfully, his eyes fixed sharply upon Rawley’s face. His fingers drummed restlessly upon the arm of his chair, as if he were seeing in the young man his own care-free youth, and was yearning over it in secret. Indeed, as he stood there in the light of the old-fashioned lamp, Rawley King might have been mistaken for the original of the picture with the costume set fifty years ahead.

“Johnny, get the box.” Grandfather King spoke without taking his eyes off Rawley.

The old Indian slipped away. In a moment he returned with a square metal box which he placed on the old man’s knees. Rawley found himself wondering what his mother would say when he told her that Grandfather King had sent for him, was actually talking to him, giving him a glimpse of that sealed past of his. He watched his grandfather fit a key into the lock of the metal box.

“You’re a King, thank God. I’ve watched you grow. Six feet and over, and no water in your blood, by the looks. You’re like I was at your age. Johnny knows. He can remember how I looked when I had two legs. Here. You take these—they’re yours, and all the good you can get out of them. Read ’em both. Read ’em till you get the good that’s in ’em. If you’re a King, you’ll do it.”

He held out two worn little books. Rawley took them, eyeing them queerly. One was a Bible, the old-fashioned, leather-bound pocket size edition, with a metal clasp. The other book was smaller; a diary, evidently, with a leather band going around, the end slipping under a flap to hold it secure.

“I will—you bet!” Rawley made his voice as hearty as his puzzlement would permit. “Thanks, Grandfather.”

“I meant ’em for your father—but he wasn’t the man to get anything out of ’em worth while. A milksop—wore spectacles before he wore pants! His idea of success was to shove money out to other people through a grated window. Paugh! When he told me that was his ambition, I came near burning the books. Johnny could tell you. He stopped me—only time in his life he ever stuck his foot through the wheel of my chair and anchored me out of reach of the fire. Out of reach of my guns, too, or I’d have killed him maybe! Johnny said, ‘You wait. Maybe more Kings come—like Grandfather.’

“So I did wait, and after a while I could watch you grow—all King. I could tell by the set of your shoulders and the tone of your voice and the way you went straight at anything you wanted. So there’s your legacy, boy, from King, of the Mounted. Ask any of the old veterans who King, of the Mounted, was! You read those books.” He lifted a bony finger and pointed. “There’s a lot in that Bible—if you read it careful.”

“You bet, Grandfather!” Rawley undid the clasp and opened the book politely. The old man twisted his lips into a sardonic smile. His eyes gleamed, indigo blue, under his shaggy black brows. Then, as if reminded of something forgotten, he dipped into the box, fumbled a bit and held out his hand to Rawley.

“You’re a mining expert; maybe you can tell me where I picked them up.” His eyes bored into Rawley’s face.

Rawley bent his head over the three nuggets of gold. He weighed them in his hand, turned them to the light of the lamp which Johnny Buffalo had lifted from the table and held close.

“Greenhorns think that gold is gold,” Rawley grinned at last. “And so it is—but you left a little rock sticking to this one, Grandfather. So I’ll guess Nevada.”

“Hunh!” The old man’s eyes sparkled. “What part?”

Rawley glanced up at him with the endearing King smile. “Say, I’m liable to fall down on that! But I reckon King, of the Mounted, will put me flat against the wall before he quits, anyway. So—well, how about Searchlight?”

“Hunh! I guess you know your job.” The old man smiled back at him, a glimmer of that same endearing quality in the smile and the eyes. He waved back the gold when Rawley would have returned it. “Keep it—you’ve earned it. No use to me any more.” He settled deeper into the chair and gave a great sigh as his head dropped back against the cushions. “Fifty years ago I picked ’em up—and I’ve lived to see a King turn them over twice in his hand and tell me within a few miles of where I got them. That shows what I mean by King blood. Fifty years ago! It’s a long time to live like a hunk of meat. I’m seventy-nine—”

“Get out! You’d have to prove it, Grandfather. That’s a good ten years more than you look.”

“Don’t lie to me, boy.” But King, of the Mounted, failed to look censorious. “You read that Bible. Remember, that’s the legacy old King, of the Mounted, leaves to the next King in line. It don’t lie, boy. Read it faithful and heed what it says, and some day you’ll say the old man wasn’t so crazy after all.”

“Why, Grandfather,—”

But the old man waved him away with a peremptory gesture. Johnny Buffalo glided to the door, opened it and held it so, waiting with the inscrutable calm of his race.

“Well, good night, Grandfather. I’m—glad to have had this little talk. And I hope it won’t be the last. I always wanted to pioneer, and I’ve always felt as if I’d like to talk over those times—”

Rawley was finding it rather difficult even yet to bridge the silence of a lifetime.

“You grew up thinking I was crazy, most likely. Easy to say the old man’s touched in the head—when they don’t want to bother with a cripple. You’re a King. Maybe you can guess what it means to be a hulk in a wheel chair. And the Kings never ran after anybody; nor the Rawlinses, your grandmother’s people. Two good names—glad you carry ’em both. If you live up to ’em both you’ll go far. Take care of those two books, boy. Remember what I said—they’re your legacy from King, of the Mounted. Good night.”

The old man snapped out the last two words in a tone of finality and reached for his pipe. Johnny Buffalo opened the door an inch wider. Rawley obeyed the unspoken hint and straightway found himself outside, with the door closed behind him. He waited, listening, loth to go. Now that the feud was broken, he tingled with the desire to know more about his grandfather, more about those wonderful old fighting frontier days, more about King, of the Mounted.

“Crazy? I should say not!” Rawley muttered as he made his way slowly across the strip of grass by the syringas. “I only hope my brain will be as keen as Grandfather’s when I am his age.”

He stood for a few minutes breathing deep the night air saturated with perfume. Then, with the spell of his grandfather’s vivid personality strong upon him, he went in to where his mother sat gently rocking beside a rose-shaded lamp, looking over a late magazine.

“I’ve just been having a talk with Grandfather,” Rawley announced bluntly, sitting down opposite his mother and studying her as if she were a stranger to him. Indeed, those few minutes spent in the west wing had dealt a sharp blow to his unquestioning faith in his mother. Mrs. King dropped the magazine and opened her lips—artificially red—and gave a faint gasp.

“Grandfather’s mind is as clear as yours or mine,” Rawley stated challengingly. “A bit old-fashioned, maybe—a man couldn’t live in a wheel chair for fifty years or so, shut away from all companionship as he has been, and keep his ideas right up to the minute. If you ask me, I’ll say he’d make a corking old pal. Full of pep—or would be if he weren’t crippled. It’s a darned shame I never busted through the feud before. Why, fifty years ago he was all through Nevada—think of that! I’d give ten years of my life to have lived when he did, right at his elbow.”

He felt the sag in his pockets then and brought out the two little books.

“I always thought, Mother, that Grandfather King was a particularly wicked old party. Well, that’s all wrong—same as the idea that he’s weak in the head. He gave me this Bible, and made me promise to read it. He said—”

“Bible?” Rawley’s mother sat up sharply, and her mouth remained open, ready for further words which her mind seemed unable to formulate.

“You bet. He said if I read it faithfully and got all the good out of it there is in it, I’d thank him the rest of my life—or something like that. He meant it, too.”

“Why, Rawley King! Your grandfather has always been an atheist of the worst type! I’ve heard your father tell how he used to hear your grandfather blaspheme and curse God by the hour for making him a cripple. When he was a little boy—your father, I mean—he was deeply impressed by your grandmother asking every prayer-meeting night for the prayers of the church to soften her husband’s heart and turn his thoughts toward God. Your father has told me how he used to go home afterwards and watch to see if your grandfather’s heart was softened. But it never was—he got wickeder, if possible, and swore horribly at everything, nearly. Your father said he nearly lost faith in prayer. But he believed that the congregation never prayed as it should. I wouldn’t believe, Rawley, that your grandfather would have a Bible near him. Are you sure?”

“Here it is,” Rawley assured her, grinning. “He said it was my legacy from him.”

“Well, that proves to my mind he’s crazy,” his mother said grimly. “Your father always felt that Grandfather King had sinned against the Holy Ghost and couldn’t repent. Anyway,” she added resentfully, “that’s about all you’ll ever get from him. When he deeded this place to your father for a wedding present—that was a little while after your grandmother died—he reserved the west wing for himself as long as he lived. It’s in the deed that he’s not to be interfered with or molested. When he dies, the west wing becomes a part of this property—which is mine, of course. He lives on his pension, which just about keeps him and that awful old Indian. Of course the pension stops when he dies. So he was right about the legacy, at least. But I’ll bet he put a curse on the Bible before he gave it to you. It would be just like him.”

Rawley shook his head dissentingly. “It’s darned hard to sit in a wheel chair for fifty years,” he remarked somewhat irrelevantly. “I’d cuss things some, myself, I reckon.” And he added abruptly, “Say, Grandfather’s got the bluest eyes, Mother, I ever saw in a man’s head. I thought eyes faded with old age. Did you ever notice his eyes, Mother?”

His mother laughed unpleasantly. “Your Grandfather King never gave me any inducement to get close enough to see his eyes. Seeing him on the porch of the west wing is enough for me.”

“He laid a good deal of stress upon his past,” said Rawley. “I suppose because he hasn’t any present—and darned little future, I’m afraid. He gave me some nuggets. Would you like a nugget ring, Mother?”

His mother glanced at the nuggets and pushed away Rawley’s hand that held them cupped in the palm.

“No, I wouldn’t. Not if your Grandfather King had anything to do with it. He’s been like a poison plant in the yard ever since I came here, Rawley; like poison ivy, that you’re careful not to go near. I don’t want to touch anything belonging to him—and I hope I’m not a vindictive woman, either.”

Rawley was rolling the nuggets in his hand, staring at them abstractedly.

“It’s queer—the whole thing,” he said finally. “I feel a sort of leaning toward Grandfather. It was something in his eyes. You know, Mother, it must be darned tough to have both legs chopped off at the knees when you’re a young husky over six feet in your socks and full of pep. I—believe I can understand Grandfather King. ‘A hunk of meat in a wheel chair’—that’s what he called himself. And those amazing blue eyes of his—”

His mother glanced curiously into his face. “They can’t be any bluer than yours, Rawley,” she observed.

Rawley looked up from the nuggets, his forehead wrinkled with surprise.

“Oh, do you think that, Mother?” He stood up suddenly, still shaking the nuggets with a dull clink in his hand. “Well, I hope Grandfather’s passed on a few more of his traits to me. There’s a few of them I’m going to need,” he said drily and kissed his mother good night.

CHAPTER TWO
JOHNNY BUFFALO BEARS ANOTHER MESSAGE

In his room, Rawley switched on the light and slid into the big chair by the table. Not to his mother could he confess how deeply those few minutes with Grandfather King had stirred him. In spite of her attitude toward the silent feud that had endured for nearly thirty years, he was conscious of the dull ache of remorse. Without meaning to judge his parents or to criticize their manner of handling a difficult situation, Rawley felt that night that he had been guilty of a great wrong toward his grandfather. He at least should have ignored the invisible wall that stood between the west wing and the rest of the house. He was a King; he should not have permitted that reasonless silence to endure through all these years.

As a matter of fact, Rawley’s life since he was twelve had been spent mostly away from home. First, a military academy in the suburbs of St. Louis, with the long hiking trips featured by the school through the summer vacations; after that, college,—with a special course in mineralogy. Since then, field work had claimed most of his time. Home had therefore been merely a place pleasantly tucked away in his memory, with a visit to his mother now and then between jobs.

The first twelve years of his life had thoroughly accustomed Rawley to the sight of the fierce old man with long hair and his legs cut off at his knees, who sometimes appeared in a wheel chair on a porch of the west wing, attended by an Indian who looked savage enough to scalp a little boy if he ventured too close; a ferocious Indian who scowled and wore his hair parted from forehead to neck and braided in two long braids over his shoulder, and who padded stealthily about the place in beautifully beaded moccasins and fringed buckskin leggings.

Nevertheless, there had been times, as he grew older, when Rawley had been tempted to invade the west wing and find out for himself just how bitterly his grandfather clung to the feud. It hurt him to think now of the old man’s isolation and of the interesting companionship he had cheated himself out of enjoying.

He pulled the two old books from his pocket, handling them as if they were the precious things his grandfather seemed to consider them. The Bible he opened first, undoing the old-fashioned clasp with his thumb and opening the book at the flyleaf. The inscription there was faded yet distinct on the yellowed paper. The sloping, careful handwriting of Rawley’s great-grandmother sending King, of the Mounted, forth upon his dangerous missions armed with the Word of God,—and hoping prayerfully, no doubt, that he would read and heed its precepts.

To my beloved son,

George Walter King,

from his

Affectionate Mother.

The date thrilled Rawley, aged twenty-six: 1858 was the year his great-grandmother had inscribed in the book. To Rawley it seemed almost as remote as the Stamp Act or the Mexican War. The thought that Grandfather King, away back in 1858, had been old enough to join the Missouri Mounted Volunteers—even to have been made a sergeant in his company and to make for himself a reputation as an Indian fighter—gave the old man a new dignity in the eyes of his grandson. It seemed strange that Grandfather King was still alive and could talk of those days.

The book itself was strangely contradictory in appearance. While the outside was worn and scuffed as if with much usage, the inside crackled faintly a protest against unaccustomed handling. The yellowed leaves clung together in layers which Rawley must carefully separate. Now and then a line or two showed faint penciled underscores; otherwise the book did not look as if it had been opened for many, many years. Nowhere was it thumbed and soiled by the frequent reading of a man living under canvas or the open sky.

“Looks to me like the old boy has simply passed the buck,” Rawley grinned. “Maybe he felt as if some one in the family ought to read it. His mother had it all marked for him, too; wanted to give him a good start-off, maybe. No, sir, the old book itself is pinning it onto King, of the Mounted! Mother must be right, after all, and Grandfather never had enough religion to talk about. But he sure gave me a Sunday-school talk; funny how a book can stand up and call you a liar.”

He smiled as he closed the book, whimsically shaking his head over the joke. Then, just to make sure that his guess was correct, Rawley opened the Bible again. No, there could be no mistake. Crackly new on the inside—though yellowed with age—badly worn on the outside, the book itself proclaimed the story of long carrying and little reading. The evidence against the sincerity of the old man’s pious admonitions was conclusive. Rawley laid the Bible down for a further consideration and took up the worn old diary.

Here, too, Grandfather King had betrayed a certain lack of sincerity. Reading the faded entries, Rawley decided that King, of the Mounted, must have been an impetuous youth who had learned caution with the years. Dates, arrivals, departures,—these remained. Incidents, however, had for the most part been neatly sliced out with a knife. And with a stubborn disregard for the opinion of later readers the stubs of the pages elided had been left to tell of the deliberate mutilation of the record. So Rawley read perfunctorily the dry record of obscure scouting trips, and the names of commanders long since dead and remembered only in the records.

Rawley learned that his grandfather had taken part in the making of much frontier history. He spoke of Captain Hunt in a matter-of-fact way and mentioned the date on which a certain Captain Hendley had been killed by Indians somewhere near Las Vegas, in Nevada. On the next page Rawley found this gruesome paragraph:

From a young Indian captured in the battle of last week, I learned the secret of the devilish poisoned arrows, which are black. The black arrows are poisoned in this manner, he tells me, and since I have befriended him in many small ways I do not doubt his word. To procure the poison, an animal is slain and the liver removed. A captured rattlesnake is then induced to strike the liver again and again, injecting all of its poison into the meat. The arrow-points are afterwards rubbed in the putrid mass and left to dry. Needless to say, a wound touched by this poison and decayed meat surely causes death. The young Indian tells me that a certain desert plant has been successfully used as an antidote, but he did not tell me the name of the plant. He declared that he did not know, that only the doctors of his tribe know that secret.

I think he lied. He was willing to tell me the horrid means of making the poison. But is too cunning to let me know the antidote. So the tobacco I’ve given him is after all wasted. The information merely increases my dread of the black arrows. Rattlesnake venom and putrid liver—paugh! I shall—

A page was missing. Followed several pages of brief entries, with long lapses of time between. Then came a page which gave a glimpse into that colorful life:

June, 1866. On board the “Esmeralda.” Arrived at El Dorado (Deuteronomy, 2:36) to-day. This is the first boat up the river.

The Scriptural reference had been inserted in very small writing above the name of the place. Evidently Grandfather King had been reading some Bible, if not the one his mother had given him.

A town has sprung up in the wilderness since I was here last, cursing the heat and stinging gnats in ’59. A stamp mill stands at the river’s edge and houses are scattered all up and down the river, while a ferry crosses to the other shore. A crowd came down to the landing for their mail and to see what strangers were on the boat. As yet I do not know whether our company will be stationed here or at Fort Callville, a few miles up the canyon. The Indians are quiet, they say. Too quiet, some of the miners think. On the edge of the crowd I saw a young squaw—or perhaps she is Spanish. She has the velvet eyes and the dark rose blooming in her cheeks, which speaks of Spanish blood. By God, she’s beautiful! Not more than sixteen and graceful as a fairy. I leaned over the rail—

Several pages were cut from the book just there, and Rawley swore to himself. When one is twenty-six one resents any interruption in a romance. The next entry read:

July 4th. Great doings at the fort to-day, with barbeque, wrestling, target practice and gambling. Miners and Indians came out of the hills to celebrate the holiday. In the wrestling matches I easily held my own, as in the sharp-shooting. Anita received my message and was here—el gusto de mi corazon. What a damned pity she’s not white! But she’s more Spanish than Indian, with her proud little ways and her light heart. Jess Cramer tried again to come between us, and there was a fight not down on the program. They carried him to the hospital. A little more and I’d have broken his back, the surgeon said. If he looks at her again—

More elision just when the interest was keenest. Rawley wanted to know more about Anita—“the joy of my heart”, as Grandfather had set it down in Spanish. The next page, however, whetted Rawley’s curiosity a bit more:

July 15th. To-morrow we march to Las Vegas to meet a party of emigrants and guard them to San Bernardino. The Indians are unsettled and traveling is not safe. A miner was murdered and scalped within ten miles of the fort the other day. No mi alebro—Anita wept and clung to me when I told her we had marching orders. Dulce corazon—God, how I wish she was white! But in any case I could not take her with me. I shall return in a month’s time—

August. In hospital, after a hellish trip in a wagon with other wounded. Mohave Indians attacked our wagon train, one hundred miles northeast of here, on the desert. While leading a charge afoot against the Indians I was shot through both legs. Gangrene set in before we could reach this place, and the doctor will not promise the speedy recovery I desire.

My Indian boy, Johnny Buffalo, refuses to leave my side. He hates all other whites. On the desert I picked him up half dead with thirst, and set him before me on the saddle because he feared the wagons. I judge him to be about ten. If I live, I shall keep the boy with me and train him for my body-servant. A faithful Indian is better than a watch-dog—

A lapse of several months intervened before the next entry. Then a brief record, which told of the closing of one romance and the beginning of another:

November 15th. This day I married Mary Jane Rawlins. Was able to stand during the ceremony, supported by two crutches. My Indian boy slipped away from the others and stood close behind me during the service, one hand clutching tightly my coat-tail. Mary has courage, to wish to marry a man likely to be a cripple the rest of his days.

Nothing further was recorded for several years; four, to be exact. Then:

Returned to-day from hospital. After all this suffering, both legs were taken off above the knee. The poison had spread to the joints. What a pity it was not my neck.

On the next page was one grim line:

December 4th, 1889. My wife, Mary Rawlins King, was buried to-day.

That ended the diary. In a memorandum pocket just inside the cover, a folded paper lay snug and flat. Rawley drew it forth eagerly and held it close to the lamp. His face clouded then with disappointment, for nothing was written on the paper save a list of Bible references.

So that was the legacy. An old diary just interesting enough to be tantalizing, with half the pages cut out; Bible references probably given to King, of the Mounted, by his mother. And a worn old Bible that had never been read. Rawley stacked the books one upon the other and leaned back in his chair, staring at them meditatively while he filled his pipe. He took three puffs before he laughed silently.

“He was a speedy old bird, I’ll say that much for him,” he told himself. “I’ll bet those pages he cut out fairly sizzled. And I’ll bet he cut them out about the time he married Grandmother. Also, I think he left one or two pages by mistake. Well, I’ll say he lived! As long as he had two good legs under him he was up and coming. I don’t suppose there’s a chance in the world of getting him to talk about Anita. ‘El gusto de mi corazon—’ There’s nothing like the Spanish for love-making words. And that was in July—and he married Grandmother in November. Poor little half-breed girl who should have been white! But then, I reckon he’d have gone back to her if he could. But they sent him home—crippled for life. You can’t blame Grandfather, after all. And I notice he mentioned the fact that Grandmother wanted to marry him. Sorry for the handsome young soldier on crutches, but it’s darned hard on Anita, just the same. And I don’t suppose he could even get word to her.”

He smoked the pipe out, his thoughts gone a-questing into the long ago, where the black arrows were dipped in loathsome poison, and young Indian girls had the fire and grace of the Spaniards.

“She’d be old, too, by now—if she’s alive,” he thought, as he knocked the ashes from his pipe and yawned. “I wonder if she ever forgot. And I wonder if Grandfather ever thinks of her now. He does, I’ll bet. Those terrible, blue eyes! They couldn’t forget.”

He went to bed, his imagination still held to the days of the fighting old frontier; still building adventures and romances for the dashing, blue-eyed King, of the Mounted.

He was dreaming of an Indian fight when a sharp tapping on his window woke him to gray dawn. He sprang out of bed, still knuckling the sleep out of his eyes, and saw Johnny Buffalo standing close to the open screen. The Indian raised a hand.

“You come quick. Your grandfather is dead.”

CHAPTER THREE
“MY HEART IS DEAD”

It was the evening after the funeral, and Rawley was sitting again on the porch, staring out gloomily over a cold pipe into the yard. His grandfather’s death had hit him a harder blow than he would have thought possible. The shock of it, coming close on the heels of his first keen realization that Grandfather King was a vivid personality, left him numbed with a sense of loss.

His mother’s evident relief at the removal of an unpleasant problem chilled and irritated him. Her calm assumption that the Indian must also be removed from the place, now that his master was gone, seemed to Rawley almost like sacrilege. The place belonged to his mother only by right of his grandfather’s generosity. To rob the Indian of a home he had enjoyed since boyhood was unthinkable.

He turned his head and glanced toward the west wing, his eyes following his thoughts. A dimly outlined figure stood erect upon the porch of the west wing. Pity gripped Rawley by the throat; pity and half-conscious admiration. Even the greatest grief of his life could not bow the shoulders of Johnny Buffalo. With no definite purpose, drawn only by the kinship of their loss, Rawley rose, crossed the grass plot by the syringas and sat down on the top step of the west porch.

Johnny Buffalo stood with his arms folded, the fringe on his buckskin sleeves whipping gently in the soft breeze that rose when the sun went down. He was staring straight out at nothing,—the nothingness that epitomized his future. Rawley slanted a glance up at him and began thoughtfully refilling his pipe. By his silence he was unconsciously bringing himself close to the soul of the Indian, the traditions of whose race forbade hasty speech.

Half a pipe Rawley smoked, staring meditatively into the dusk. In that time Johnny Buffalo had moved no more than if he were a statue of brown stone. Then Rawley tipped his head sidewise and looked up at him.

“Sit down, Johnny. I want to talk.”

“Talk is useless when the heart is dead,” said Johnny Buffalo after a long pause. But he came down two steps and seated himself, straight-backed, head up, beside Rawley.

“The man I love is cold. His spirit has gone. So I am left cold, and my heart is dead. I shall wait—and be glad when my body is dead.”

Rawley felt a sharp constriction in his throat. For one moment he almost hated his mother who would drive this stricken old man out into a world he did not know. A gun against his temple would be kinder. He drew a long breath.

“Would you like to wait here, where he lived?” Intuitively he crystallized his thoughts into the briefest words possible to express his meaning.

Johnny Buffalo shook his head slowly, with a decisiveness that could not be questioned. He folded his arms again across his grief-laden breast.

“It is your mother’s. In the fields I can wait for death, which is my friend. I shall walk toward the land of my people. When death finds me I shall smile.”

Rawley turned this over in his mind, seeking some point where argument might break down bitter resolution.

“Cowards wait for death when life grows hard,” he said at last. “The brave man meets life and faces sorrow because he is brave and will overcome. The brave man fights death which is an enemy. He does not run away from life and welcome his enemy. My grandfather found life very hard. For fifty years my grandfather faced it because his spirit was strong.”

“Your grandfather’s spirit was strong. His body was broken. My body is strong. My spirit is broken. Can a strong body live with a broken spirit inside?”

Rawley had to smoke over this for a while. Johnny Buffalo, he conceded privately, was no man’s fool. Rawley tried to put himself in the Indian’s place and discover, if he could, something that would make life worth the living.

“Your people are scattered,” he said quietly. “Few are left. The Mohaves are a broken tribe.”

“The Mohaves are not my people,” the Indian corrected him calmly. “I am Pahute. In the mountains along the river you call the Colorado, my people lived and hunted—and fought. My uncle was the chief, and I was proud. One day my mother beat me with a stick. I took my bow and my arrows and some dried meat, and that night I left my people, for I was angry and ashamed. With my bow I had killed two mountain sheep. With my bow I had hidden in the rocks and had wounded a white man who was digging in the hillside. I thought I was a warrior and not to be beaten by a squaw.

“The great thirst found me as I was walking toward the mountains where all my life I had seen the sun go down. With my bow and arrow I could get meat, but I could not get water. All my life I had lived near the river. The great thirst I did not know.

“I fell in the sand. When I awoke, water was in my mouth. I looked, and I was lying in the arms of a white man. He was big and strong and very handsome. He was Sergeant King. Your grandfather. I looked into his eyes and I was not afraid. There was no hate in my heart for him, but all other whites I hated. He lifted me and carried me in his arms and laid me in a wagon with white women and children. I hated them. I was weak from the thirst and from much walking, but I bit deep into the arm of a woman who put her hand on me.

“There was much yelling in that wagon. The woman struck me many times. A horse came galloping. Your grandfather lifted me out of the wagon and put me on the horse with him. So we rode together in one saddle. I loved him.

“The Mohaves attacked the whites when we had gone many days. My sergeant left me with his horse by the wagons. He crept behind bushes and killed many. He was a great warrior and I was proud when his gun brought death to a Mohave. I watched him, for I loved him. When I saw him fall from his knees and lie on his face in the sand, I jumped from the horse and went creeping through the brush. He was not dead. I took his gun and killed Mohaves. Pretty soon my sergeant looked at me and smiled while I killed. When there were no more Mohaves, the captain came. They put my sergeant in a wagon and I sat beside him. I gave him water, I gave him food. With my fists I beat back those who would take from me the joy of serving him.

“A long time he was sick in the town we entered. I was with him. Every day and every night he could open his eyes and see that I was with him.”

The sonorous voice ceased its monotone and the Indian sat silent, staring into the past. After a while he turned his head and looked full at Rawley.

“I was a boy when he took me. Now I am an old man. Since he took me there has been no night when my sergeant could call and get no answer. There has been no day when my sergeant could look and could not see me. Now my sergeant is gone. My heart is gone with him.”

Enthralled by the picture vividly painted with bold strokes by the Indian, Rawley sat hunched over his pipe, cuddling the cooling bowl in his fingers.

“Your sergeant was my grandfather. At the last I loved him, too. I am a King. I need you.” His tone stamped the lie as truth. Later he would find some way of making it the truth, he thought.

Johnny Buffalo eyed him sharply in the deepening dusk.

“You have read the book?” he asked after a minute. “If you have read, then I will go with you. The spirit of my sergeant will go. My heart may live again.”

“What book?” Rawley’s eyes widened.

“Your grandfather gave you the book. Your grandfather commanded that you read.” Reproach was in the voice of Johnny Buffalo.

“I have read the diary—the book where he wrote of his travels. Do you mean that book?”

Johnny Buffalo gave a grunt that was pure Indian and signified disgust.

Rawley frowned over the puzzle and his very evident defection. It must be the Bible that was meant, he decided. But he could see no reason why he should read the Bible and then go somewhere. Still, the thing seemed to have pulled Johnny Buffalo out of his slough of despond, and that was what Rawley had been working for.

“If you mean the Bible,” he said tentatively, “I read it a little, that night.”

Johnny Buffalo peered at him. “Read that book more. Your grandfather commanded that you should read. I heard the promise you gave. You said, ‘You bet.’ It was a promise to obey your grandfather.”

“I mean to keep the promise,” Rawley replied defensively. “I haven’t had time. Things have been pretty much upset since that night.”

The Indian meditated. “You read,” he admonished after due deliberation. “Your grandfather never talked to make words. I think he would have told you more. But his spirit went. I will stay in a tent by the river. When you have read, you come. We will talk more when you have read.”

Rawley felt the dismissal under the words. He offered the Indian money, which was refused by a gesture. Then, conscious of a certain vague excitement in the back of his mind, he went back to his own part of the house.

CHAPTER FOUR
RAWLEY READS THE BIBLE

In his room again, Rawley unlocked his desk and got the two books which were his “legacy.” He was young, and for all his technical training the spirit of romance called to his youth. There was something particularly important, something urgent in the admonition that he should read the Scriptures. Rawley’s training was all against vague speculations. Your mining engineer fights guesswork at every stage of his profession.

He sat down with the books in his hand and began to reason the thing out cold-bloodedly, as if it were a problem in mineral formations. He undid the clasp of the Bible, opened it and looked through all the leaves, seeking for some hidden paper. He spent half an hour in the search and discovered nothing. There was no message, then, hidden in the Bible. His grandfather must have meant the actual reading of the text itself.

Then he remembered the paper filled with references, hidden in the pocket of the diary. There might be something significant in that, he thought. He opened the diary, took out the paper and glanced down the list of references. They were scattered all through the book and there were sixty-four of them.

He opened the Bible again and began to look for the first one—I Kings, 20:3. The leaves stuck together, they turned in groups, they seemed determined that he should not find I Kings anywhere in the book. Daniel, Joshua, Jeremiah, Zechariah and Esther he peered into; there didn’t seem to be any Kings.

He muttered a word frequently found in the Bible, laid the book down and went to the living room, to the big, embossed Family Bible that had his birth date in it and the date of his father’s death; and pictures at which he had been permitted to look on Sunday afternoons if he were a good boy. His mother had gone out to some meeting or other. He had the room to himself and he could read at his leisure.

It struck him immediately that this Bible had not been much read either. But the leaves were thick enough to turn singly, the print was large, and if I Kings were present he felt that he had some chance of finding it. With pencil and paper beside him, and with the list of references in one hand, he therefore set himself methodically to the task. And he was twenty-six, and the blood of the adventurous Kings beat strongly in his veins. So when he had found the book and the chapter which headed the list, he ran his finger down the half-column to the third verse; and this is what he read:

Thy silver and thy gold is mine; thy wives also and thy children, even the goodliest, are mine.

Rawley was conscious of a slight chill of disappointment when he had written it down in his fine, beautifully exact, draftsman’s handwriting. But he went doggedly to work on the next reference nevertheless:

Psalms, 73:7. Their eyes stand out with fatness; they have more than heart could wish.

This was no more promising, but he had promised to read, and this seemed to him the most practical method of getting at his grandfather’s secret purpose and thoughts. So he settled himself down to an evening’s hard labor with book and paper.

He was just finishing the work when he heard his mother’s footsteps on the porch. Rather guiltily he closed the Bible and folded his notes, so that his mother, coming into the room, found Rawley standing before a large window, thoughtfully gazing out into the dark while he stuffed tobacco in his pipe. His mother was a religious woman and a member of the church, but she took her religion according to certain fixed rules. Reading the Bible casually, apparently for entertainment, would have required an explanation,—and Rawley did not want to explain, least of all to his mother.

He listened with perfunctory interest to her account of the evening’s edifications (a Swedish missionary having lectured in his own tongue, with an interpreter) and escaped when he could to his room. He wanted to be alone where he could try and guess the riddle his grandfather had placed before him.

That there was a message of some kind hidden away in the Scriptural quotations, Rawley felt absolutely certain. In the first place, they did not seem to him such passages as a devout person would cherish for the comfort they held. Moreover, certain verses had been repeated, although the text itself did not seem to justify such emphasis. Precious metals, and journeyings into rough country, he decided, was the dominant note of the citations and the net result was confusing to say the least. If his grandfather really intended that he should discover any meaning in the jumble, he should have furnished a key, Rawley told himself disgustedly, some time after midnight, when he had read the quotations over and over until his head ached and they seemed more meaningless than at first.

But his grandfather had told him emphatically that there was a lot in the Bible, if he read it carefully enough. There might have been in the statement no meaning deeper than an old man’s whim, but Rawley could not bring himself to believe it. Somewhere in those verses a secret lay hidden, and Rawley did not mean to give up until he had solved the problem.

At daylight the next morning Rawley awoke with what he considered an inspiration. He swung out of bed and with his bathrobe over his shoulders made a stealthy pilgrimage into the old-fashioned library where the conventional aggregation of “works” were to be found in leather-bound sets. Squatting on his haunches, he inspected a certain dim corner filled with fiction of the type commonly accepted as standard. He chose a volume and returned to bed, leaving one of his heelless slippers behind him in his absorption in the mystery.

He crawled back into bed and read Poe’s “Gold Bug” before breakfast, giving particular attention to the elucidation of the cipher contained in the story. The general effect of this research work was not illuminating. Poe’s cipher had been worked out with numbers, whereas Grandfather King had carelessly muffled his meaning in many words; unless the book, chapter and verse numbers were intended to convey the message in cipher similar to Poe’s.

This possibility struck Rawley in the middle of his shaving. He could not wait to put the theory to the test, but hastily wiped the razor, and the lather from one side of his face, opened his grandfather’s old Bible at the index and began setting down the number of each book above its name in the reference list. Thus, I Kings, 20:3 became the numerals 11-20-3.

He was eagerly at work at this when his mother called him to breakfast. His mother was a woman who worked industriously at being cultured. She had a secret ambition to be called behind her back a brilliant conversationalist. Breakfast, therefore, was always an uncomfortable meal for Rawley whenever his mother had attended some instructive gathering the evening before.

While he ate his first muffin, Rawley listened to a foggy interpretation of the Swedish lecturer’s ideas upon universal brotherhood. Rather, he sat quiet while his mother talked. Then he interrupted her shockingly.

“Say, Mother, do you know whether Grandfather ever read Poe?”

A swallow of coffee went down his mother’s “Sunday throat.” It was some minutes before she could reply, and by that time Rawley had decided that perhaps he had better not bother his mother about the cipher. He patted her on the back, begged her pardon for asking foolish questions, and escaped to his own room, where he spent the whole day with “The Gold Bug” opened before him at the page which contained Poe’s rule concerning the frequency with which certain letters occur in the alphabet.

That evening there was a fine litter of papers scribbled over with letters and numbers, singly and in groups. Rawley could not get two words that made sense. The thing simply didn’t work. If his grandfather had ever read Poe’s “Gold Bug”, he certainly had not used it for a pattern.

He went back to his sixty-four Bible verses and began studying them again. But he could not see any reason why Grandfather King should claim any one’s wives and children, whose “eyes stand out with fatness.” The third and fourth verses were intelligible;

Proverbs, 2:1. My son, if thou wilt receive my words, and hide my commandments with thee.

II Chronicles, 1:12. Wisdom and knowledge is granted unto thee; and I will give thee riches, and wealth, and honor, such as none of the kings have had that have been before thee, neither shall there any after thee have the like.

Even the next three lent themselves to a possible personal meaning:

Psalms, 2:10. Be wise now therefore, oh ye kings; be instructed, ye judges of the earth.

I Chronicles, 22:16. Of the gold, the silver, and the brass, and the iron, there is no number. Rise, therefore, and be doing and the Lord be with thee.

Deuteronomy, 11:11. But the land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven.

After that, he was all at sea.

He picked up the little Bible and opened it again. It must be there that the message was hidden; and Rawley felt very sure, by now, that the Bible quotations held the secret. The book opened at the eleventh chapter of Deuteronomy. Here was a verse marked,—a verse made familiar to Rawley in his hours of exhaustive study. Only a part of the verse was marked, however, by a penciled line drawn faintly beneath certain words.

With a sudden excitement Rawley seized a fresh sheet of paper and wrote down the marked passage, “The land whither ye go to possess it is a land of hills and valleys.”

Painstakingly then he began at the beginning of the reference list and worked his way once more through book, chapter and verse. But this time he used his grandfather’s Bible and copied only such parts of the verse as were underscored. Now he was on the right track, and as he wrote his excitement grew apace. From a hopeless jumble, the verses conveyed to him this message:

... Gold is mine ... more than heart could wish. My son, if thou wilt receive my words and hide my commandments with thee ... I will give thee riches, and wealth ... such as none of the kings have had that have been before thee. Be wise now, therefore, be instructed. Of the gold ... there is no number. The land whither ye go to possess it is a land of hills and valleys. Do this now, my son. Go through ... the city which is by the river in the wilderness ... yet making many rich. In the midst thereof ... a ferry-boat ... which is by the brink of the river. Take victuals with you for the journey ... turn you northward into the wilderness ... to a great and high mountain ... cedar trees in abundance ... scattered over the face of ... the high mountain. In the cliffs ... there is a path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture’s eye hath not seen. Come to the top of the mount ... pass over unto the other side ... westward ... on the hillside ... a very great heap of stones ... joined ... to ... a dry tree. Go into the clefts of the rocks ... into the tops of the jagged rocks ... to the sides of the pit ... take heed now ... that is ... exceeding deep. It is hid from the eyes of all living ... creep into ... the midst thereof ... eastward ... two hundred, fourscore and eight ... feet ... ye shall find ... a pure river of water ... proceed no further ... there is gold ... heavier than the sand ... pure gold ... upon the sand. And all the gold ... thou shalt take up ... then shalt thou prosper if thou takest heed ... I know thy poverty, but thou art rich ... take heed now ... On the hillside ... which is upon the bank of the river ... in the wilderness ... there shall the vultures also be gathered ... ye shall find ... him that ... is mine enemy ... his mouth is full of cursing ... under his tongue is mischief and vanity ... be watchful ... the heart is desperately wicked ... He that keepeth his mouth keepeth his life ... I put my trust in thee. Now, my son, the Lord be with thee and prosper thou.

His first impulse was to find Johnny Buffalo. He folded the paper, slipped it safely into a pocket and reached for his hat. He had neglected to ask the Indian just where he meant to make his camp, but he felt sure that he could find him. Indeed, when he stopped in the path halfway to the front gate and looked toward the west wing, he could just discern a figure standing on the porch. So he crossed the grass plot and in a moment stood before Johnny Buffalo.

Again his mood impelled him to the manner that most appealed to the old Indian, nephew of a chief of his tribe. He waited for a space before he spoke. And when he did speak it was in the restrained tone which had won the Indian’s confidence the evening before.

“I have read,” he stated quietly, “and I know what it is that Grandfather meant. If we can go inside I’ll read it to you.”

“The door is locked.” Johnny Buffalo pointed one finger over his shoulder. “It is a new lock put there by your mother. She does not want me to go in.”

Rawley pressed his lips tightly together before he dared trust himself to speak. He looked at the barred door, thought of the room he had seen, its furnishings enriched by a hundred little mementoes of the past that belonged to his soldier grandfather. He had a swift, panicky fear that his mother would call in a second-hand furniture dealer and take what price he offered for the stuff. That, he promised himself, he would prevent at all costs.

“Come into my room, then,” he invited. “I want to read you what I discovered.”

“No. The house is your mother’s. We will go to my camp.”

So it was by the light of a camp fire, with the Mississippi flowing majestically past them under the stars, that Rawley first read as a complete document the Scriptural fragments that contained his grandfather’s message. Away in the northeast the lights of St. Louis set the sky aglow. Little lapping waves crept like licking lips against the bank with a whispery sound that mingled pleasantly with the subdued crackling of the fire. Across the leaping flames, Johnny Buffalo sat with his brown, corded hands upon his knees, his black braids drawn neatly forward across his chest. His lean face with its high nose and cheek bones flared into light or grew shadowed as the flames reached toward him or drew away. His lips were pressed firmly together, as if he had learned well the lesson of setting their seal against his thoughts.

“There is one point I thought you might be able to tell me,” Rawley said, looking across the fire when he had finished reading. “This ‘City which is by the river in the wilderness’—and ‘In the midst thereof a ferryboat which is by the brink of the river.’ Do you know what place is meant by that? Is it El Dorado, Nevada? Because Grandfather’s diary tells of going up the river to El Dorado. And I remember, now, there was some kind of Bible reference written over the name. I don’t remember what it was, though. I didn’t look it up. We’ll have to make sure about that, for the directions start from that point. It says we’re to go through the city which is by the river, and turn northward—and so on.”

The Indian reached out a hand, lifted a stick of wood and laid it across the fire. His eyes turned toward the river.

“Many times, when the air was warm and the stars sat in their places to watch the night, my sergeant came here with me, and I gathered wood to make a fire. Many hours he would sit here in his chair beside the river. Sometimes he would talk. His words were of the past when he was the strongest of all men. Sometimes his words were of El Dorado. It is a city by the river, and a ferryboat is in the midst thereof. It has made many rich with the gold they dig from the mountains. I think that is the city you must go through.”

“There isn’t any city now,” Rawley told him. “It’s been abandoned for years. I don’t think there’s a town there, any more.”

“There is the place by the river,” Johnny Buffalo observed calmly. “There is the great and high mountain. There is ‘the path that no man knoweth.’”

“Yes, you bet. And we’re going to find it, Johnny Buffalo. I’ve got a chance to go out that way this month, to examine a mine. I didn’t think I’d take the job. I wanted to go to Mexico. But now, of course, it will be Nevada, and I’ll want you to go with me. Do you know that country?”

A strange expression lightened the Indian’s face for an instant.

“When I killed my first meat,” he said, “I could walk from the kill to the city by the river. My father’s tent was no more distant than it is from here to the great city yonder. Not so far, I think. The way was rough with many hills.”

Impulsively Rawley leaned and stretched out his arm toward the Indian.

“Let’s shake on it. We will go together, and you will be my partner. Whatever we find is the gift of my grandfather, and half of it is yours when we find it. I feel he’d want it that way. Is it a go, Johnny Buffalo?”

Something very much like a smile stirred the old man’s lips. He took Rawley’s hand and gave it a solemn shake, once up, once down, as is the way of the Indian.

“It is go. You are like my sergeant when he held me in his arms and gave me water from his canteen. You are my son. Where you go I will go with you.”

CHAPTER FIVE
A CITY FORSAKEN

The storekeeper at Nelson stood on his little slant-roofed porch and mopped his beaded forehead with a blue calico handkerchief. The desert wrinkles around his eyes drew together and deepened as he squinted across the acarpous gulch where a few rough-board shacks stood forlorn with uncurtained windows, to the heat-ridden hillside beyond.

“It’s going to be awful hot down there by the river,” he observed deprecatingly. “You’ll find the water pretty muddy—but maybe you know that. Strangers don’t always; it’s best to make sure, so if you haven’t a bucket or something to settle the water in, I’d advise you to take one along. I’ve an extra one I could lend you, if you need it.”

“We have a bucket, thanks.” Rawley stepped into the dust-covered car loaded with camp outfit. “El Dorado is right at the mouth of the canyon, isn’t it?”

The storekeeper gave him an odd look. “This is El Dorado,” he answered drily. “This whole canyon is the El Dorado. There used to be a town at the mouth of the canyon, but that’s gone years ago. Better take the left-hand road when you get down here a quarter of a mile or so. That will take you past the Techatticup Mine. Below there, turn to the right where two shacks stand close together in the fork of the road. The other trail’s washed, and I don’t know as you could get down that way. Car in good shape for the pull back? She’s pretty steep, coming this way.”

“She’s pulled everything we’ve struck, so far,” Rawley replied cheerfully. “Other cars make it, don’t they?”

“Some do—and some holler for help. It’s a long, hard drag up the wash. And if you tackle it in the hot part of the day you’ll need plenty of water. And,” the storekeeper added with a whimsical half-smile, “the hot part of the day is any time between sunrise and dark. It does get awful hot down in there! I don’t mean to knock my own district,” he added, “but I don’t like to see any one start down the canyon without knowing about what to expect. Then, if they want to go, that’s their business.”

“That’s the way to look at it,” Rawley agreed. “I expect you’ve been here a good while, haven’t you?”

The storekeeper wiped a fresh collection of beads from his forehead. He looked up and down the canyon rather wistfully.

“About as many years as you are old,” he said quietly. “I came in here twenty-five years ago.”

Rawley laughed. “I was about a year old when you landed. Seems a long while back, to me.” He stepped on the starter, waved his hand to the storekeeper and went grinding away down the steep trail through the loose sand. Johnny Buffalo, sitting beside him, lifted a hand and laid it on his arm.

“Stop! He calls,” he said.

Rawley stopped the car, his head tilted outward, looking back. The storekeeper was coming down the trail toward them.

“I forgot to tell you there’s a bad Indian loose in the hills somewhere along the river,” he panted when he came up. “He’s waylaid a couple of prospectors that we know of. A blood feud against the whites, the Indians tell me. You may not run across him at all, but it will be just as well to keep an eye out.”

“What’s his name?” Johnny Buffalo turned his head and stared hard at the other.

“His name’s Queo. He’s middle-aged—somewhere in the late forties, I should say. Medium-sized and kind of stocky built. He’ll kill to get grub or tobacco. Seeing there’s two of you he might not try anything, but I’d be careful, if I were in your place. There’s a price on his head, so if he tries any tricks—” He waved his hand and grinned expressively as he turned back to the store.

“He is older than that man thinks,” said Johnny Buffalo after a silence. “Queo has almost as many years as I have. When we were children we fought. He is bad. For him to kill is pleasure, but he is a coward.”

“If there is a price on his head he has probably left the country,” Rawley remarked indifferently. “Old-timers are fine people, most of them. But they do like to tell it wild to tenderfeet. I suppose that’s human nature.”

Johnny Buffalo did not argue the point. He seemed content to gaze at the hills in the effort to locate old landmarks. And as for Rawley himself, his mind was wholly absorbed by his mission into the country, which he had dreamed of for more than a month. There had been some delay in getting started. First, he could not well curtail the length of his visit with his mother, in spite of the fact that they seemed to have little in common. Then he thought it wise to make the trip to Kingman and report upon a property there which was about to be sold for a good-sized fortune. The job netted him several hundred dollars, which he was likely to need. Wherefore he had of necessity had plenty of time to dream over his own fortune which might be lying in the hills—“In the cleft of the jagged rocks”—waiting for him to find it.

Just at first he had been somewhat skeptical. Fifty years is a long time for gold to remain hidden in the hills of a mining country so rich as Nevada, without some prospector discovering it. But Johnny Buffalo believed. Whether his belief was based solely upon his faith in his sergeant, Rawley could not determine. But Johnny Buffalo had a very plausible argument in favor of the gold remaining where Grandfather King had left it in the underground stream.

The fact that Rawley was exhorted to “take victuals for the journey” meant a distance of a good many miles, perhaps, which they must travel from El Dorado. Then, they were to go to the top of a very high mountain and pass over on the other side. Johnny Buffalo argued that the start was to be made from El Dorado merely because the mountain would be most visible from that point. It would be rough country, he contended. The code mentioned cliffs and great heaps of stones and clefts in jagged rocks, with a deep pit, “Hid from the eyes of all living,” for the final goal. He thought it more than likely that Grandfather King’s gold mine was still undiscovered. And toward the last, Rawley had been much more inclined to believe him. He had read diligently all the mining information he could get concerning this particular district, as far back as the records went. Nowhere was any mention made of such a rich placer discovery on—or in—a mountain.

He was thinking all this as he drove the devious twistings and turnings of the canyon road. Another mine or two they passed; then, nosing carefully down a hill steeper than the others, they turned sharply to the left and were in the final discomfort of the “wash.” A veritable sweat box it was on this particular hot afternoon in July. The baked, barren hills rose close on either side. Like a deep, gravelly river bed long since gone dry, the wash sloped steeply down toward the Colorado. Rawley could readily understand now the solicitude of the storekeeper. The return was quite likely to be a time of tribulation.

He had expected to come upon a camp of some sort. But the canyon opened bleakly to the river, the hot sand of its floor sloping steeply to meet the lapping waves of the turgid stream. At the water’s edge, on the first high ground of the bank, were ruins of an old stamp mill, which might have been built ten years ago or a hundred, so far as looks went.

He left the car and climbed upon the cement floor of the old mill. What at first had seemed to be a greater extension of the plant he now discovered was a walled roadway winding up to the crest of the hill. He swung about and gazed to the northward, as the Bible code had commanded that he should travel. A mile or so up the river were the walls of a deep canyon,—Black Canyon, according to his map. Farther away, set back from the river a mile, perhaps two miles, a sharp-pointed hill shouldered up above its fellows. This seemed to be the highest mountain, so far as he could see, in that direction. If that were the “great and high mountain” described in the code, their journey would not be so long as Johnny Buffalo anticipated.

The nearer view was desolation simmering in the heat. A hundred yards away, on the opposite bank of the wash, the forlorn ruins of a cabin or two gave melancholy evidence that here men had once worked and laughed and loved—perchance. He looked at the furnace yawning beside him, and at the muddy water swirling in drunken haste just below. It might have been just here that his grandfather had landed from the steamboat Gila and had watched the lovely young half-breed girl in the crowd come to welcome the boat and passengers.

He started when Johnny Buffalo spoke at his elbow. How the Indian had reached that spot unheard and unseen Rawley did not know. Johnny Buffalo was pointing to the north.

“I think that high mountain is where we must go,” he said. “It is one day’s travel. We can go to-day when the sun is behind the mountains, and we can walk until the stars are here. Very early in the morning we can walk again, and before it is too hot we can reach the trees where it will be cool.”

“We have a lot of grub and things in the car,” Rawley objected. “It seems to me that it wouldn’t be a bad plan to carry the stuff up here and cache it somewhere in this old mill. Then if your friend Queo should show up, there won’t be so much for him to steal. And if we want to make a camp on the mountain, we can come down here and carry the stuff up as we need it. There’s a hundred dollars’ worth of outfit in that car, Johnny,” he added frugally. “I’m all for keeping it for ourselves.”

Johnny Buffalo looked at the mountain, and he looked down at the car,—and then grunted a reluctant acquiescence. Rawley laughed at him.

“That’s all right—the mountain won’t run away over night,” he bantered, slapping his hand down on Johnny Buffalo’s shoulder with an affectionate familiarity bred in the past month. “I’ve been juggling that car over the desert trails since sunrise, and I wouldn’t object to taking it easy for a few hours.”

Johnny Buffalo said no more but began helping to unload the car. It was he who chose the trail by which they carried the loads to the upper level, cement-floored, where no tracks would show. He chose a hiding place beneath the wreckage of some machinery that had fallen against the bank in such a way that an open space was left beneath, large enough to hold their outfit.

A huge rattlesnake protested stridently against being disturbed. Rawley drew his automatic, meaning to shoot it; but Johnny Buffalo stopped him with a warning gesture, and himself killed the snake with a rock. While it was still writhing with a smashed head, he picked it up by the tail, took a long step or two and heaved it into the river, grinning his satisfaction over a deed well done.

Rawley, standing back watching him, had a swift vision of the old Indian paddling solemnly about the yard near the west wing. There he was an incongruous figure amongst the syringas and the roses. Here, although he had discarded the showy fringed buckskin for the orthodox brown khaki clothes of the desert, he somehow fitted into his surroundings and became a part of the wilderness itself. Johnny Buffalo was assuredly coming into his own.

CHAPTER SIX
TRAILS MEET

By sunrise they were ready for the trail, light packs and filled canteens slung upon their shoulders. The car was backed against the bluff that would shade it from the scorching sunlight from early afternoon to sundown. Beside it were the embers of a mesquite-wood fire where they had boiled coffee and fried bacon in the cool of dawn. As a safeguard against the loss of his car, Rawley had disconnected the breaker points from the distributor and carried them, carefully wrapped, in his pocket. There would be no moving of the car under its own power until the points were replaced. And Johnny Buffalo had advised leaving a few things in the car, to ward off suspicion that their outfit had been cached. Furthermore, he had cunningly obliterated their tracks through the deep, fine sand to the ruins of the stamp mill. Even the keen, predatory eyes of an outlaw Indian could scarcely distinguish any trace of their many trips that way.

They crossed the wash, turned into the remnant of an old road leading up the bank to the level above, and followed a trail up the river. Once Johnny Buffalo stopped and pointed down the bank.

“The ferryboat went there,” he explained. “Much land has been eaten by the river since last I saw this place. Many houses stood here. They are gone. All is gone. My people are gone, like the town. Of Queo only have I heard, and him the white men hunt as they hunt the wolf.”

Rawley nodded, having no words for what he felt. There was something inexpressibly melancholy in this desolation where his grandfather had found riotous life. Of the fortunes gathered here, the fortunes lost—of the hopes fulfilled and the hopes crushed slowly in long, monotonous days of toil and disappointment—what man could tell? Only the river, rushing heedlessly past as it had hurried, all those years ago, to meet the lumbering little river boats struggling against its current with their burden of human emotions, only the river might have told how the town was born,—and how it had died. Or the grim hills standing there as they had stood since the land was in the making, looking down with saturnine calm upon the puny endeavors of men whose lives would soon enough cease upon earth and be forgotten. Rawley’s boot toe struck against something in the loose gravel,—a child’s shoe with the toe worn to a gaping mouth, the heel worn down to the last on the outer edge: dry as a bleached bone, warped by many a storm, blackened, doleful. Even a young man setting out in quest of his fortune, with a picturesque secret code in his pocket, may be forgiven for sending a thought after the child who had scuffed that coarse little shoe down here in El Dorado.

But presently Johnny Buffalo, leading the way briskly, his sharp old eyes taking in everything within their range as if he were eagerly verifying his memories of the place, turned from the trail along the river and entered the hills. His moccasined feet clung tenaciously to the steep places where Rawley’s high-laced mining boots slipped. The sun rays struck them fiercely and the “little stinging gnats” which Grandfather King had mentioned in his diary were there to pester them, poising vibrantly just before the eyes as if they waited only the opportunity to dart between the lids.

The thought that perhaps his grandfather had come that way, fifty years ago, filled the toil of climbing up the long gully with a peculiar interest. Fifty years ago these hills must have looked much the same. Fifty years ago, the prospect holes they passed occasionally may have been fresh-turned earth and rocks. Men searching for rich silver and gold might have been seen plodding along the hillsides; but the hills themselves could not have changed much. His grandfather had looked upon all this, and had divided his thoughts, perhaps, between the gold and his latest infatuation, the half-breed girl, Anita. And suddenly Rawley put a vague speculation into words:

“Hey, Johnny! Here’s a good place to make a smoke, in the shade.” He waited until the Indian had retraced the dozen steps between them. “Johnny, there was a beautiful half-breed girl here, when Grandfather made his last trip up the river. She was half Spanish. My grandfather mentioned her once or twice in his diary. Do you remember her?”

“There were many beautiful girls in my tribe,” Johnny Buffalo retorted drily. “What name did he call her?”

“Anita. It’s a pretty name, and it proves the Spanish, I should say.”

The old man stared at the opposite slope. His mouth grew thin-lipped and stern.

“My uncle, the chief, was betrayed in his old age. His youngest squaw loved a Spanish man with noble look. I have the tale from my older brothers, who told me. The child she bore was the child of the Spanish gentleman. My uncle’s youngest squaw—died.” Johnny Buffalo paused significantly. “The child was given to my mother to keep. Her name was Anita. She was very beautiful. I remember. Many visits Anita made with friends near this place. I think she is the same. It was not good for my sergeant to look upon her with love. I have heard my brothers whisper that Anita looked with soft eyes upon the white soldiers.”

Rawley’s young sympathies suffered a definite revulsion. If his grandfather’s dulce corazon were a coquette, her fruitless waiting for his return was not so beautifully tragic after all. There were other white soldiers stationed along the river, Rawley remembered, with a curl of the lip. His romantic imagination had not balked at the savage blood in her veins, since she was a beauty of fifty years ago. But he was a sturdy-souled youth with very old-fashioned notions concerning virtue. He finished his smoke and went on, feeling cheated by the cold facts he had almost forced from Johnny Buffalo.

They reached the head of that gulch, climbed a steep, high ridge where they must use hands as well as feet in the climbing, and dug heels into the earth in a descent even steeper. Rawley told himself once that he would just as soon start out to follow a crow through this country as to follow Johnny Buffalo. One word had evidently been omitted from the Indian’s English education by Grandfather King,—the word “detour.” Rawley thought of the straight-forward march of locusts he had once read about and wondered if Johnny Buffalo had taken lessons from them in his youth.

However, he consoled himself with the thought that a straight line to the mountain would undoubtedly shorten the distance. If the Indian could climb sneer walls of rock like a lizard, Rawley would attempt to follow. And they would ultimately arrive at their destination, though the glimpse he had obtained of the mountain from the ridge they had just crossed failed to confirm Johnny Buffalo’s assertion that it was one day’s travel. They had been walking three hours by Rawley’s watch, and the mountain looked even farther away than from El Dorado. But Johnny Buffalo was so evidently enjoying every minute of the hike through his native hills that Rawley could not bear to spoil his pleasure by even hinting that he was blazing a mighty rough trail.

They were working up another tortuous ravine where not even Johnny Buffalo could always keep a straight line by the sun. In places the walls overhung the gulch in shelving, weather-worn cliffs of soft limestone. Bowlders washed down from the heights made slow going, because they were half the time climbing over or around some huge obstruction; and because of the rattlesnakes they must look well where a hand or a foot was laid. Johnny Buffalo was still in the lead; and Rawley, for all his youth and splendid stamina was not finding the Indian too slow a pacemaker. Indeed, he was perfectly satisfied when the dozen feet between them did not lengthen to fifteen or twenty.

The mounting sun made the heat in that gully a terrific thing to endure. But the Indian did not lift the canteen to his mouth; nor did Rawley. Both had learned the foolishness of drinking too freely at the beginning of a journey. So, when Johnny Buffalo stopped suddenly in the act of passing around a jutting ledge, Rawley halted in his tracks and waited to see what was the reason.

The Indian glanced back at him and crooked a forefinger. Rawley set one foot carefully between two rocks, planted the other as circumspectly, and so, without a sound, stole up to Johnny Buffalo’s side. Johnny waited until their shoulders touched then leaned forward and pointed.

Up on the ridge a couple of hundred yards before them, a man moved crouching behind a bush, came into the open, bent lower and peered downward. His actions were stealthy; his whole manner inexpressibly furtive. His back was toward them, and the ridge itself hid the thing he was stalking.

“He’s after a deer, maybe. Or a mountain sheep,” Rawley whispered, when the man laid a rifle across a rock and settled lower on his haunches.

“Still, it is well that we see what he sees,” Johnny Buffalo whispered back. “We will stalk him as he stalks his kill.”

The Indian squirmed his shoulder out of the strap sling that held his rifle in its case behind him. With seeming deliberation, yet with speed he uncased the weapon, worked the lever gently to make sure the gun was chamber loaded, and motioned Rawley to follow him.

In the hills the old man had somehow slipped into the leadership, and now Rawley obeyed him without a word. They stole up the side of the gulch where the man on the ridge could not discover them without turning completely around; which would destroy his position beside the rock and risk the loss of a shot at his game. He seemed wholly absorbed in watching something on the farther side of the ridge, and it did not seem likely that he would hear them.

A little farther up, a ledge cutting across the head of the gulch hid him completely from the two. An impulse seized Rawley to cross the gulch there and to climb the ridge farther on, nearer the spot which the man had seemed to be watching. He caught the attention of Johnny Buffalo, whispered to him his desire, and received a nod of understanding and consent. Johnny would keep straight on, and so come up behind the fellow.

Unaccountably, Rawley wanted to hurry. He wanted to see the man’s quarry before a shot was fired. So, when a wrinkle in the ridge made easy climbing and afforded concealment, he went up a tiny gully, digging in his toes and trying to keep in the soft ground so that sliding rocks could not betray him.

Unexpectedly the deep wrinkle brought him up to a notch in the ridge, beyond which another gully led steeply downward. Immediately beneath him a narrow trail wound sinuously, climbing just beyond around the point of another hill. He could not see the man up on the ridge, but he could not doubt that the rifle was aimed at some point along this trail. He was standing on a rock, reconnoitering and expecting every moment to hear a shot, when the unmistakable sound of voices came up to him from somewhere below. He listened, his glance going from the ridge to the bit of trail that showed farther away on the point of the opposite hill. The thought flashed through his mind that the man with the rifle could easily have seen persons coming around that point; that he must be lying in wait. Whoever it was coming, they must pass along the trail directly beneath the watcher on the ridge. It would be an easy rifle shot; a matter of no more than a hundred yards downhill.

He stepped down off the rock and started running down the steep gully to the trail. He was, he judged, fully a hundred yards up the trail from where the man was watching above. He did not know who was coming; it did not matter. It was an ambush, and he meant to spoil it. So he came hurtling down the steep declivity, the lower third of which was steeper than he suspected. Had he made an appointment with the travelers to meet them at that spot, he could not possibly have kept it more punctually. For he slid down a ten-foot bank of loose earth and arrived sitting upright in the trail immediately under the nose of a bald-faced burro with a distended pack half covering it from sight.

There was no time for ceremony. Rawley flung up his arms and shooed the astonished animal back against another burro, so precipitately that he crowded it completely off the trail and down the steep bank. Rawley heard the sullen thud of the landing as he scrambled to his knees, glancing apprehensively over his shoulder as he did so. There had been no shot fired, but he could not be certain that the small flurry in the trail had been unobserved.