Still Jim

At 66th street, Jim had passed the Californian and caught up with Sara. He held Sara's pace for the next block. Try as he would, the young Greek could not throw Jim off and instinct told him that Jim had enough reserve in him to forge ahead in the final spurt at Columbus Circle, six blocks away.

But at 63rd street something happened. A fire alarm was turned in from a store in the middle of the block. The police tried to move the crowd away without interfering with the race, but just as the runners reached the point of the fire, the crowd broke into the street. A boy darted in front of Sara and Jim, and Sara struck at the lad. It was a back-handed blow and Sara brought his elbow back into Jim's stomach with a force that doubled Jim up like a closing book. Sara did not look round. A policeman jerked Jim to his feet.

"After 'em, boy. Ye still can beat the next bunch!" cried the policeman. But Jim was all in. The blow had been a vicious one and he swayed limply against the burly bluecoat.

"Dirty luck!" grunted the Irishman, and with his arm under Jim's shoulders he walked slowly with him to the rooms at Columbus Circle, where the runners were to dress. There Uncle Denny found Jim, still white and shaken, dressing slowly.

"What happened to you, me boy?" asked Uncle Denny, looking at him keenly.

Jim sat limply on the edge of a cot and told Dennis what had happened.

"The low scoundrel!" roared Uncle Denny. "Leave me get at him!"

Jim caught the purple-faced Irishman by the arm. "You are to say nothing to anyone, Uncle Denny. How could I prove that he meant to do it? And do you want me to be a loser that bellyaches?"

Uncle Denny looked Jim over and breathed hard for a moment before he replied: "Very well, me boy. But I always suspected he had a yellow streak in him and this proves it. Have you seen him do dirty tricks before?"

"I never had any proof," answered Jim carefully. "And it was always some money matter and I'm no financier, so I laid it to my own ignorance."

"A man who will do dirt in money matters can't be a clean sport," said Uncle Denny. "This ends any chance of your going into business with him, Jim, I hope."

"I gave that idea up long ago, Uncle Denny. Pen is not to hear a word of all this, remember, won't you?"

At this moment, Saradokis burst in the door. He was dressed and his face was vivid despite his exhaustion.

"Hey, Still! What happened to you? Everybody's looking for you. Congratulate me, old scout!"

Jim looked from Sara's outstretched hand to his beaming face. Then he put his own hand in his pocket.

"That was a rotten deal you handed me, Sara," he said in the drawl that bit.

"What!" cried Sara.

"What's done's done," replied Jim. "I'm no snitcher, so you know you're safe. But I'm through with you."

Sara turned to Uncle Denny, injured innocence in his face. "What is the matter with him, Mr. Dennis?" he exclaimed.

"Still Jim, me boy, go down to the machine while I talk with Sara," said Dennis.

"No, there is no use talking," insisted Jim.

"Jim," said Dennis sternly, "I ask you to obey me but seldom."

Without a word Jim picked up the suit case containing his running togs and went down to the automobile where his mother and Penelope were waiting. To their anxious questions he merely replied that he had fallen. This was enough for the two women folk, who tucked him in between them comfortably and his mother held his hand while Pen gave him a glowing account of the finish of the race.

Jim listened with a grim smile, his gray eyes steadily fixed on Pen's lovely face. Not for worlds would he have had Penelope know that Sara had won the race on a foul. Whatever she learned about the Greek he was determined she should not learn through him. He was going to win on his own points, he told himself, and not by tattling on his rival.

It was fifteen minutes before Dennis and Sara appeared. Sara's face was red with excitement and drawn with weariness. He walked directly to the machine and, looking up into Pen's face, exclaimed:

"If Jim has told you that I gave him a knockout to win the race, it's a lie, Pen!"

Penelope looked from Jim to Uncle Denny, then back to Sara in utter bewilderment.

"Why, Sara! He never said anything of the kind! He said he had a bad fall when the crowd closed in and that it put him out of the race."

"I told you to keep quiet, Sara, that Jim would never say anything!" cried Uncle Denny.

"Get in, both of you," said Jim's mother quietly. "Don't make a scene on the street."

"If Saradokis gets in, I'll take the Elevated home," said Jim slowly.

"Don't worry!" snapped Sara. "I'm meeting my father in a moment. Pen, you believe in me, don't you?"

Pen seized his outstretched hand and gave the others an indignant look. "Of course I do, though I don't know what it's all about."

Sara lifted his hat and turned away and the machine started homeward.

"Now, what on earth happened?" Pen cried.

Uncle Denny looked at Jim and Jim shook his head. "I'm not going to talk about it," he said. "I've a right to keep silence."

Pen bounced up and down on the seat impatiently. "You haven't any such right, Jim Manning. You've got to tell me what you said about Sara."

"Aw, let's forget it!" answered Jim wearily. "I'm sorry I ever even told Uncle Denny."

He leaned back and closed his eyes and his tired face touched Pen's heart. "You poor dear!" she exclaimed. "It was awfully hard on you to lose the race."

Jim's mother patted her boy's hand. "You are a very blind girl, Penelope," she said. "And I'm afraid it will take long years of trouble to open your eyes. We all must just stand back and wait."

The little look of pre-knowledge that occasionally made Pen's eyes old came to them now as she looked at Jim's mother. "Did you learn easily, Aunt Mary?"

The older woman shook her head. "Heaven knows," she answered, "I paid a price for what little I know, the price of experience. I guess we women are all alike."

When they reached the brownstone front, Jim went to bed at once and the matter of the race was not mentioned among the other three at supper. Pen was offended at what she considered the lack of confidence in her and withdrew haughtily to her room. Uncle Denny went out and did not return until late. Jim's mother was waiting for him in their big, comfortable bedroom.

Dennis peeled off his coat and vest and wiped his forehead. "Mary," he said, "I've been talking to the policeman who helped Jim. He says it was a deliberate knockout Sara gave Jim. He was standing right beside them at the time."

Jim's mother threw up her hands. "That Greek shall never come inside this house again, Michael!"

Dennis nodded as he walked the floor. "I don't know what to do about the matter. As a lawyer, I'd say, drop it. As Jim's best friend, I feel like making trouble for Saradokis, though I know Jim will refuse to have anything to do with it."

Jim's mother looked thoughtfully at the sock she was darning. "Jim has the right to say what shall be done. It means a lot to him in regard to its effect on Pen. But I think Pen must be told the whole story."

Uncle Denny continued to pace the floor for some time, then he sighed: "You're right, as usual, Mary. I'll tell Pen meself, and forbid Sara the house, then we'll drop it. I'm glad for one thing. This gives the last blow to any hope Sara may have had of getting Jim into business with him. Jim will take that job with the United States Reclamation Service, I hope. Though how I'm to live without me boy, Mary, its hard for me to say."

Uncle Denny's Irish voice broke and Jim's mother suddenly rose and kissed his pink cheek.

"Michael," she said, "even if I hadn't grown so fond of you for your own sake, I would have to love you for your love for Jim."

A sudden smile lighted the Irishman's face and he gave the slender little woman a boyish hug.

"We are the most comfortable couple in the world, Mary!" he cried.

Uncle Denny told the story of the boys' trouble to Penelope the next morning. Pen flatly refused to believe it.

"I don't doubt that Jim thinks Sara meant it," she said. "But I am surprised at Jim. And I shall have to tell you, Uncle Denny, that if you forbid Sara the house I shall meet him clandestinely. I, for one, won't turn down an old friend."

Pen was so firm and so unreasonable that she alarmed Dennis. In spite of his firm resolution to the contrary, he felt obliged to tell Jim of Penelope's obstinacy.

"I wish I'd kept my silly mouth shut," said Jim, gloomily. "Of course that's just the effect the story would have on Pen. She is nothing if not loyal. Here she comes now. Uncle Denny, I might as well have it out with her."

The two men were standing on the library hearth rug in the old way. Pen came in with her nose in the air and fire in her eyes. Uncle Denny fled precipitately.

Jim looked at Penelope admiringly. She was growing into a very lovely young womanhood. She was not above medium height and she was slender, yet full of long, sweet curves.

"Jim!" she exclaimed, "I don't believe a word of that horrid story about Sara."

Jim nodded. "I'm sorry it was told you. I'm not going to discuss it with you, Pen. You were told the facts without my consent. You have a right to your own opinion. Say, Pen, I can get my appointment to the Reclamation Service and I'm going out west in a couple of weeks. I—I want to say something to you."

Jim moistened his lips and prayed for the right words to come. Pen looked a little bewildered. She had come in to champion Sara and was not inclined to discuss Jim's job instead. But Jim found words and spoke eagerly:

"I'm going away, Pen, to make some kind of a name to bring back to you and then, when I've made it, I'm coming for you, Penelope." He put his strong young hands on Pen's shoulders and looked clearly into her eyes. "You belong to me, Penelope. You never can belong to Sara. You know that."

Pen looked up into Jim's face a little pitifully. "Still Jim, way back in my heart is a feeling for you that belongs to no one else. You—you are fine, Jim, and yet—Oh, Jim, if you want me, you'd better take me now because," this with a sudden gust of girlish confidence, "because, honestly, I'm just crazy about Sara, and I know you are better for me than he is!"

Jim gave a joyful laugh. "I'd be a mucker to try to make you marry me now, Penny. You are just a kid. And just a dear. There is an awful lot to you that Sara can never touch. You show it only to me. And it's mine."

"You'd better stay on the job, Still," said Pen, warningly.

Again Jim laughed. "Why, you sent me out west yourself."

Pen nodded. "And it will make a man of you. It will wake you up. And when you wake up, you'll be a big man, Jimmy."

Pen's old look was on her face. "What do you mean, Pen?" asked Jim.

The girl shook her head. "I don't quite know. Some day, when I've learned some of the lessons Aunt Mary says are coming to me, I'll tell you." Then a look almost of fright came to Pen's face. "I'm afraid to learn the lessons, Still Jim. Take me with you now, Jimmy."

The tall boy looked at her longingly, then he said:

"Dear, I mustn't. It wouldn't be treating you right." And there was a sudden depth of passion in his young voice as he added, "I'm going to give you my sign and seal again, beloved."

And Jim lifted Penelope in his strong arms and laid his lips to hers in a hot young kiss that seemed to leave its impress on her very heart. As he set her to her feet, Penelope gave a little sob and ran from the room.

Nothing that life brings us is so sure of itself as first love; nothing ever again seems so surely to belong to life's eternal verities. Jim went about his preparations for graduating and for leaving home with complete sense of security. He had arranged his future. There was nothing more to be said on the matter. Fate had no terror for Jim. He had the bravery of untried youth.

The next two weeks were busy and hurried. Pen, a little wistful eyed whenever she looked at Jim, avoided being alone with him. Saradokis did not come to the house again. He took two weeks in the mountains after graduation before beginning the contracting business which his father had built up for him.

As the time drew near for leaving home, Jim planned to say a number of things to his Uncle Denny. He wanted to tell him about his feeling for Pen and he wanted to tell how much he was going to miss the fine old Irishman's companionship. He wanted to tell him that he was not merely Jim Manning, going to work, but that he was a New Englander going forth to retrieve old Exham. But the words would not come out and Jim went away without realizing that Uncle Denny knew every word he would have said and vastly more, that only the tender Irish heart can know.

Jim's mother, Uncle Denny and Pen went to the station with him. He kissed his mother, wrung Pen's and Dennis' hands, then climbed aboard the train and reappeared on the observation platform. His face was rigid. His hat was clenched in his fist. None of the watching group was to forget the picture of him as the train pulled out. The tall, boyish figure in the blue Norfolk suit, the thick brown hair tossed across his dreamer's forehead, and the half sweet, half wistful smile set on his young lips.

There were tears on Jim's mother's cheeks and in Pen's eyes, but Uncle Denny broke down and cried.

"He's me own heart, Still Jim is!" he sobbed.

CHAPTER VII

This was Jim's first trip away from the Atlantic coast. He was a typical Easterner, accustomed to landscapes on a small scale and to the human touch on everything. Until he left St. Paul, nothing except the extreme width of the map really surprised him. But after the train had crossed the Mississippi valley, it began to traverse vast rolling plains, covered from horizon to horizon with wheat. At endless intervals were set tiny dwellings like lone sentinels guarding the nation's bread. After the plains, came an arid country where a constantly beaten vegetation fought with the alkali until at last it gave way to a world of yellow sand and purple sky.

After a day of this, far to the west appeared a delicate line of snowcapped peaks toward which the flying train snailed for hours, until Jim, watching eagerly, saw the sand give way to low grassy hills, the hills merge into ridges and the ridges into pine-clad mountain slopes.

For the last two days of the trip the train swung through dizzy spaces, slid through dim, dripping canyons, crossed trestles even greater than the trestles of Jim's boyhood dreams; twisted about peaks that gave unexpected, fleeting views of other peaks of other ranges until Jim crawled into his berth at night sight-weary and with a sense of loneliness that appalled him.

At noon of a bright day, Jim landed at a little way station from which a single-gauge track ran off into apparent nothingness. Puffing on the single-gauge track was a "dinky" engine, coupled to a flat car. Wooden benches were fastened along one end of the car. The engineer and fireman were loading sheet iron on the other end. They looked Jim over as he approached them.

"Do you go up to the dam?" he asked.

"If we ever get this stuff loaded," replied the engineer.

"I'd like to go up with you," said Jim. "I've got a job up there."

The engineer grunted. "Another cub engineer. All right, sonny. Load your trousseau onto the Pullman."

Jim grinned sheepishly and heaved his trunk and suit case up on the flat car. Then he lent a hand with the sheet iron and climbed aboard.

"Let her rip, Bill," said the fireman. And she proceeded to rip. Jim held his hat between his knees and clung to the bench with both hands. The dinky whipped around curves and across viaducts, the grade rising steadily until just as Jim had made up his mind that his moments were numbered, they reached the first steep grade into the mountain. From this point the ride was a slow and steady climb up a pine-covered mountain. Just before sunset the engine stopped at a freight shed.

"Go on up the trail," said the fireman. "We'll send your stuff up to the officers' camp."

Jim saw a wide macadam road leading up through the pines. The unmistakable sounds of great construction work dropped faintly down to him. His pulse quickened and he started up the road which wound for a quarter of a mile through trees the trunks of which were silhouetted against the setting sun. Then the road swept into the open. Jim stopped.

First he saw ranges, stretching away and away to the evening glory of the sky. Then, nearer, he saw solitary peaks, etched black against the heavens, and groups of peaks whose mighty flanks merged as if in a final struggle for supremacy.

The boy saw a country of mighty distances, of indescribable cruelty and hostility, a country of unthinkable heights and impassable depths. And, standing so, struggling to resist the sense of the region's terrifying bigness, he saw that all the valleys and canyons and mountain slopes seemed to focus toward one point. It was as if they had concentrated at one spot against a common enemy.

This point, he saw, was a huge black canyon that carried the waters from all the hundred hills around. It was the point where the war of waters must be keenest, where the stand of the wilderness was most savage and where lay the one touch of man in all that area of contending mountains.

A vast wall of masonry had been built to block the outlet of the ranges. A curving wall of gray stone, so huge, so naked of conscious adornment that the hills might well have disbelieved it to be an enemy and have accepted it as part and parcel of their own silent grandeur.

Jim lifted his hat slowly and moistened his lips. This, then, was the labor to which he had so patronizingly offered his puny hands.

After a while, details obtruded themselves. Jim saw black dots of men moving about the top of the dam. He heard the clatter of concrete mixers, the raucous grind of the crusher, the scream of donkey engines and the shouts of foremen. Back to the right, among the trees, was a long military line of tents. Above the noise of construction the boy caught the silent brooding of the forest and, poured round all, the liquid glory of the sunset. Suddenly he saw the whole great picture as his own work, and it was a picture as elusive, as tantalizing, as a boy's first dreams of pirate adventure. Jim had come to his first great dam.

When he had shaken himself together and had swallowed the lump in his throat, he asked a passing workman for Mr. Freet, the Project Engineer. He was directed to a tent with a sheet iron roof. Jim stopped bashfully in the door. A tall man was standing before a map. Jim had a good look at him before he turned around.

Mr. Freet wore corduroy riding breeches and leather puttees, a blue flannel shirt and soft tie. He was thin and tall and had a shock of bright red hair. When he turned, Jim saw that his face was bronzed and deeply lined. His eyes were black and small and piercing.

"Mr. Freet," said Jim, "my name is Manning."

The project engineer came forward with a pleasant smile. "Why, Mr. Manning, we didn't look for you until tomorrow, though your tent is ready for you. Come in and sit down."

Jim took the proffered camp chair and after a few inquiries about his trip, Mr. Freet said: "It's supper time and I'll take you over to the mess and introduce you. Only a few of the engineers have their wives here and all the others, with the so-called 'office' force, eat at 'Officers' Mess'. I'm not going to load you up with advice, Mr. Manning. You are a tenderfoot and fresh from college. You occupy the position of cub engineer here, so you will be fair bait for hazing. Don't take it too seriously. About your work? I shall put you into the hands of the chief draughtsman for a time. I want you to thoroughly familiarize yourself with that end of the work. Then, although most of that part is done, you will go into the concrete works, then out on the dam with the superintendent. Remember that you have no record except some good college work. Forget that you ever were a senior. Look at yourself as a freshman in a difficult course, where too many cons means a life failure."

Jim listened respectfully. At that moment Arthur Freet was the biggest man on earth to him.

"Yes, sir," he said. "Thank you."

Freet pulled on a corduroy coat. "Come over to supper, Manning. Too much advice on an empty stomach is bad for the digestion."

Jim followed meekly after the Big Boss.

Jim reported to Charlie Tuck, the head draughtsman the next morning. Tuck was a plump, middle-aged man, bald headed and clean shaven, with mild blue eyes. Jim put him down in his own mind as a sissy and chafed a little at being put into Tuck's care. But his discontent was shortlived.

Tuck proved to be a hard taskmaster. Before the end of the week Jim realized that he would not get out of Tuck's hands until he knew every inch of the design of the great dam from the sluice gates and the drainage holes to the complete vertical section. He had no patience with mistakes and Jim took his grilling in silence, for the fat little man showed a deep knowledge of the technical side of dam building that reduced the cub engineer to a humble pulp.

Also, Jim discovered that Tuck was an old Yale man and that his avocation in life seemed to be tennis. The engineers had a good court in the woods and after Tuck found that Jim liked the game, he took the boy over to the court every afternoon before supper and beat him with monotonous regularity. And Jim was a good player.

The dam was far from civilization and the engineers welcomed Jim, although they treated him with the jocularity that his youth and inexperience demanded. The novelty of his environment, the romance of the great gray dam, built with such frightful risk and difficulty, absorbed Jim for the first week or so. He had no thought of homesickness until the excitement of his new work began to recede. And then, quite unexpectedly, it descended on him like a leaden cloud.

The longing for home! The helpless, hopeless sickness of the heart for dear familiar faces! The seeing of alien places through tear-dimmed eyes, the answering to strange voices with an aching throat, and the poignancy of memory! Jim's mind dwelt monotonously on the worn spot in the library hearth rug where he and Uncle Denny had spent so many, many hours. There was the crack in the brown teapot that his mother would not discard because she had poured Big Jim's tea from it. There was Uncle Denny's rich Irish voice, "Ah, Still Jim, me boy!" And there was Pen—dear, dear Penelope, with her woman's eyes in her child's face—with her halo of hair. Pen's "Take me with you, Still," was the very peak of sorrow now to the boy. Jim was homesick. And he who has not known homesickness does not know one of life's most exquisite griefs.

It seemed to Jim now that he hated the Big Country. At night in his tent he was conscious of the giant dam lying so silent in the darkness and it made him feel helpless and alone. By day he hid his unhappiness, he thought. He worked doggedly and did not guess that Charlie Tuck understood that many times he saw the designs for the wonderful bronze gates of the sluicing tunnel over which Charlie heckled him for days, through tear-dimmed eyes.

The camp was lighted by electricity. Jim would sit watching the lights flare up after supper, watching the night shift on the broad top of the dam which was as wide as a street and try to pretend that the noise and the light and the figures belonged to 23rd street. Jim was sitting so in the door of his tent one night after nearly a month in camp. He held his pipe but could not smoke because of the ache in his throat. He had not been there long when Charlie Tuck came up the trail and with a nod sat down beside Jim.

"Let me have a light," he said. "The fellows are having a rough house over in the office tonight. Why don't you go over?"

"I don't feel like it, somehow," replied Jim.

Tuck nodded. "You may have hated New York while you lived there, but it looks good now, eh?"

"Yes," answered Jim.

"You'll feel better when the Boss begins to give you some responsibility. Were you ever up in the Makon country, Manning?"

"No," said Jim.

"Don't strain yourself talking," commented Tuck, sarcastically. "You are rather given to blathering, I see. Well, the Makon country wants a dam. It wants it bad but the Service doesn't see how to get in there. There is a big valley that has been partially farmed for years. It is enormously fertile, but there is only enough water in it to irrigate a limited number of farms.

"Now, ten miles to the north, is the Makon river that never fails of water. But as near as anyone can find out the only feasible place for damming it is somewhere in a beastly canyon that no man has ever gone through alive. The river is treacherous and the country would make this look as well manicured as the Swiss Alps."

Jim listened intently. Charlie Tuck pulled at his pipe for a time, then he said: "My end of this job is about finished. I like the exploring end of the work best, anyhow. I was with the Geological Survey for ten years before the Reclamation Service was created. I made the preliminary surveys for this project and for the Whitson. I tell you, Manning, that's the greatest work in the world—getting out into the wilderness and finding the right spot for civilization to come and thrive. There's where you get a sense of power that makes you feel like a Pilgrim Father. The Reclamation Service is a great pipe dream. Some of the finest men in the country are in it today and nobody knows it."

"Like Mr. Freet," said Jim.

Jim thought that Tuck hesitated for a moment before he answered. "Yes, and a dozen others. I consider it a privilege to work with them. Say, Manning, if some way they could find the right level in that canyon and drive a tunnel through its solid granite walls, they could send the Makon over into the valley."

"Why doesn't the Service send a man to explore the crevice?" asked Jim.

"That's what I say!" cried Tuck. "Just because a lot of cold feet claim it can't be done, just because no man has come through that crevice alive, is no reason one won't. Say, Manning, if I can get the Service to send me up there, will you go with me?"

"Me!" gasped Jim.

Tuck nodded in his gentle way. "Yes, you see I like you. You are more congenial than most of the fellows here to me. On a trip like that you want to be mighty sure you like the fellow you are going to be with. Then I think you would learn more on a trip like that than in a year of the sort of work Freet plans for you. And last, because I think you've got the same kind of feeling for the Service that I have though you've been here so short a time. It's something that's born in you. What do you say, Manning?"

Jim never had felt so flattered in his life. And Adventure called to him like a ship to a land-locked mariner.

"Gee!" he cried, "but you're good to ask me, Mr. Tuck! Bet your life I'll go!"

Tuck emptied his pipe and rose. "I'll go see Freet now and persuade him to get busy with the Chief in Washington. One thing, Manning. It will be a dangerous undertaking. We may not come through alive. You must get used to the idea, though, that every Project demands its toll of deaths. People don't realize that. Are you willing to go, knowing the risk?"

With all the valor of youth and ignorance, Jim answered, "I'm ready to start now."

Mr. Freet was not adverse to the undertaking and the Washington office shrugged its shoulders. The Project engineer talked seriously to Jim, though, about the danger of the mission and insisted that he write home about it before finally committing himself. Jim's letter home, however, would have moved a far more stolid spirit than Uncle Denny, for he sketched the danger hazily and dwelt at length on the honor and glory of the undertaking. The reply from the brownstone front was as enthusiastic as Jim could desire.

Tuck undertook the preparations for the expedition with the utmost care. Only the two of them were to go. The outfit must be such as they could handle themselves, yet as complete as possible. Two folding canvas boats, two air mattresses, life preservers, waterproof bags, first aid appliances, brandy, sweet oil, surveying implements, food in as compact form as possible, guns and fishing tackle made a formidable pile for two men to manage. But at Jim's protest Charlie answered grimly that they would not be heavily laden when they came out of the canyon.

It was mid-August when the two men reached the Makon country. They arranged with a rancher to take them and their outfit up to the river. There was no road, scarcely even a trail up to the canyon. The green of the ranches was encircled by a greasewood-covered plain that, toward the river, became rock covered and rough so that a wagon was out of the question and the sturdy pack horses themselves could move but slowly.

Jim's first view of the Makon Canyon was of a black rift in a rough brown sea of sand, with a blue gray sky above. As the little pack train drew nearer he saw that the walls of the rift were weathered and broken into fissures and points of seeming impassable roughness. So deep and so craggy were these walls that the river a half mile below could be seen only at infrequent intervals. The labor of getting into the crevice would be quite as difficult, Jim thought, as going through it.

They made camp that night close beside the canyon edge. Early the next morning the rancher left them and Charlie and Jim prepared to get themselves and their outfit down over the mighty, bristling walls. Lowering each other and the packs by ropes, sliding, rolling, jumping, crawling, it was night before they reached the river's edge, where they made camp. There was a narrow sandy beach with a cottonwood tree growing close to the granite wall. Under this they put their air mattresses and built their fire.

Jim did not like the feeling of nervousness he had in realizing how deep they were below the desert and how narrow and oppressive were the canyon walls. He was glad that the strenuous day sent them off to bed and to sleep as soon as they had finished supper. They were up at dawn.

Charlie's purpose was to work down the river, surveying as he went until he found a level where the river would flow through a tunnel out onto the valley. And this level, too, must be at a point where construction work was possible. The river was incredibly rough and treacherous. From the first they packed everything in waterproof bags. The canvas canoes were impractical. The river was full of hidden rock and by the third day the second canoe was torn to pieces and they were depending on rafts made from the air mattresses.

After the canoes were gone, they spent practically all the daylight in the water, swimming or wading and towing or pushing the mattresses. The water was very cold but they were obliged to work so hard that they scarcely felt the chill until they made camp at night. Jim discovered that a transit could be used in a cauldron of water or on a peak of rock where a slip meant instant death or clinging to steep walls that threatened rock slide at the misplacing of a pebble.

One arduous task was the locating of a camp at night. The second night in the camp they were lucky. They found a broad ledge in a spot that at first seemed hopeless, for the blank walls appeared here almost to meet above the deep well of water. There was a little driftwood on the ledge and they had a fire. The following two nights they were less fortunate. The best they could find were chaotic heaps of fallen rock on which to lay their mattresses, and they slept with extreme discomfort.

The fifth day was a black day. They were swimming slowly behind their laden mattresses through deep, smooth black water when, without warning, the river curved and swept over a small fall into heavy rapids. Instantly the mattresses were whirling like chips. The two men fought like mad to tow them to a rock ledge, the only visible landing place the crevice had to offer. But long before this haven was reached the mattresses were torn to shreds and Jim and Charlie were glad to reach the ledge with their surveying instruments and two bags of "grub." Here they sat dripping and exhausted. It was nearly dark. Night set in early in the canyon. They dared not try to look for a better camping ground that night. The ledge was just large enough for the two of them, with what remained of their dunnage.

Charlie grinned. "Welcome to our city. Well, it's as good as a Pullman berth at that."

"And no harder to dress on," said Jim, standing up carefully and beginning to peel off his wet clothes. "I guess if we wring these duds out and rub with alcohol, they won't feel so cold."

Charlie rose and began to undress gingerly. "You can stand up to make your toilet," he said, "which is more than the Pullman offers you."

They ate a cold canned supper and afterward, as they sat shivering, Jim said, "If we fail to locate the dam site, no one will have any sympathy with our troubles."

"We will find it," said Charlie with the calm certainty he never had lost. "Jupiter looks as big as a dinner plate down here. Sometimes when I look at the stars I wonder what is the use of this kind of work."

Jim looked up at the stars which seemed almost within hand touch. Their nearness was an unspeakable comfort to the two in the crevice. He spoke slowly but with unusual ease. Charlie Tuck had grown very near to him in the past few days.

"I've had a feeling," he said, "ever since we actually got down here and on the job, that I'm doing the thing I've always been intended to do. I don't know how I got that feeling because I've always lived in towns."

"I feel that way every time I go out exploring," answered Tuck. "I can stand the draughting board just so long and then I break loose. I suppose someone has got to do these jobs and there is always someone willing to take the responsibility. Kipling calls it being a Son of Martha. Do you know those verses?"

"No," said Jim. "I'd like to hear them."

Charlie chuckled. "Me reciting Kipling is like hearing a 'co-ed yell'—it's the only poem I know, though, and here goes. The Sons of Martha

'—say to the Mountains, Be ye removed! They say to the lesser floods, run dry!
Under their rods are the rocks reproved. They are not afraid of that which is high.
Then do the hilltops shake to their summits, then is the bed of the deep laid bare,
That the Sons of Mary may overcome it, pleasantly sleeping and unaware.

They do not preach that their God will rouse them a little before the nuts break loose,
They do not teach that His pity allows them to leave their work whenever they choose.
As in the thronged and the lighted ways, so in the dark and the desert they stand,
Wary and watchful all their days that their brethren's days may be long in the land.

Lift ye the stone or cleave the wood to make a path more fair or flat,
Lo, it is black already with blood some Son of Martha spilled for that.
Not as a ladder from Earth to Heaven, not as an altar to any creed,
But simple Service, simply given, to their own kind, in their common need.'"

The two men sat in silence after Charlie had finished until he said: "If I were you I'd read Kipling a good deal. He's good food for a man of your type. People don't realize what their comforts cost. I hope that when I die it will be on a Son of Martha job. I'm built that way. My people were New Englanders, then middle west pioneers, and now here I am, still breaking the wilderness."

Jim sat with his heart swelling with he knew not what great dream. It was the divine fire of young sacrifice, the subtle sense of devotion that has made men since the world began lay down their lives for the thing not seen with the eye.

"I wish you'd teach me those verses," said Jim. "We've got to keep awake or roll off the ledge."

And so the night passed.

The next day the way was unspeakably difficult. They made progress slowly and heavily, clambering from rock to rock, clinging to the walls, fighting through rapids. It was past mid afternoon when they ran a level in a spot of surpassing grandeur. A rock slide had sent a great heap of stone into the river. Close beside this they set the transit. Forward the river swept smoothly round a curve. Back, the two looked on a magnificent series of flying buttresses of serrated granite, their bases guarding the river, their tops remotely supporting the heavens. The buttresses nearest the rock heap and on opposite sides of the river were not two rods apart.

They ran the levels carefully and then looked at each other in silence. Then they made another reading and again looked at each other. Then they packed the transit into its rubber bag, sat down on the rock heap and gazed at the marching, impregnable line of buttresses.

"It will be even higher than the Green Mountain and a hundred times more difficult to build," said Charlie, softly.

"She'll be a wonder, won't she!" exclaimed Jim. "The Makon dam. It will be the highest in the world."

"Granite and concrete! Some beauty that! Eternal as the hills!" said Charlie. "We will make camp and finish the map here."

They lay long, looking at the stars that night. "Some day," said Jim, "there will be a two hundred feet width of concrete wall right where we are lying. Doesn't it make you feel a little hollow in your stomach to think that you and I have decreed where it shall be?"

"Yes," said Charlie. "It's a good spot, Manning. I hope I get a chance to lay out the road down here. They will have to blast it out of the solid granite. It will eat money up to make it."

"Let me in on it, won't you," pleaded Jim.

"Well, slightly!" exclaimed Charlie. "Now for a good night's sleep. We ought to be out in three days. That will make ten days in all, just what I planned."

Jim hardly knew Charlie the next day. No college freshman on his first holiday ever acted more outrageously. He sang ancient college songs that reverberated in the canyon like yells on a football field. He stood solemnly on his head on the top of rock pinnacles. He crowned himself and Jim with wreaths made of water cress that he found on a tiny sandy beach. When they were obliged to take to the water he pretended that he was an alligator and made uncouth sounds and lashed the water with the grub bag in lieu of a tail.

Late in the afternoon, while they were swimming through a whirlpool, he insisted on giving Jim a lecture on the gentle art of bee-hunting as he had seen it practiced in Maine.

"Now we will pretend that I am the bee!" he shouted at Jim. "You will admit that I look like one! I am drunk with honey and I hang to the comb thus!"

He caught a point of rock with one hand and lazily waved the other.

"This is my proboscis," he explained.

"For heaven's sake, be careful!" yelled Jim. "This is no blooming ten-cent show! Keep both hands on the rock and climb up for a rest."

Charlie suddenly went white. "God! I've got cramp!" he screamed. "Both legs. Help me, Manning!"

He struggled to get his free hand on the rock, but the water tore at him like a ravening beast and he lost his hold. Jim swam furiously after him. The white head showed for a moment, then disappeared around a turn of the wall.

CHAPTER VIII