Still Jim

How he passed the night that followed Jim never was sure. He knew that he fought his way down stream until long after darkness set in. Then, utterly exhausted, bleeding and bruised, he crawled up onto a rock under the wall and lay dripping and shivering until dawn.

He watched the light touch the far top of the crevice, saw the azure strip of the sky appear and then with a deep groan he forced himself to eat from his grub bag and started hurriedly on down the river. The stream was much deeper below the point of the accident, with several large falls. Jim worked his way along carefully, swimming or floating for the most part, for the walls for many miles offered not even a hand-hold nor did they once give back in beach or eddy.

The loneliness was appalling. The hardship of the work was astonishingly increased, robbed of Tuck's unfailing cheerfulness and faith. There was one moment when, toward sunset, Jim's strength almost failed him. The walls were rougher now. He had found a hand-hold but no place for the night. He clung here until his exhausted arms were able to endure no more.

"I can't do any more!" panted Jim. "I'll have to go down." And then he gave a little childish sob. "'Hang on to what you undertake like a hound to a warm scent, Jimmy!'" he said, brokenly. And new strength flowed into his arms and he swam on for a few moments, finding then a bit of shore on which to spend the night. He and Charlie had each carried a map and a set of instruments. Jim felt that he bore now not only his own but Charlie's responsibility to deliver the maps to Freet. As he lay looking up at the stars, that second night alone in the crevice, Jim realized ever since he and Charlie had started on the expedition, he had ceased to be homesick. He realized this when, on this second night, he tried to keep his nerves in order by thinking very hard of home and he found that he dwelt most on Exham and his father and the Sign and Seal he had given Penelope. And that while he longed vaguely for the old brownstone front, he felt with a sudden invigorating thrill that he belonged where he was and that he was nearer to Exham than he had been since he had left there.

It was nearing evening of the fourth day after Charlie's disappearance that Jim suddenly saw the canyon walls widen. He struggled at last up onto a sandy beach and looked about him. The canyon walls here, though very rough, gave promise of access to the top. Jim examined the beach carefully for trace of Charlie and, finding none, he prepared to spend the night in resting before the stiff climb of the next day. He built a fire and ate his last bit of grub, a small can of beans, and fell asleep immediately.

At dawn the next morning he began his climb up the bristling walls of the canyon. Eleven days before he would have said that to scale these sickening heights was impossible. But Jim would never be a tenderfoot again. He had been on short rations for three days and was weak from overwork. But he had a canteen of water and rested frequently and he went about the climb with the care and skill of an old mountaineer. He had learned in a cruel school.

Late in the afternoon he crawled wearily over one last knife-edged ledge and hoisted himself up onto the canyon's top. He was greeted by a faint shout.

Three men on horseback were picking their way carefully toward him. Jim waved his hand and dropped, panting, to await their arrival. When they were within speaking distance, he rose weakly and called:

"Where's Charlie Tuck?"

The three men did not answer until they had dropped from their horses beside Jim; then the rancher who had packed the expedition to the crevice said:

"They picked his body up near Chaseville this morning. We come up as quick as we could for trace of you. You look all in. Here, Dick, get busy! We brought some underclothes; didn't know what shape you'd be in. Here is the suit you left at my place. God! I thought you'd never need it. Billy, start a fire and cook the coffee and bacon. You've had an awful experience, Mr. Manning, I guess. You don't look the tenderfoot kid that went into the canyon!"

"We found the dam site," said Jim hoarsely.

"Don't try to talk till you get some grub," said the man called Billy.

Clothed and fed, Jim told his story, a little brokenly. The group of men who listened were used to hardy deeds. They had seen Nature demand her toll of death again and again in the wilderness. And yet as they sat looking at the young fellow with his gray eyes shocked and grief-stricken and perceived his boyish idolatry of Charlie Tuck, something like moisture shone in their eyes. They shook hands with Jim when he had finished, silently for the most part, though the rancher said:

"You're the only man ever came through there alive. They had to bury Tuck right off. They'd ought to build a monument for him. Where is his folks?"

"He had none," said Jim. "I want to put up his headstone for him, and I know just what lines are going to be put on the stone."

"They ought to be blamed good," said Dick.

"What are they?" asked the ranchman.

Jim sat for a moment looking down into the fearful depths where Charlie and he had lived a lifetime. Then he said:

"'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 his own kind, in their common need.'"

And so Charlie Tuck crossed the Great Divide.

Jim stopped two days with the rancher and then went back to the Green Mountain dam. The story of the trip through the crevice had preceded him. The men of the Service were inured to the idea of the sacrifice of blood for the dams. There was little said, some silent handshakes given, and they ceased to haze Jim. He had become one of them.

The plans for the preliminary surveys of the Makon Project were begun at once. Jim remained at Green Mountain during the winter, serving his apprenticeship to the concrete works and the superintendent as Mr. Freet had planned. But in the spring he had his wish and was sent to lay out the road on the Makon project.

All this time letters came regularly from the brownstone front, but they were from Jim's mother and his Uncle Denny for the most part, and they were very silent about Penelope. Jim wrote Pen from time to time, but he was not an easy writer and Pen wrote him only gay little notes that were very unsatisfactory. But Jim was absorbed in his work and did not worry over this.

Mr. Freet explained to Jim that he needed an "Old Timer" in laying out the Makon road whose practical experience would supplement Jim's theories. When Jim reached the survey camp in the Makon valley he found waiting for him a small man of about fifty, with a Roman nose, bright blue eyes and a shock of gray hair. This was Iron Skull Williams, whom Freet had described in detail to Jim and who was to be Jim's right hand. He was an old Indian fighter. The Apaches, Freet said, had given him his nickname because they claimed he would not be killed. Bullets glanced off his head like rain. Williams was an expert road maker and had worked much for Freet in various parts of the west.

Jim and Williams looked each other over carefully and liked each other at once. They found immediately in each other's society something very choice. The friendship had not been a week old before Iron Skull had heard of Exham and the brownstone front and of Penelope. While Jim had learned what no other man knew, that Williams' life-long, futile passion had been for a college education and that he was a bachelor because a blue-eyed, yellow-haired girl had been buried in the Arizona ranges, twenty-five years before.

Jim's quiet ways and silent tongue did not make him an easy mixer. The opening up of a project is a rough and lonesome job. Running surveys through unknown country where supplies are hard to get and distances are huge, makes men very dependent on one other for companionship. Jim liked the young fellows who ran the road surveys with him. He enjoyed the "rough necks," the men who did the actual building of the road. They all in turn liked Jim. But Jim had not the easy coin of word exchange that makes for quick and promiscuous acquaintanceship. So he grew very dependent on Iron Skull, who, in a way, filled both Sara's and Uncle Denny's place.

The old Indian fighter had that strange sense of proportion, that eagle-eyed view of life that the desert sometimes breeds. All the love of a love-starved life he gave to Jim.

One evening in April Jim came in from a hard day on horseback. The spring rains were on and he was mud-splashed and tired but full of a great content. He had found a short cut on the crevice end of the road that would save thousands of dollars in time and material.

He lighted the lamp in his tent and saw a letter from Uncle Denny on the table. There was nothing unusual about a letter from Uncle Denny and ordinarily Jim waited for his bath and clean clothes before reading it. But this time, with an inexplicable sense of fear, he picked it up and read it at once.

Love, dear boy, from
Uncle Denny."

Jim crumpled the letter into his pocket and dashed out into the night. For hours he walked, heedless of rock or cactus, of rain or direction. He took a fiendish satisfaction in the thought of Sara's tragedy. Other than this he did not think at all. He felt as he had at his father's death, rudderless, derelict.

It was dawn when Iron Skull found Jim sitting on a pile of rock five miles from camp. He put his hand on Jim's shoulder.

"Boss Still," he said, "what's broke loose? I've trailed you all over the state."

Jim looked up into the kindly face and his throat worked. "Iron Skull," he got out at last, "my—my girl has thrown me down!"

Williams sat down beside him. "Not Penelope?"

Jim nodded and suddenly thrust the crumpled letter into his friend's hands. In the dawn light Williams read it, cleared his throat, and said:

"God! Poor kids! I take it your folks don't like this Sara, though you never said so."

Jim put his hand on Iron Skull's knee. "Iron Skull," he said, hoarsely, "I'd rather see Pen laid away there in the Arizona ranges beside your Mary than married to him. He's got a yellow streak."

The two sat silent for a time, then Williams said: "This love business is a queer thing. Some men can care for a dozen different women. But you're like me. Once and never again. I ain't going to try to comfort you, partner. I know you've got a sore inside you that'll never heal. It's hell or heaven when a woman gets a hold on your vitals like that.—My Mary—she had blue eyes and a little brown freckle on her nose—I was just your age when she died. And I never was a kid again. You gotta face forward, partner. Work eighteen hours a day. Marry your job. You still owe a big debt for your big brain. Go ahead and pay it."

Jim did not answer, but he did not remove his hand from Williams' knee, and finally Williams laid a hard palm on it. They watched the sun rise. The rain had ceased. Far to the east where the little camp lay, crimson spokes shot to the zenith. Suddenly the sun rolled above the desert's brim and leading straight and level to its scarlet center lay the road that Jim was building.

"It's a good road," said Jim unevenly. "It's my first one. I'd planned to show it to her, this summer. And now, she'll never see it—nor any of my work. Iron Skull, she had a bully mind. Just the little notes she's sent me, show she got the idea of the Projects. I guess I'm a quitter. If I can't keep my girl, what's the use of living?"

The old Indian fighter nodded. "Life is that away, partner. You mostly do what you can and not what you dream. Some day you'll have to marry. That's where I fell down. These days all us old stock Americans ought to marry. First you marry your job, Boss Still, then you marry a mother for your children."

Jim shook his head. "Pen's thrown me down," he said drearily.

Iron Skull waited patiently. At last Jim rose and held out his hand.

"Thank you, Williams," he said.

"Don't mention it," said Iron Skull Williams. "Glad to do it any time—that is, I ain't but—Hell, you know how I feel. Come home for some breakfast."

Before he went to work that day, Jim wrote a note to Pen.

Pen's answer to this reached Jim the following week.

This was Jim's answer:

And then, as Iron Skull had bade him, Jim married his job.

CHAPTER IX

It must be wide enough to safeguard life. It must be as steep as the mules could manage in order to save distance and cost. It must be strong enough to carry enormous weights. Its curves must accommodate teams of twenty mules, hauling the great length of beam and pipe needed in the work below. And it must be a road that would endure with little expense of up-keep as long as the dam below would endure.

It was not a complicated engineering feat. But it was Jim's first responsible job. It was his first experience in handling men and a camp. Moses, showing the children of Israel the way across the desert, could have felt no more pride or responsibility than did Jim breaking the trail to the Makon.

The crevice road was blasted from the granite. It was widened to hang like a shelf over sickening depths or built up with concrete to withstand the wash from some menacing gorge, or tilted to cling desperately to a blank wall that offered not even claw hold for the eagles. And always it must drop with a grade that took no account of return freightage.

"We'll wear the machinery out and leave it at the bottom," Freet had said. "Even a 25 per cent. grade will do when necessary. Hustle it along, Manning. I'll be ready to leave the Green Mountain by the time you are ready for me at the Makon."

And Jim hustled. But labor was hard to get. The country was inaccessible and extraordinarily lonely. There was no place for women or children until the camp in the canyon should be built, so it was a crowd of wandering "rough-necks" who built the road. A few were friends of Iron Skull, who followed him from job to job. The rest were tramp workmen, men who had toiled all over the world. They were not hoboes. They were journeyman laborers. They were world workers who had lent willing and calloused hands to a thousand great labors in a thousand places.

They came and went like shifting sands. Jim never knew whether he would wake to find ten or a hundred men in the camp. He tried for a long time to solve the problem. Iron Skull considered it unsolvable. He had a low opinion of the rough-neck. At last he disappeared for a couple of weeks and returned with twenty-five Indians. They were Apaches and Mohaves under the leadership of a fine austere old Indian whom Iron Skull introduced to Jim as "Suma-theek."

"His name means 'I don't know,'" explained Williams. "It's the extent of his conversation with the average white who considers an Injun sort of a cross between a cigar sign and a nigger. Him and I did scout service together for ten years in Geronimo's time. He's my 'blood' brother, which means we've saved each other's lives. He knows more than any two whites. Color don't make no difference in wisdom, Boss Still, and I guess the Big Boss up above must have some quiet laughs at the airs the whites give themselves."

This was Jim's introduction to another friendship, though it was slow in growth. But before the Makon was finished Jim, in the long evening pipes he smoked under the stars with Suma-theek, learned the truth of Iron Skull's statements as to the Indian's wisdom.

The evening of the day the Indians arrived, a short, heavy man came to Jim's tent. He was a foreman and a good one. Jim liked his voice, which had a peculiar, tender quality, astonishing in so rough a man.

"Hello, Henderson," said Jim. "What can I do for you?"

"Us boys is going out tomorrow. We ain't going to live like Injuns!"

Jim's heart sank. He already was behind on the work. "What's the matter with the way we live?" he asked.

"Young fella," said the man pityingly, "I've worked all over the world, including New York. And I'm telling you that when you try to mix colors in camp, you've got to grade their ways of living. Now I went to Mr. Williams, but he's one of these queer nuts who thinks what's good enough for an Injun is good enough for anyone."

Jim knew that this was in truth Iron Skull's attitude. He had had no idea, however, that it might breed trouble. He thought rapidly, then spoke slowly.

"Look here, Henderson, what would you do in my place? The Director of the Service sends out word he'll be here to look the dam site over next month. I want to get the road ready for him to get down there. For six months I've tried to keep a hundred white men on the job and I can't do it. I'll give the Indians a camp of their own. But will that keep you men here?"

Henderson looked at Jim keenly to see whether or not Jim was sincerely asking his advice. Jim suddenly smiled at his evident perplexity and that flashing wistful look got under the red-faced man's skin.

"Well," he said, "if I was trying to keep men on a job I'd make things pleasant for 'em."

"You have everything I have," said Jim. "I eat with you."

"No, we ain't got all you have. We ain't got your job and your chance. You get homesick yourself even on your pay and your chance. What do you think of us boys, with nothing but wages and a kickout? Let me tell you, boss, it's the man that takes care of his men's idle hours that gets the work out of 'em."

Jim looked at the camp. It was merely a straggling line of tents set along the crevice edge. The day's work was ended and the men lounged listlessly about the tents or hung over the corral fence where the mules munched and brayed. At that moment Jim made an important stride in his education in handling men. He saw the job for the first time through the workmen's eyes. Why should they care for the job?

"Look here," said Jim, "if I send to Seattle and get a good phonograph and a couple of billiard tables and some reading matter and set them up in a good big club tent, will you agree to keep a hundred men on the job until I finish the road?"

"Government won't pay for them," said Henderson.

"I'll pay for them myself," returned Jim. "I tell you, Henderson, this road means a lot to me. It's my—my first important job and the rest of my work on the Makon depends on it. And—and a friend of mine lost his life finding the dam site and he wanted to build this road. I feel as if I'm kind of doing his work for him. If doing something to give you boys amusement will keep you here, I'll do it gladly. I haven't anything to save my money for."

Henderson cleared his throat and looked down into the awful depths of the Makon Canyon. "I heard about that trip," he said. "If—if you feel that way about it, Mr. Manning, I guess us boys'll stand by you. And much obliged to you."

"I'm grateful to you," exclaimed Jim. "Tell the boys the stuff will be here in less than a month."

There was a noticeable change in the atmosphere of the camp after this episode. The Indians, in their own camp, were perfectly contented with their quarters and their hoop game and "kin-kan" for recreation. The phonograph and billiard tables arrived on time and were set up in the club tent and Jim and his camp began to do team work. The trouble with shifting labor disappeared except for the liquor trafficking that always hounds every camp. From dawn until dark, the canyon rang periodically with the thunder of blasts. Scoops shrieked. Mules brayed. Drivers yelled. Pick and shovel rang on granite.

Jim grew to know every inch of that granite wall. He lived on the road with the men. No detail of the job was too trivial for his attention. A more experienced man would have left more to his foremen. But Jim was new to responsibility and his nervousness drove him into an intimate contact with his workmen that was to stand him in good stead all his life. It was in building this road on the Makon that Jim learned the hearts of those who work with their hands.

When a fearful slide cost him the lives of two men and half a dozen mules, it was Jim who, in his boyish contrition and fear lest the catastrophe might have been due to his lack of foresight, insisted on first testing the wall for further danger and risked his life in doing so. When a cloudburst sent to the bottom in a half hour a concrete viaduct that had taken a month to build, it was Jim who led the way and held the place at the head of the line of men, piling up sacks of sand lest the water take out a full half mile of the road. He dreamed of the road at night, waking again and again at the thought of some weak spot he had left unprotected.

The rough-necks felt Jim's anxiety and it proved contagious. It may have been due to many things, to Jim's youth and his simple sincerity, to his example of indefatigable energy and his willingness to work with his hands; it may have been that the men felt always the note of domination in his character and that that forced some of the cohesion. But whatever the causes, by the time the road lay a coiling thread from the top of the crevice to the spot where poor Charlie Tuck went down, Jim had built up a working machine of which many an older engineer would have been proud.

The day before the Director and Mr. Freet were expected, Jim and Iron Skull left for the railway station, twenty-five miles away, to meet their two superiors. As he mounted his horse, Jim said to Iron Skull:

"I'm a little worried about the wall at the High Point curve."

"So am I," answered Iron Skull. "Shall I blast back? I don't need to go in with you."

"No," replied Jim. "We couldn't clear out in a week. Wait till the Big Bosses go."

"Better tend to it now," warned Iron Skull.

"I'll risk it," said Jim. And he rode away, Iron Skull following.

The two were held at the little desert station for a day, waiting for the two visitors who were delayed at Green Mountain. They returned in the stage with the Director and Freet, the two saddle horses leading behind. Just about a mile outside the camp they were met by Henderson, mounted on one of the huge mules, that shone with much grooming.

The stage pulled up and Henderson dismounted and bowed.

"I come out to meet you gents," he said, in his tender voice, "representing the Charles Tuck Club of Makon, to tell you we hope you'd not try to go down the Canyon this afternoon, as us citizens of Makon had got up a few speeches and such for you."

Jim and Iron Skull were even more amazed than the two visitors, and sat staring stupidly, but the Director rose nobly to the occasion.

"Thank you," he said. "What is the Charles Tuck Club?"

Henderson mounted his mule and rode on the Director's side of the stage.

"It's the club we formed for using the phonograph and billiard tables the Boss give us. If you gents don't care, I'll ride ahead and tell 'em you're coming."

"Gee!" exclaimed Jim, as the mule disappeared up the broad ribbon of road. "What do you suppose they are up to?"

"This is going some for a small camp!" said the Director. "The men usually don't care whether I come or go."

Jim shook his head. They reached the camp shortly after Henderson and were led by that gentleman to the club tent, where fully half the camp was gathered. The phonograph was set to going as they came in and following this, Baxter, the orator of the camp, got up and made a speech of welcome that consumed fifteen minutes of time and his entire vocabulary. It was concerned mostly with praises of Jim and his work with the men. When he had finished, the phonograph gave them "America" by a very determined male quartet. The perspiring Henderson then led them to the mess tent, where a late dinner or an early supper was set forth that had taxed the resources of the desert camp to its utmost.

It was dusk when the meal was finished, and then and then only did Henderson allow Iron Skull to lead the visitors to their tents while he took Jim by the arm and drew him to the crevice edge.

"Boss," he said, "not half an hour after you left, the whole dod dinged wall on the High Point curve slid out. Well, sir, we all know'd there'd be hell to pay for you if the two Big Bosses come and see that. We couldn't stand for it after all you'd worried over it. We fixed up three shifts. It's moonlight and, say, if we didn't push the face off that slide! Old Suma-theek, why he never let his Injuns sleep! They worked three shifts. Even at that you'd a beat us to it if we hadn't thought of this here committee of welcome deal. If I do say it, I've mixed with good people in my time. We kept the big mitts in there and one of the Injuns just brought me word the road was clear."

Jim stared at his rough-neck friend for a minute, too moved to speak. Then he held out his hand.

"Henderson, you've saved me a big mortification. I knew that wall should have been blasted back. Gee! Henderson! I'll remember this!"

"You're welcome," replied Henderson gently. "Don't let on to anyone but Williams and us fellows is mum."

And so the Director made his trip down and up the Makon Road and praised much the forethought and care that Jim had expended on it. And Jim, because the secret meant so much to his men, did not tell of their devotion until the Director had gone and Arthur Freet was established on the job. And after he had heard the story Freet said, looking at Jim keenly:

"You know what that kind of carelessness deserves, Manning?"

Jim nodded and Freet laughed at his serious face. "Pshaw, boy! Your having gotten together an organization with that sort of motive power would offset worse carelessness than that. Get ready to shove them into the tunnel."

So Jim's rough-necks began to open the tunnel.

The Makon Project was a six years' job. Freet gave Jim a chance at every angle of the work. Jim admired his chief ardently and yet the two never grew confidential. Freet, in fact, had no confidants among the government employees, but he seemed to know a great many of the politicians of the valley and of the state. And when he was not too deeply immersed in the work at hand Jim felt vaguely troubled by this.

And the problems of actual construction were so many that the dam and tunnel were completed and Jim had begun work on the ditches before he realized that there was a whole group of questions he must face that had nothing to do with technical engineering.

For the first mile the tunnel had to be driven through solid granite. Then the way led through adobe hills, so soft that the sagging walls were a constant menace. Not until six workmen had died at the job was the adobe finally sealed with concrete. After the adobe came sand, spring riddled. More rough-necks gave up their lives fighting the gushing floods and falling walls, until at last the tunnel emerged into the open foothills of the valley.

During all this time, the men for whom Jim had spent his first savings stayed solidly by him, save those whom death called out. After the camp in the canyon was built, many of them, including Henderson, developed unsuspected families and Jim became godfather to several namesakes. After the road was finished, however, old Suma-theek had to take his braves back to the Apache country. They did not like the work in the tunnel, and it was several years before Jim saw his old friend again.

Uncle Denny and Jim's mother came out to visit him, his second summer on the dam, and they enjoyed their visit so much that it became a yearly custom.

Jim's mother, with a mother's wisdom, never spoke of Pen to Jim except casually, of her health or of Sara's effort to carry on real estate business through Pen and his father. On the first visit Uncle Denny undertook to tell Jim of how the accident had developed all the latent ugliness of Sara's character and of his heavy demands on Penelope's strength and time. And he told Jim how Pen's girlishness had disappeared, leaving behind a woman so sweet, so patient, so sadly wise, that Uncle Denny could not speak of her without his voice breaking.

But Uncle Denny never repeated this recital, for before he had finished, Jim, white-lipped, had said hoarsely, "Uncle Denny, I can't stand it! I can't!" and had rushed off into the desert night.

Even Uncle Denny could not know, as Iron Skull who had lived with him for the past years knew, of Jim's silent anguish in the loss of Penelope. There was a little picture of Pen in tennis clothes at sixteen that always was pinned to Jim's tent wall. Once in a while when Iron Skull found him looking at it, Jim would tell him of Pen's beauty. But other than this he never mentioned her name to anyone.

Under the excitement of what Uncle Denny told him, Jim wrote a note to Pen:

And though Pen did not answer the note she carried it next her heart for many a day.

After the tunnel was delivering water to the valley, Jim moved into the valley with his henchmen and took charge of the canal building. Not until he undertook this work did he realize that there were economic features connected with the work on the Projects that were baffling and irritating.

The conditions in the valley were complex. A small portion of it had been farmed for many years. These farmers felt that the canals ought to come to them first. As soon as it had become known that the Reclamation Service was to undertake the Makon project, real estate sharks had gotten control of much land and by misinforming advertisements had induced eastern people to buy farms in the valley.

Other people, sometimes farmers, oftener folk who had failed in every other line of business, took up land long before even the road to the dam was finished. These people waited in a pitiful state of hardship five years for water. They blamed the Service and they fought for first water.

There were Land Hogs in the valley; men who by illegal means had acquired thousands of acres of land, although the law allowed them but one hundred and sixty acres. After the Project was nearing completion these Land Hogs sold parcels of their land at inflated prices. The Land Hogs were wealthy and had influence in the community. They threatened trouble if canals were not built first to them.

Jim turned a deaf ear to all the contending forces. His reply was the same to each:

"There is just one way to build a canal and that is where, influenced only by the lie of the land, it will do the greatest good to the greatest number. I'm an engineer, not a politician. Get out and let me work."

Yet for all his deaf ear, there percolated to Jim's inner mind facts and insinuations that disturbed him. Day after day there poured into his office not only complaints about the actual work, but accusations of graft. "The Service was working for the rich men of the valley." "The Service had its hand behind its back." "The Service was extravagant and wasteful of the people's money." "Every cent that the Project cost must be paid back by the farmers. What right had the Service to make mistakes?"

In all the cloud of complaints, Jim maintained a persistent silence and placed his canals without fear or favor. One morning in March, it was Jim's fifth year on the Makon, Mr. Freet sent for him.

"Manning," he said, as Jim dropped off his horse and stood in the doorway, "how about the canal through Mellin's place?"

Jim tossed his hair back from his face and lighted a cigarette. "Mellin, the Land Hog?" he asked. "Well, his canal's like the apple core. There ain't going to be one!"

Freet's small black eyes met Jim's clear gaze levelly. "Why?" he asked.

Jim looked surprised. "Why, you know, Mr. Freet, that to run it through Mellin's place will cost $5,000 more and will force half a dozen farmers to double the length of their ditches. The lie of the canal in relation to grade, too, is a half mile east of Mellin's place."

Arthur Freet raised his eyebrows. "I think that the canal had better go through Mellin's place."

Jim drew a quick breath. There was silence in the little sheet iron office for a moment and then Jim said, "I can't do it, Mr. Freet."

"This is not a matter for you to decide, Manning," replied Freet. "A man in my position has more to consider in building a dam than the mere engineering 'best.' I must think of the tactful thing, the thing that will save the Service trouble. Mellin has pull with Congress, enough to start an investigation."

"Let them investigate!" cried Jim. "I'd like them to see what I call some darn good engineering! I do think you got soaked on some of the contract work, though. Those permanent caretakers' houses could have been built for half the price."

Freet raised his eyebrows. "Put the canal through Mellin's place, Manning."

Jim flushed. "I can't do it! The west canal had to go through that Land Hog Howard's place, I'm sorry to say. It was the cheapest and best site. Every farmer in the valley dressed me down about it, in person and by mail. But I haven't cared! It was the right thing. But nothing doing on Mellin's place."

Freet smiled a little. "Do you want me to go over your head?"

Jim gave him a clear look. "You can have my resignation whenever you want it, Mr. Freet."

And Jim mounted and rode heavily back to his office.

CHAPTER X

The older man answered gently, for he knew he was hurting Jim. "The Service is the cleanest bureau in the government. I'll bet you can count on one hand the men in it who don't toe quite straight."

Jim drew a quick breath. "I don't believe there is a crook in the Service."

"How about the sale of the water power up at Green Mountain?" asked Williams. "Do you think that was an open deal? Did the farmers have their chance?"

Jim flushed. "I never let myself think about it," he muttered.

Iron Skull nodded. "You've lived in a fool's paradise, Boss Still, and I for one don't see that you help the Service by shutting your eyes. You know as well as I do that the United States Reclamation Service is developing some mighty important water power propositions. Do you think it's like poor old human nature to argue that the Water Power Trust ain't going to get hold of that power if it can or try to destroy the Service if it can't?"

Jim rubbed his forehead drearily. "Iron Skull, isn't there anything a fellow can keep his faith in?"

"Pshaw!" answered Williams, "you can keep your faith in the Service! This here is just like finding out that, though your wife is a mighty fine woman, she has her weak points!"

Jim stared at the lamp for a long time.

"What you looking at, partner?" asked Iron Skull.

"Oh, I was seeing the Green Mountain dam the way I first saw it and I was seeing Charlie Tuck and those days of ours in the canyon and thinking of what he said about the Service. He believed in it the way I have. And then I was thinking about the bunch of men who've stuck together and by me for five years, like a pack of wolves, by jove! And I was thinking of those lines, you know, 'The strength of the pack is the wolf and the strength of the wolf is the pack.' That is what the Service ought to be like, the Pack, and if one man goes bad the strength of the pack is hurt."

The older man nodded. Then he said, "What are you going to do about it all, Boss Still?"

Jim brought his fist down on the table. "I'm an engineer. I deal with hard facts, not intrigues. Freet must take me so or not at all."

"Well, you are half right and half wrong," commented Iron Skull, rising.

"What do you mean?" asked Jim.

"I mean that you have got an awful lot to learn yet before you will be of big value to the Service, but you've got to learn it with your elbows and sweating blood. You're that kind. Nothing I can say will help you. Good night, partner!"

The next morning Jim reported at Freet's office. "Mr. Freet," he said carefully, "I have a lot of pride in the reputation of the Reclamation Service. If we put a canal through Mellin's place it'll give people a real cause for complaint. I shall have to resign if you insist on my doing it."

Freet laughed sardonically. "The Service can't afford to lose you, even if you do live in the clouds! Why, I broke you in myself, Manning, and you are one of the best men in the Service today, bar none. We will let the Mellin matter rest for a while."

Jim blushed furiously under his chief's praise and with a brief "Thank you," he turned away.

It was a little over two months later that Jim received an order from Washington to proceed to the Cabillo Project in the Southwest. The engineer in charge there was in poor health and Jim was to act as his assistant. Jim was torn between pleasure at his promotion and displeasure over Freet's obvious purpose of getting him away from the Makon.

But the utter relief in not having to fight the Mellin matter to a finish triumphed over the displeasure and Jim left the Makon for the Southwest with Iron Skull, while trailing after him came the Pack who, to a man, suddenly felt an overwhelming desire to winter in the desert.

Jim missed the Makon very much at first. He had all the love of a father for his first born for the Project, for which Charlie Tuck had died. At first, he felt very much a stranger on this new Project. Watts, the engineer in charge, was a sick man. He was a gentle, lovable fellow of fifty, and he was taking very much to heart the heckling that the Service was receiving on his Project. His illness had caused the work on the dam to fall behind. Jim closed his ears and his mouth, placed Iron Skull and his Pack judiciously on the works and started full steam ahead to build the Cabillo dam.

Six months after Jim's arrival Watts died and Jim succeeded to his job, which day by day grew more complicated. The old simple life of the Makon when, heading his faithful rough-necks, Jim ate up the work, with no thought save for the work, was gone. Jim's job on the Cabillo was not that of engineer alone. He had not only to build the dam but to rule an organization of two thousand souls. He was sole ruler of an isolated desert community and he was the buffer between the office at Washington and all the contending and jealous forces that were rapidly developing in the valley.

The United States Reclamation Service is in the Department of the Interior. Jim had been at Cabillo two years when the new Secretary of the Interior summoned him to Washington.

The new Secretary had found his office flooded with complaints about the Reclamation Service. He had found, too, a report from the Congressional Committee which had the year before investigated several of the Projects. Being of a patient and inquiring turn of mind, the Secretary had decided to go to the heart of the matter. Therefore he invited the complainants to come to Washington to see him. He summoned the Director and Jim with several other of the Project engineers, Arthur Freet among them, to appear before him, with the complainants.

May in Washington is apt to be very warm, although very lovely to look upon. Jim, so long accustomed to the naked height and sweep of the desert country, felt half suffocated by the low hot streets of the capitol. He went directly from the train to the Hearing, which was held in one of the Secretary's offices. The room was large and square, with a desk at one end, where the Secretary was sitting. When Jim entered, the place already was filled to overflowing with irrigation farmers or their lawyers, with land speculators, with Congressmen and reporters.

The Secretary was a large man with a smooth shaven, inscrutable face and blue eyes that were set far apart under overhanging brows. He looked at Jim keenly as the young engineer made his way to his seat in the front of the room. He saw the same Jim that had said good-bye to the little group in the station eight years before; the same Jim, with some important modifications.

He was tanned to bronze, of course. He had sun wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. His mouth was thinner and the corners not so deep. The old scowl between his eyes had traced two permanent lines there. The mass of brown hair still swept his dreamer's forehead. His jaws had become the jaws of a man of action.

Jim sat down, folded his arms and crossed his knees, fixing his gaze on the patch of blue sky above the building opposite the open window. For five days he sat so, without answering a charge that was brought against him.

For five days the Secretary sat with entire patience urging every man to speak his mind fully and freely. And if bitterness toward the Service betokened free speaking, the complainants held back nothing.

A heavy set man, tanned and cheaply dressed, said: "Mr. Secretary, I was born in Hungary. I am a tinner by trade. I lived in Sioux City. I have a wife and six children. I got consumption and a real estate man fixed it up with a friend of his on the Makon Project that I go out there, see? It took all I saved but they told me crops the first year will pay all my living expenses. I buy forty acres.

"Mr. Secretary, I get no crops for five years. I hauled every drop of water we use seven miles from a spring for five years. Some days we got nothing to eat. Me and my oldest boy, we work for Mellin when we can and we stayed alive till the water come. I get cured of my consumption. But my money is gone. I can buy no tools, no nothing. And, Mr. Secretary, when the canal do come they run it through Mellin's place. My money is gone and I can't afford to dig the long ditch to Mellin's. Mellin's place is green and mine is still desert."

"Are there no small farmers or settlers who are succeeding on the Makon Project?" asked the Secretary.

"Yes, sir," replied the man, "many, but also, many like me."

"Then is your complaint against the real estate sharks or the government?" persisted the Secretary.

"Against both!" cried the man. "Why did that Freet give Mellin and the other big fellow first choice in everything? Why must I pay for what I can't get?"

There were several farmers from different projects who had stories that matched the ex-tinner's. When they had finished, the Secretary called on a real estate man who had come with a protest about the running of the canals on the Makon.

"What was the net value of the crops on the Makon Project last year," asked the Secretary.

"About $500,000, I think."

"What was it, say the year before the Reclamation Service went in there?"

"Perhaps $100,000."

"We are to believe, then, that some people have found the Service useful?"

"Oh, yes, Mr. Secretary, there are a whole lot of contented farmers up there who are too busy with their bumper crops to come to Washington, even if they wanted to."

The real estate man sat down and the Secretary called on the Chairman of the Congressional investigating committee to make a brief summary of his charges.

The Chairman said, succinctly: "I charge the Service with graft, gross extravagance and inefficiency. I call on you to remove the Director and four of his engineers, including Arthur Freet and James Manning, who are present."

"Of what specific things do you accuse Mr. Manning?" asked the Secretary, with a glance at Jim's impassive face.

"His Project is full of mistakes, some of them small, that, nevertheless, aggregate big and show the trend of the Service. Up on the Makon he made a road at a cost of a hundred thousand dollars that only the Service used. He's put a thousand dollars into telephone booths where two hundred would have been ample. Some of the canal concrete work has had to be dynamited out and done over and over again. The farmer pays for all this. Manning refuses to take any advice from the farmers on the Project, men who were irrigating before he was born. His every idea seems hostile to the farmer, whose land the farmer himself is paying him to irrigate. Manning was trained by Freet, Mr. Secretary."

The Secretary tapped his desk softly for several moments, as if turning over in his mind the opposing evidence brought out during the several days of the Hearing. Jim had not been called on but Arthur Freet and two other Project engineers had spent an entire day on the stand, quizzed unmercifully by everyone in the room. They had disclaimed every accusation. The Director of the Service, a quiet man of marvelous executive ability, had made a bitter return attack on the Congressional Committee, the farmers, the real estate men and the lawyers, accusing them of being the conscious or unconscious tools of the Water Power Trust, whose object was to destroy the Service.

An elderly Senator had risen and had addressed the Hearing. "I was one of the fathers of the Reclamation Act. One of the fundamental ideas of the Act was that it was not governmental charity but that every farmer whose arid acres were watered would be willing to pay for it. I see but one thing in all these protests against the Service and that is the attempt to repudiate the debt incurred by the farmers to the Service. And the attempt to repudiate is most bitter with the very men who pleaded most loudly with the Government to irrigate their land and who voluntarily pledged themselves to pay back during an easy period of years the cost of the Projects. If it is a fact that this tainted idea of Repudiation is creeping among the land owners on the Projects, I warn you all that I shall use all my influence to have the Reclamation Act repealed."

As the old Senator had finished half the men in the room had risen to their feet, angrily denying any thought of repudiation.

Now, after tapping his desk thoughtfully, the Secretary looked at Jim.

"Mr. Manning, please take the stand."

Jim unfolded his long legs and strode up beside the Secretary's desk. He stood there struggling for words that would not come. For five days he had sat thinking of the three Projects that he knew. He recalled Charlie Tuck and the two other engineers who had laid down their lives for the dams. He pictured again the drowned and mangled workmen at the cost of whose lives the Makon tunnel had been driven. A slow, bitter anger had risen in him against Freet. It seemed to Jim a fearful thing that one crooked man could taint such faithfulness and sacrifice as he had known, could blind intelligent men to the marvel of engineering work that marked the progress of the Reclamation Service through the arid country. But when Jim's words came, they were futile.

"I don't know," he said in his father's casual drawl, "that I have anything to say to the specific charges against me. The Director has covered the ground better than I can. I have the feeling that if the actual work we have done out west, the actual acreage we have brought to profitable bearing won't speak to you people who have seen it, nothing else will. The flood season is coming on, Mr. Secretary. I would suggest that you send either me or my successor out to my dam."

The Secretary's face was quite as inscrutable as Jim's. "Mr. Manning, why do you put so much money into roads?"

Jim's eyes fired a little. "I believe that one of the functions of government is to build good roads. Actually, the heavy freightage that must pass over these roads makes it essential that they be first class. A cheap road would be expensive in time and breakage."

"How about the accusations of mismanagement?"

"I have made mistakes," replied Jim, "and some of them have been expensive ones in lives and money. Many of our engineering problems are entirely new and we have to solve them without precedent. The punishment for a bad guess in engineering is always sure and hard. One can make a bad political guess and escape."

"How about the accusation of graft?" continued the Secretary.

Jim whitened a little. He looked over the Secretary's head out at the patch of blue sky and then back at the room full of hostile faces.

"If any man in the Service," he said slowly, "can be shown to be dishonest, no punishment can be too severe for him." Jim paused and then went on, half under his breath as if he had forgotten his audience. "The strength of the pack is the wolf. It's disloyalty in the pack that's helping the old American spirit down hill."

The Secretary's eyes deepened but he repeated, quietly, "And as to your graft, Mr. Manning?"

Jim hesitated and whitened again under his bronze. If ever a man looked guilty, Jim did.

There was at this point a sudden scraping of a chair, the clatter of an overturned cuspidor and a stout, elderly man at the rear of the room jumped to his feet.

"Mr. Secretary," he cried, "may I say a word?"

"Who are you?" asked the Secretary.

"I'm a New York lawyer, but I know the Projects like the back of me hand. And I know Jim Manning as I know me own soul. You've let everyone have free speech here. Manning didn't know till this minute that I was in town. My name is Michael Dennis, your honor."

The Secretary smiled ever so slightly as he glanced from Jim's face to that of the speaker. Jim's jaw was dropped. He was shaking his head furiously at Uncle Denny while the latter nodded as furiously at Jim.

"Mr. Manning seems unwilling to speak for himself. Since you know him so well, Mr. Dennis, we'll hear what you have to say. You may be seated, Mr. Manning."

Jim moved back to his place reluctantly and Uncle Denny made his way to the front, talking as he went.

"Of course, he won't speak for himself, Mr. Secretary. He never could. Still Jim we call him. Still Jim they name him on all the Projects and Still Jim he is here before this crowd of mixed jackals and jackasses. He never could waste his energy in speech, as I'm doing now. I've often thought he had some fine inner sense that taught him even as a child that if it's hard to speak truth, its next to impossible to hear it. So he just keeps still.

"You've heard him accused of graft, Mr. Secretary, and of inefficiency and of any other black phrase that came handy to these people. Your honor, it's impossible! It's not in his breed of mind! If you could have seen him as I have! A child of fifteen working in the pit of a skyscraper and crying himself to sleep nights for memory of his father he'd seen killed at like work, yet refusing money from me till I married his mother and made him take it. If you had seen him out on your Projects, cutting himself off from civilization in the flower of his youth and giving his young life blood to his dams! I know he's received offers of five times his salary from a corporation and stayed by his dam. I've seen him hang by a frayed cable with the flood round his arm pits, arguing, heartening the rough-necks for twenty-four hours at a stretch, the last man to give in, for his dam! I've seen him take chances that meant life or death for him and a hundred workmen and ten thousand dollars worth of material and win for his dam, for a pile of stones that was to bring money to the very men here who are howling him down. For his dam, that's wife and child to him, and they accuse him of prostituting it! Bah! You fools! Don't you know no money-getter works that way? He's a trail builder, Mr. Secretary. He's the breed that opens the way for idiots like these and they follow in and trample him underfoot on the very trail he has made for them!"

Uncle Denny stopped. There was a moment's hush in the room. Jim watched the patch of blue with unseeing eyes. As Uncle Denny started back to his seat there rose an angry buzz, but the Secretary raised his hand.

"Gentlemen! Gentlemen! Turn about is fair play. Remember that you have called the Reclamation Engineers some very foul names. Mr. Manning, I cannot see why you should not return to the flood at your dam and you other engineers to your respective posts, there to await word from your Director as to the results of this Hearing. You yourselves must realize after hearing all sides that I can take action only after careful deliberation. I thank you all for your frankness and patience with me."

As the room cleared, Uncle Denny puffed down on Jim. "Still Jim, me boy, don't be sore at me. I should have spoken if I'd been a deaf mute!"

Jim took Uncle Denny's hands. "Uncle Denny! Uncle Denny! You shouldn't have done it, yet how can I be sore at you!"

"That's right," said Uncle Denny. "You can't be! Oh, I tell you, I feel about you as I do about Ireland! I'm aching for some blundering fool to say something that I may knock his block off! When are you going back?"

"Tonight," replied Jim. "Come up to the hotel and talk while I pack. I can't wait an hour on the flood. How are mother and Pen?"

"Fine! Your mother and I are the most comfortable couple on earth. We took it for granted you'd come up to New York. You got me letter about Sara and Pen before you left the dam, didn't you?"

"No. What letter?" asked Jim.

The two were walking up to the hotel now. Uncle Denny threw up both his hands. "Soul of me soul! They are out there by now. It all happened very unexpectedly and I did me best to head him off. I must admit Pen was no help to me there."

"But what——" exclaimed Jim.

Uncle Denny interrupted. "I don't know, meself. You gave Sara's name to Freet some time ago, two years ago, when he wanted to do some real estate business in New York. Well, ever since Sara has had the western land speculation bug, and lately nothing would do but he must get out to your Project. They are waiting there now for you if Sara killed no one en route. There is so much peace in the old brownstone front now, Still Jim, that your mother and I fear we will have to keep a coyote in the parlor to howl us to sleep!"

Jim turned a curiously shaken face on Dennis. "Do you mean that Pen, Pen is out at the Dam? That she will be there when I get back?"

Uncle Denny nodded. "Pen and Sara! Don't forget Sara. Me heart misgives me as to his purpose in going."

"Penelope at my dam?" repeated Jim.

Uncle Denny looked at Jim's tanned face. Then he looked away and his Irish eyes were tear-dimmed. He said no more until they were in Jim's room at the hotel. Jim began to pack rapidly and Uncle Denny remarked, casually:

"Penelope is Saradokis' wife, you know."

Jim's drawl was razor-edged. "Uncle Denny, she never was and never will be Saradokis' wife."

"Oh, I know! Only in name! But—I may as well tell you that I think she was unwise in going to you."

Jim walked over to the window, then slowly back again. His clear gray eyes searched the kindly blue ones. "Uncle Denny, why do you suppose this thing happened to Pen?"

The Irishman's voice was a little husky as he answered: "To make a grand woman of her. She's developed qualities that nothing else on earth could have developed in her. It's because of her having grown to be what she is that I didn't want her to go to you. I—Oh, Still Jim, me boy! Me boy!"

For just a moment Jim's lips quivered, then he said, "We shall see what the desert does for us," and he closed his suitcase with a snap.