Not a man among them knew Peter Cramer. Not one had ever heard the name. He looked a man of the desert, every inch of his six-feet-and-something-over. He might turn out to be a bore; he did not look like a boor. He did not wear his hair in the prevailing fad; it grew thick to the nape of his neck and was trimmed there neatly by some barber who remembered how they used to cut hair. His dark suit was incontestably made to his measure,--but it had been made before the War. You don’t get such material nowadays. At least, men of the desert do not get it. His hands, as he shuffled a few slips of paper, showed how hardly they had been used. They were the hands of a laborer, scrubbed meticulously clean, the nails trimmed painstakingly,--with a pocket-knife, one could guess. So there he stood, towering above them all, with pre-War clothes, the hands of a laborer, the eyes of a thinker. The car became very still. Every man there looked at Peter. And one man’s eyes held love, sympathy and a shade of anxiety. To this moment, Rawley King could only guess at what his Uncle Peter was going to say. There was a little prayer in Rawley’s heart, in his eyes. A modern, young-man prayer, “God, don’t let him pull a boner!” It would be well if all the prayers in all the churches were as sincere. “Gentlemen of the Colorado River Commission” (Peter began in his deep, even voice that carried far) “you do not know me, and I do not know you. I thank you for consenting to listen to me. When I am done, you may thank me for consenting with myself to talk to you. In the words of a certain wise man--whose wisdom I wish I might borrow as I borrow his words--‘I am not a clever speaker in any way at all; unless, indeed, by a clever speaker they mean a man who speaks the truth. You will not hear an elaborate speech dressed up with words and phrases. I will say to you what I have to say, without preparation and in the words which come first, for I believe that my cause is just. So let none of you expect anything else.’ If I could better that statement, make it more forceful, I should hesitate. Gentlemen, they stand for absolute honesty of purpose. Let them stand for me now, as they stood for Socrates--but I hope with happier effect. “Fifty-four years ago, I was born within sight and sound of the Colorado River and within sight of the cliffs of Black Canyon. The river has been a part of my life. The wilderness hedged me in, mile upon mile. When I was ten, so long ago as that, I was taught the use of a rifle that I might help defend lives and property from hostile Indians and renegade white men. My mother is the granddaughter of a chief, and the daughter of a Spanish nobleman who voyaged up from Mexico before white men had seen this country. I am therefore one-fourth Indian,--a son of the desert. My father was a white man of good blood.