The eagle's wing: A story of the Colorado

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...

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 sti...

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 harde...

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 y...

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 togethe...

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...

He ran to the point of rocks, gathered himself together and cleared the trail and the open space beyond in one leap. How he got up the steep bank he never remembered afterward....

Their progress was necessarily slow, and Nevada’s “mile or so” seemed longer. Johnny Buffalo remained no more than half-conscious and breathed painfully. Nevada invented a makes...

The girl turned and looked at him over her shoulder, flinging back a heavy braid of coppery auburn hair. She had Pickles by his lead rope and was plainly heading into the trail...

It seemed as fantastic as a troubled dream. To be lying there helpless, to look across and see Johnny Buffalo staring grimly up at the ceiling, his face set stoically to hide th...

At intervals of fevered wakefulness during that night, Rawley went over and over the astonishing state of affairs. The hour and the temperature that was almost inevitable conspi...

How wisely, how honestly, how bravely he would play the Great Game, Rawley unconsciously indicated that evening, when Peter sat alone with the two, after Nevada and her grandmot...

The tribe of Cramer dined. In the shack beside the big mesquite tree was heard the clatter of knives and forks--more knives than forks, one might guess--the dull clink of enamel...

A high-keyed snarl brought the two sharply facing the crag. Bearing down upon them with his fists flailing the air in a kind of impotent fury came old Jess Cramer, like a vultur...

For days Rawley watched the might of the rushing Colorado and wondered at the temerity of men who would calmly plan to check its headlong progress to the sea. A splendid dream,...

Came a time when Rawley felt fit enough for work; and this investigation of the wild, improbable scheme of the Cramers would be work, with every faculty of the engineer on the a...

Young Jess and Old Jess exchanged sidelong glances. Young Jess turned his head away from the group and spat out a quid of tobacco on to the porch floor, whereat Nevada frowned h...

Johnny Buffalo was on the warpath. Figuratively speaking, he was brandishing the tomahawk over the tribe of Cramer. The gods he worshiped had been blasphemed, the altar upon whi...

The month of inaction which followed fretted Johnny Buffalo nearly as much as the companionship of the squaws had done. In his boyhood he had been trained to serve his sergeant....

On a certain day in June, Rawley left his car at Nelson and started afoot down the trail to Cramers. Although the war was over he was still in the service of the government. A b...

“To-morrow,” said Johnny Buffalo, with a transparent air of triumph, “we will go to the cleft in the rocks, by the path which no man knoweth, and you shall go down into the deep...

Johnny Buffalo held a handful of nuggets in his hard, brown palms. His eyes shone whenever he looked toward the old wheel chair beside the window. He listened to Rawley’s explan...

Rawley drove down El Dorado Canyon, now silent in mid-afternoon, with not a sound of stamp mill or compressor or the mingled voices of men at work. Techatticup stood forlorn, de...

Life seemed to have moved sluggishly in the basin, save in the increase of the tribe. Six young Cramers now walked upright, though the smallest walked insecurely and frequently...

“You may as well listen to me,” said Rawley in the incisive tone which big responsibilities had taught him. “I am your friend. My only object in coming here is to be of service...

Never before had Rawley seen Young Jess in a rage. A surly, ignorant fellow he knew him to be, and not too intelligent. A dangerous fellow, Rawley believed him; quite capable of...

Las Vegas awoke one morning to find itself in the public eye. Destiny had so decreed when it permitted Las Vegas to become the town nearest to the proposed dam site at Boulder C...

Rawley had them rounded up in the private car--governors and high officials and newspaper representatives--lighting cigars, cigarettes and pipes and eyeing, their curiosity poli...

“I should like to say just here, if I may, that many of the astonishing facts as Mr. Cramer has placed them before you I can vouch for from my own personal knowledge.” Rawley wa...

On the street men were guessing wild. An explosion had taken place,--every one knew that. The majority guessed that the powder magazine at Searchlight had blown up; though as a...

They walked on, heads turned toward the spectacle. The sun, rising higher, splashed a mellow light into the deep crannies between the bowlders, set the bald pates of smoothed gr...

“Going to try for a rescue of the--body?” Jerry Newton looked up from fussing with one of the best small cameras on the market to-day. He had “got” that dramatic race with the f...

Nevada was lying on the bed in Anita’s shack, trying to convince Rawley that the doctor knew what he was talking about. The doctor had declared that Nevada’s injuries were mostl...