Still Jim

Suma-theek waited eagerly. "I'll send for Uncle Benny," said Pen. "He'll leave anything to help Jim."

Suma-theek nodded. "Good medicine. He that fat uncle that love the Big Boss. I sabez him. You get 'em here quick," and Suma-theek sighed with the air of one who had accomplished something.

"I'll telephone a night telegram to Cabillo," said Pen. "He ought to be here in a week. But we mustn't tell the Big Boss or he wouldn't let us do it."

Suma-theek nodded and strolled off. When Pen returned to the tent Sara was full of curiosity, but Pen began to get supper with the remark, "I'm not the proper one to tell you, if you don't know!"

When Pen sent the night telegram, she telephoned to Jane Ames, getting her promise to come up to the dam the next day. As she took the long trail back from the store, where she had gone for privacy in sending her messages, it seemed to Pen that she could not bear to refuse Jim the comfort for which he had begged.

"My one safeguard," she thought, "is to avoid him except where we are chaperoned by half the camp. My poor boy, keeping his real troubles to himself!"

After Sara was asleep that night, Pen slipped over to talk with Mrs. Flynn. The two women were good friends. Sara's ugliness deprived Pen here as it had in New York of the friendship of most women. In the camp were many charming women who had lived lives with their engineering husbands that made them big of soul and sound of body. But Sara would have none of them. So Pen fell back on Mrs. Ames and Mrs. Flynn and the strangely matched trio had many happy hours together.

But Mrs. Flynn was not in her kitchen, nor was she in her little bedroom. Pen wandered into the living room. Mrs. Flynn was not there, but Jim was lying on the couch asleep, his hat on the floor beside him. For many moments Pen stood looking at him. Sleep robbed Jim of his guard of self-control. The man lying on the couch, with face relaxed, lips parted, hair tumbled, looked like the boy whom Pen many a time had wakened on the hearth rug of the old library.

Suddenly, with a little sob, Pen dropped on her knees beside the couch and laid her cheek against Jim's. She felt him wake with a start, then she felt a hand that trembled gently laid on her head.

"Heart's dearest, this is mighty good of you!" said Jim huskily.

Pen did not answer, but she put her hand up and smoothed his hair back from his forehead. Jim seized her fingers and carried them to his lips.

"Sweetheart," he said brokenly, "how am I going to bear it without you or—or anything. Oh, Pen, let's go back to Exham and begin all over again!"

Penelope lifted her head and slipped back until she was sitting on the floor beside the couch, with Jim holding both her hands against his hot cheek.

"You will do this often, won't you, dear?" asked Jim.

Pen shook her head. "Jimmy, about twice more like this and I'd be actually thinking seriously of leaving Sara and marrying you. God help me to keep from ever doing as yellow a thing as that, Still. But, somehow tonight, I thought that just this once would help us both through all the hard months to come. And the memory will be mighty sweet. We—we need a memory to take some of the bitterness out of it all, Still. If I'm wrong in doing this, why the blame is mine alone."

Jim lay silently, holding her hands closer and closer, looking into her face with eyes that did not waver.

Pen smiled and disengaged one hand to smooth his hair again. "I'm a poor preacher. My life is just an endless struggle not to let my mistakes wreck other people as well as myself. Jim, the thing that will be bigger than all we've missed is to make you give the world all the fine force that is in you. We've got to save the dam for you and for the country. I shall be with you every moment, Jim, no matter where either of us is, bracing you with all the will I've got. Never forget that!"

Little by little the steel lines crept over Jim's face again. "I shall not forget, little Pen. How sweet you are! How good! How less than a lump of dough I'd be if I didn't put up a good fight after this!—dearest!"

In the silence that followed, they did not take their gaze from each other. Then Pen started, as Mrs. Flynn came in at the front door and stopped with her mouth open. But Jim would not free Pen's hand.

"Mother Flynn must have guessed," he said slowly, "and—she knows us both!"

Mrs. Flynn came over to the couch eagerly. "I do that!" she exclaimed, "and my heart is wore to a string, God knows, sorrowing for the two of you."

"I came in to see you and found Jim asleep and—he's got so much trouble ahead of him, I couldn't help trying to comfort him just this once. I'll never do it again," said Pen, like a child.

Mrs. Flynn threw her apron over her head, then pulled it down again to say, "God knows I'm a good Catholic, but I'm glad you did it. Don't I know what a touch of the hand means to remember? Is there a day of my life I don't live over every caress Timothy Flynn ever gave me? Would I sit in judgment on two as fine as I know the both of you are? I'm going to make us a cup of tea for our nerves."

Jim swung his long legs off the couch and lifted Pen to her feet. "The two of you have tea," he said. "I've had a better tonic. I'm going out for a look at the night shift."

By the time that Mrs. Flynn had bustled about and produced the tea, Pen had regained her composure and was ready to tell Mrs. Flynn of the errand that had brought her to the house, which was that when Jane Ames came up on the morrow the three were to have a council of war on how to help Jim. Wild horse could not have dragged from her what Suma-theek had told her, since Jim so evidently wanted it kept a secret. Nevertheless, all that a woman could do, possessing that knowledge, Pen was going to do.

The next afternoon, while Oscar joined Murphy and Jim, who were having a long talk in Jim's living room, Pen and Mrs. Ames and Mrs. Flynn went up onto the Elephant's back.

Pen's plan was simple. It was merely that she and Jane go among the farmers' wives and campaign against Fleckenstein. "Women's opinions do count, you know," she said.

"Mine didn't use to," said Jane, "but they do now. I ain't felt so young in years as I have since Oscar and I had that clearing up. It's a splendid idea."

"Where do I come in?" asked Mrs. Flynn, jealously.

"I wanted you to keep an eye on Sara, the days I am away," said Pen. "You are the only one he will let come near him except me."

"Sure I'll do it," said Mrs. Flynn. "I'd take care of a Gila monster if I thought it would do the Boss any good. And Mr. Sara don't sass me so much since I told him what I thought of the Greek church. No! No! I won't tell the Boss. God knows I'm worried thin as a knitting needle now over his worrying."

"Then I'll come down tomorrow, Jane," said Pen. "Bill Evans will take us round. He charges——" Pen blushed and stopped. "I—I—to tell the truth, I have to ask Sara for what I want and I don't know just how to get round it, this time."

Jane in her turn went red. "I'll ask Oscar. I hadn't begun to break him in on that yet. But he's been so nice lately."

Mrs. Flynn stood eying the two women. "Of all the fools, women are the worst," she snorted. "You bet Tim never kept the purse and there never was a happier pair than him and me. Just you wait."

As she spoke, Jim's near mother was exploring the region within her gingham waist and finally she tugged out a chamois skin bag that bulged with bills. "I ain't been down to the bank at Cabillo for months, and that angel boy pays me regular as a clock. How much do you want?"

"Oh, but we can't let you pay out anything, Mrs. Flynn," protested Penelope.

Neither Pen nor Mrs. Ames had seen Mrs. Flynn angry before. "I mustn't, mustn't I?" she shrieked. "Who's got a better right? Who feeds him and launders him and mends him? Don't he call me Mother Flynn? God knows I never thought to see the day to be told I could not do for him! I expect to be doing for him till I die and if God lets me live to spare my life, that'll be a long time yet!"

Pen threw her arms round Mrs. Flynn and kissed her plump cheek. "Bless your dear heart, you shall spend all you want to on Jim."

Mother Flynn sobbed a little. "God knows I'm an old fool, girls! Take what you want and come back for more."

And thus the campaign for Jim among the farmers' wives was launched.

Neither Oscar nor Murphy had any faith in Jim's "silent campaign." But his own quiet fervor was such that after that Sunday afternoon's talk, both men pledged themselves to help him. Murphy was to play the part of watchdog. Oscar was to work among the farmers.

Oscar Ames never did anything by halves. With Jane urging him from without and his new found faith in Jim urging him from within, he turned his ranch over to the foreman and devoted himself utterly to Jim. The days now were busy ones in the valley as well as on the dam. Jim's eighteen hours a day often stretched into twenty, though he sometimes dozed in his office chair or in the automobile with Oscar, reveling in his new-learned accomplishment, driving at a snail's pace.

During this period Pen saw him only infrequently, for she was much occupied with Sara, who was not so well, when she was not in the valley with Jane Ames. Even when Pen did see Jim, he talked very little. It seemed to her that in his fear lest the secret of his dismissal escape him, he had gone into himself and shut the door even against her.

They did not speak again of watching Sara, but Pen knew that no mail left their tent, no visitor came and went without surveillance. If Sara knew of this, he made no comment. In fact, he did very little now save smoke and stare idly out the door.

Reports of Jim's campaign reached Pen quite regularly, however. Oscar was a very steady source of information.

"He don't say much, you know, and that's what makes a hit," Oscar told Pen and Jane. "For instance, he went over to old Miguel's ranch. Miguel's one of the fellow's been accusing the Boss of raising the cost of the dam so's he could steal the money. Boss, he found old Miguel looking over his ditch that's over a hundred years old. And the Boss, he says as common as an old shoe:

"'Wish I owned the place my fathers built a hundred years ago, Señor Miguel.'

"Miguel, he had had his mind made up for a fight, but started off telling the Boss about old Spanish days in the valley and the Boss, he sits nodding and smoking Miguel's rotten cigarettes and smiling at him sort of sad and friendly like until old Miguel he thinks the Boss is the only man he ever met that understood him. After two straight hours of this, the Boss he says he'll have to go, but he wishes old Miguel would come up and spend the day and dine with him. Says he's got some serious problems he'd like old Miguel's opinion on. And old Miguel, he follows us clear out to the main road, where we left the machine, and he tells the Boss his house is his and his wife and his daughters and sons are his and his horses and cattle are his and that he will be glad to come up and show him how to build the dam."

"Mrs. Flynn says he's having some farmer up to supper nearly every night," said Jane. "Oscar, how comes it you always speak of Mr. Manning as the Boss, now? You never would call any other man that?"

Oscar squared his big shoulders. "He's the only man I ever met I thought knew more than I do. You ought to hear the things he can tell you about dam building. And he's full of other ideas, too. A lot of what you folks put down as stuckupedness is just quietness on his part while he thinks. I'm trying to pound that into these bullheaded ranchers round here. I tell 'em how to make sand-cement, for instance, and then ask 'em if a fellow didn't have to keep his mouth shut and saw wood while he thought a thing like that out. I'm willing to call him Boss, all right. He's got more in his head than sand cement, too. Last night, we was coming home just before supper. He's been on the job since four in the morning and I knew he had to get back and work half the night on office work. And I says:

"'Boss, what will you get out of it to pay you for half killing yourself this way?'

"He didn't answer me for a long time, then he begun to tell me a story about how he and another fellow went through the Makon canyon and how that other fellow felt about it and how he was drowned and how he had some verses that that fellow taught him printed on his gravestone. Thought I'd remember those lines. They made me feel more religious than anything I've heard at church. Something about Sons of Martha."

Pen had been listening, her heart in her eyes, trying not to envy Oscar his long days with Jim. Now she leaned forward eagerly.

"Oh, I know what he quoted to you:

The three sat silent for a moment, then Oscar nodded. "That's them. He said he never got their full meaning till just lately and now he's trying to live up to 'em. I'm perfectly willing to call him Boss."

Pen and Jane were not finding the farmers' wives easy to influence. Their task was a double one. First they had to rouse interest in the coming election and then they had to persuade the women that their husbands were wrong. Moreover, after the first week or so, they found that Penelope's presence was a hindrance rather than a help. It was after their call on Mrs. Hunt that they reluctantly reached this conclusion.

Bill rattled them up to a bungalow on one of the new ranches. The Hunts were newcomers, having bad luck with their first attempts at irrigation. Mrs. Hunt was a hearty looking woman of forty. Pen stated the object of the call.

"I never had any interest in politics," said Mrs. Hunt. "I was always too busy with my family to gallivant around."

Jane and Pen plunged earnestly into explanations. When they had finished, Mrs. Hunt said:

"I can see why Mrs. Ames is so interested. But why should you be, Mrs. Sardox? I heard your husband was backing Fleckenstein."

"I don't agree with my husband's ideas," said Pen. "I am doing this because I think Fleckenstein's election will do the valley a deadly wrong."

"Oh, you are one of those eastern women that thinks they know more than their husbands! I am not! I prefer to let my husband do my thinking in politics for me. Does Mr. Manning know you're doing this?"

"Oh, no!" cried Jane. "You don't understand this, Mrs. Hunt."

"I'm no fool," returned Mrs. Hunt. "And I tell you it don't look well for a good-looking young married woman to go round fighting against her husband for a handsome young bachelor like Manning. So there!"

Pen and Jane withdrew with as much dignity as they could muster. It was the sixth rebuff they had received that day. Pen was almost in tears.

"Jane, what are we to do?"

Jane fastened up her linen duster firmly. "One thing is sure, you can't go round with me. One way, you can't blame 'em for looking at it so, drat 'em! I'll just have to carry on this campaign by myself. I wish Mr. Manning could go with me. I don't think he has any idea that he has a way with women. He just sits around looking as if he had a deep-hidden sorrow and all us women fall for it. You and I aren't a bit more sensible than Mrs. Flynn. Here I got a Chinese cook in the house Oscar lugged home. I'd as soon have a rat in the house as one of the nasty yellow things, but Oscar says I got to have him or a dish washing machine, so, after all, I've said I'm up against it. And here I am dashing round the country for Mr. Manning, when I know that Chink is making opium pills in my kitchen."

But Pen was not to be distracted. "What can I do, Jane? Must I just sit with folded hands while the rest of you work?"

"You do your share in supplying ideas, Penelope," said Jane.

Pen answered with a little sob, "I get tired of that job! I want to be on the firing line, just once!"

That night they consulted with Oscar. At first he was very hostile to the thought of either of them undertaking such work. Then in the midst of his tirade on woman's sphere, he stopped with a roar of laughter.

"And I'm a fine example of what a woman can do with a man when she gets busy! All right, Jane, go ahead. Hanged if I ain't proud of you! But Mrs. Pen is hurting the cause. The women folks won't stand for you, Mrs. Pen; you are too pretty."

So Pen withdrew from the campaign and Jane and Bill Evans went on alone.

When Oscar was not with Jim, he brought visitors to the dam. These visitors were farmers and business men from the entire Project. Ames was careful to time the visits, so that about the time he strolled up to the dam site with the callers, Jim would be on his tour of inspection. Oscar would then follow unostentatiously in Jim's wake, but close enough to get a good idea of the ground that Jim covered. Often he would make Jim stop and give an explanation of some point the visitors could not understand. Penelope, consumed with curiosity, joined the touring party one day.

"I wish you could see him in full action," Oscar was saying. "Like the day of the flood or the night Dad Robins was killed. He can handle fifteen hundred men better'n I handle my three. Now you watch him. Those there fellows he's joshing have been with him seven years. You ought to hear their stories about driving the tunnel up on the Makon. Say, he'd go right in with 'em. Never asked 'em to go somewhere he wouldn't go himself. They all laugh at us farmers, those rough-necks. Say, we don't know a real man when we see one."

The bronzed elderly man who was with Oscar listened intently. Oscar went on:

"The details on a place like this are enough to drive a man crazy. He dassent let 'em pour concrete without him or his cement expert is round. If the rocks aren't just right or the surface of the section isn't just right or they slip up a little on the mixture, the whole thing will go to thunder some day. He's got to spend ten million dollars with eighty million people watching him and all us farmers kicking every minute. How'd you like his job?"

"He was over at my place the other day," said the farmer. "I see how he got his nickname. But he's awful easy to talk to. I got to telling him what a hard time I had the first year or two I was irrigating alfalfa and how I get five good cuttings a year now, regular. He wants me to show that new fellow Hunt how I did it. Guess I will. I always thought Manning hated the farmers. But I guess he was just busy with his own troubles."

Pen fell back and climbed the trail to a point where she could look down on Jim. He was listening to his master mechanic, interjecting a word now and then at which his subordinate nodded eagerly. Pen wondered sadly, what Jim would do with his life when he could no longer work for the Projects. The thought of this sudden thwarting of all his plans haunted her and she longed almost unbearably to talk to him about it, but his silence on the subject she felt that she must respect. As she sauntered on along the trail to meet Bill Evans exploding into camp with the mail, she was thinking back over Jim's life and of how much of it had been spent in listening rather than in speaking. His silence, she thought, was a part of his great personal charm. From it his companions got a sense of a keen, sympathetic intelligence focused entirely on their own problems that was very attractive. Somehow, Pen had faith that his campaign of silence would defeat Fleckenstein.

Bill had a lone passenger in his tonneau. Pen's pulse quickened. As the machine reached her side, Bill stopped with his usual flourish, and Uncle Denny, without waiting to open the door which was fastened with binding wire, climbed out over the front seat.

"Pen! Pen! The door of me heart has hung sagging and open ever since you left!"

CHAPTER XXIV

Uncle Denny stopped and wiped the sweat out of his eyes with his silk handkerchief. He gazed in silence for a moment at the mammoth foundations, over which the workmen ran like ants.

"'Twas but a hole in the ground when I last saw it," he said. "Pen, it's so big you can't compass it in your mind. And they are pecking at me boy while he builds mountains!"

"There he is!" exclaimed Pen, pointing to the tower foot.

"It is! It's Still Jim! Is me collar entirely wilted?"

Pen laughed. "Uncle Denny, you're as fussed as a girl at meeting her sweetheart! You look beautiful and you know it. There! He sees us!"

Uncle Denny lost a little of his color and stood still. Jim came striding down the road. His eyes were black with feeling. Without a word he threw his arms around Uncle Dennis and hugged that rotund person off his feet.

"Still Jim, me boy!" cried Uncle Denny. "I've come out to lick the world for ye!"

Jim loosened his bear hug and stepped back. His smile was brilliant.

"Uncle Denny, you look like a tailor's ad! Doesn't he, little Penelope?"

There was something in Jim's voice as he spoke Pen's name that Michael Dennis understood as clearly as if Jim had shouted his feeling for Pen in his ear.

"I'm starving to death," he said hastily. "Take me home, Still. Come along, Pen."

Mrs. Flynn was surveying the trunk as it stood on end in the living room. She was talking rapidly to herself and as the three came up on the porch she cried:

"I said 'twas you, Mr. Dennis! I told myself fifty times 'twas your trunk and still myself kept contradicting me. You are as handsome as a Donegal dude. Leave me out to the kitchen till I get an early supper!"

After supper Jim and Dennis sat for a short time over their pipes before Jim left for some office work.

"Tell me what to do first, Still," said Uncle Denny, "and I'll start a campaign against Fleckenstein that'll turn the valley upside down. That's what I came out for. I'll fix them, the jackals!"

"Uncle Denny, it won't do," answered Jim slowly. "The uncle of a Project engineer can't carry on a political campaign in his behalf. You'd just get me in deeper with the public."

Uncle Denny stared. "But I came out for that very thing."

"I thought you had just come out for one of your usual visits. It won't do, dear Uncle Denny. I can't say anything against Fleckenstein nor must you."

"Me boy," said Michael Dennis, "all the public sentiment on earth can't keep me from fighting Fleckenstein. Pen sent for me and I'm here."

"Pen sent for you?" repeated Jim. "Why, Pen should not have done that."

"This is a poor welcome, Jim," said Uncle Denny, immeasurable reproach in his voice.

Jim sprang to his feet and put a long brown hand on Uncle Denny's shoulder. "You can't mean that, Uncle Denny. It's meat and drink to me to have you here. You can't doubt it."

"I can't, indeed," agreed Dennis heartily. "And somehow, I'm going to help. Go get your work done and then call for me at Pen's house."

Jim had been in the office but a few minutes when he came out again and stood on the edge of the canyon, staring at the silhouette of the Elephant against the night stars. After a moment he turned up the trail toward the tent house. He entered without ceremony and stood a tall, slender, commanding figure against the white of the tent wall. His eyes were big and bright. His lips were stiff as he looked at Sara and said:

"You are fully even now, Saradokis. I've a notion to kill you as I would a rattler."

The tent was bright with lamplight. The red and black Navajo across Sara's cot was as motionless over the outline of his great legs as though it covered a dead man. Uncle Denny stared at Jim without stirring. His florid face paled a little and his bright Irish eyes did not blink.

Pen could see a tiny patch that Mrs. Flynn had put on the knee of Jim's riding breeches. There swept over her a sudden appreciation of Jim's utter simplicity and sincerity under all the stupendous responsibilities he had assumed not only in the building of the dam, but in his less tangible building for the nation. As he stood before them she saw him not as a man but as the boy Uncle Denny often had described to her, announcing the vast discovery of his life work. Would he, had he known the bitter years ahead of him, have chosen the same, she wondered.

"I found two interesting communications in my mail tonight," said Jim, slowly. "One is a letter from the Washington Office containing clippings from eastern papers. Some reporter announces that he has discovered a fully developed scheme of mine and Freet's to sell out to the Transatlantic people. He gives a twisted version of the conversation here, the other night, that sounds like conclusive evidence. The matter is so well handled that even the Washington office is convinced that I'm a crook. The local papers will, of course, copy this."

Sara did not stir. Jim moistened his lips. "While I knew that I lived under a cloud of suspicion," he said, "I thought to be able to leave the Service with nothing worse than suspicion on my name. I shall never be able to live this down. Yet this is not the worst. I received tonight an anonymous letter. It states that unless I drop my silent campaign, the name of the wife of my crippled friend will be coupled with mine in an unpleasant manner."

Pen's eyes were for a moment horror-stricken. Then they blazed with anger. And so suddenly that Jim and Dennis hardly saw her leave her chair. She sprang over to Sara's couch and struck him across the mouth with her open hand. The stillness in the room for a second was complete, except that Sara breathed heavily as he rose to his elbow.

"I may or may not have produced the newspaper copy, but so help me the God I have blasphemed, I have never used Pen's name," said Sara.

"But you have," said Jim. "You used it before Freet. You probably have cursed me out before Fleckenstein as you did before him and Ames!"

"And there was my trying to help Jane Ames in the valley!" cried Pen suddenly. "She's talking with the farmers' wives for Jim and I went with her until the women were cattish. Oh, Jim, what have we done to you, Sara and I?"

"I shall have to give up the fight a little earlier, that is all," answered Jim. "Don't feel badly, Pen. If I only had some way of punishing Sara and stopping his mischief! Though it's too late now."

"Just be patient, Jim," said Sara. "My mischief will soon end."

Pen had heard only Jim, the first sentence of Jim's remarks. She stood beside the table, white to the lips. "Jim, if you want to wreck my life, stop the fight! Do you suppose, except for the moment's shame, I care what they say about me? If you will only go on with your fight, Jim, let them say what they will. I can stand it. My strength—my strength——" Pen paused with a little sob, as if Uncle Denny reminded her of her girlhood dreams, "my strength is in the eternal hills!"

"I have lived with George Saradokis all these years," Pen went on, "and he's almost broken my faith in life. When I found I could help you, Jim, I thought that I was making up for some of the wrong of my marriage. I even thought that I'd be willing to go through my marriage again because it had taught me how to help you fight. Jim, it will ruin my life if you stop now!"

And Pen suddenly dropped her face in her hands and broke down entirely. Jim never had seen Pen cry. He took a step toward her, then looked pitifully at Uncle Denny.

Uncle Denny sprang from his chair.

"Go on out, Jim," he said. Then he folded Pen in his arms. "Rest here, sweet, tired bird," he said in his rich voice. "Rest here, for I love you with all me soul."

Jim's lips quivered. He went out into the night and once more climbed the Elephant's back. For a long time he sat, too exhausted by his emotions to think. With head resting on his arms, he let the night wind sweep across him until little by little his brain cleared and he looked about him. Far and wide, the same wonder of the desert night; the stars, so low, so tender, so inscrutable, the sky so deep, so utterly compassionate; the far black scratch of the river on the silver desert, the distant black lift of the mountains—Pen's eternal hills!

Over the flagpole on the office the flag rippled and floated, sank and rose, dancing like a child in the joy of living. Jim looked at it wistfully. Flag that his forefathers had fashioned from the fabric of their vision, must the vision be forgotten? It was a great vision, fit to cover the yearnings of the world. His grandfather had fought for it at Antietam. His father had lost it and had died, bewildered and hungry of soul. Was he himself to lose it, son of vision seekers?

The Elephant beneath him seemed to listen for Jim's reply. "God knows," he said at last, "I would not deny the vision to all the immigrant world. All I wish is that we who made the vision had kept it and had taught it to these others to whom our heritage must go. You can scoff, old Elephant, but the struggle is worth while. You can say that nothing matters but Time. I tell you that eternity is made up of soul fights like mine and Pen's!"

Suddenly there came to him the fragment that Pen had quoted to him days before:

Jim suddenly rose with his blood quickened. "Not to be overcome! And God, what stakes to fight for! To build my father's dream in stone and to make a valley empire out of the tragedy of a woman's soul!"

With renewed strength Jim went down the trail, crossed the canyon and went up to his house.

Uncle Denny was waiting for him. It was nearly midnight. He had kindled a fire in the grate and was brewing some tea. "Mrs. Flynn would have it you'd fallen off a peak but I got her to bed. Have some tea, me boy."

Uncle Denny's voice was cheerful, though his eyes were red. He watched Jim anxiously.

"You should have gone to bed yourself, Uncle Denny. I have a letter to write, then I'm going to turn in."

Uncle Denny's hand shook as he poured the tea. "I had to see you, Still, because I promised Pen I'd go back over there tonight and tell her what your decision was."

Jim caught up his hat. "I'll go!"

But Uncle Denny laid his hand on Jim's arm. "No, me boy. Pen's had all she can stand tonight. I'll take her your word. What shall it be, Still?"

Jim brought his fist down on the table. "Tell her, with her help, I'll keep up the fight!"

Uncle Denny's blue eyes blazed. "I'm prouder of the two of you than I am of me Irish name," he said, and, seizing his hat, he hurried out.

While he was gone Jim wrote this note:

"My dear Mr. Secretary:—Some time ago I wrote you that I did not think an engineer should be asked to build the dam and at the same time handle the human problems connected with the Project. Subsequent events lead me to believe that as your letter suggests it is the duty of the government to look on these Projects not as engineering problems so much as the building of small democracies that may become the living nuclei for the rebirth of all that America once stood for. I do not believe that I am big enough for such a job, but I am putting up a fight. I have been asked to resign within a few weeks from now. I think, looking at the matter from the point of view I have just expressed, that I am dismissed with justice. This letter is to ask you to see that my successor is chosen with the care that you would give to the founder of a colony."

Uncle Denny returned and waited until Jim had finished his letter. Then he said:

"Sara spoke just once after you left. He denied any knowledge of the anonymous letter."

"I'm going to put it up to Fleckenstein," said Jim. "The newspaper dope, of course, was Sara's. I can only ignore that except to answer any questions the farmers may put to me about it. How is Pen?"

"She cried it out on me shoulder after you left and felt better for the tears. Your message will send her to sleep. Still Jim, if I had a jury of atheists and could put Pen on the stand and make her give her philosophy as she has sweated it out of her young soul, I could make them all believe in the eternal God and His mighty plans. To be bigger than circumstance, that's the acid test for human character."

Jim nodded and looked into the fire. This suggestion that he might be the instrument of a mighty plan, he and Pen and Uncle Denny, awed him. Uncle Denny eyed the fine drooping brown head for a moment.

"Ah, me boy! Me boy!" he said tenderly. "The old house at Exham is not a futile ruin. 'Tis the cocoon that gave birth to the butterfly wings of a great hope. Look up, Still! You've friends with you till the end of the fight."

Jim reached for Michael Dennis' hand and held it with both his own, while he said: "Stay with me for a month or two, Uncle Denny. Don't go away. I need you. I've neither wife nor father and I haven't the gift of speech that makes a man friends."

Jim was off the next morning before daylight. Uncle Denny slept late and while he was eating his breakfast, the ex-saloonkeeper, Murphy, came in.

"The Big Boss sent me up to spend the day with you, Mr. Dennis. He can't get back till late in the afternoon. He told me to talk Project politics to you. My name is Murphy. I'm timekeeper down below, but I've left the job for a while for reasons of my own."

Uncle Denny pulled a chair out for Murphy and looked at him thoughtfully.

"Do you know this jackal, Fleckenstein?"

"I do. The Boss showed me that letter. I suppose you know how a man like Mr. Manning would take to a fellow like Fleckenstein?"

"Know!" snorted Uncle Denny. "Why, young fellow, I'd know Jim's disembodied soul if I met it in an uninhabited desert."

Murphy raised his eyebrows. "You're Irish, I take it."

"You take it right."

"I was born in Dublin myself."

The two men shook hands and Murphy went on. "I told the Boss to forget that letter. I know Fleckenstein. I know all his secrets just as I do about every other man's in the valley. I know their shames and their business grafts. In fact I know everything but the best side of 'em. I've been in the saloon business in this valley for twenty years, Mr. Dennis."

"Ah!" said Uncle Denny. "I understand now!"

"All I've got to do," said Murphy, "is to drop in on Fleckenstein and mention this letter and suggest that my own information is what you might call detailed. 'Twill be enough."

"Of course, it might not be Fleckenstein," said Dennis.

"Never mind! My warning will reach the proper party, if I go to Fleckenstein," said Murphy. He smacked his lips over the cup of coffee Mrs. Flynn set before him.

"And how came you to be helping the Boss instead of distributing booze?" asked Uncle Denny.

"I was about ready to quit, anyhow," said Murphy. "A man gets sick of crooked deals if you give him time. And time was when a man could keep a saloon in this section and still be the leading citizen and his wife could hold up her head with the banker's wife. That time's gone. I've been thinking for a long time of marrying and settling down. Then the Boss cleaned me out." Murphy chuckled.

"How was that?" asked Dennis. Mrs. Flynn began to clear the table very slowly.

"Well, this is the way of it," and Murphy told the story of his first meeting with Jim. "I've seen him in action, you see," he concluded, "and I'd be sorry for Fleckenstein if he crosses the Boss's path."

"Jim'll never trouble himself to kick the jackal!" said Uncle Denny.

"Huh! You don't know that boy. There was a look in his eye this morning—God help Fleckenstein if he meets the Big Boss—but he'll avoid the Boss like poison."

Uncle Denny shook his head. "What kind is Fleckenstein?"

"What kind of a man would be countenancing a letter like that?" Then Murphy laughed. "The first time I ever saw Fleckenstein he was riding in the stage that ran west from Cabillo. Bill Evans was driving and Fleckenstein got to knocking this country and telling about the real folks back East. Bill stood it for an hour, then he turned round and said: 'Why, damn your soul, we make better men than you in this country out of binding wire! What do you say to that?' And Fleckenstein shut up."

Uncle Denny chuckled. "Have a cigar? Is Jim making any headway in this 'silent campaign' I'm hearing about?"

"Thanks," said Murphy. "Well, he is and he ain't. He's got a great personality and everybody who gets his number will eat sand for him. He made a great speech at Cabillo, time of the Hearing. He said the dam was his thumb-print—kind of like the mounds the Injuns left, I guess. People are kind of coupling that speech up now with him when they meet him and they are beginning to have their doubts about his dishonesty. But I don't believe he can get his other idea across on the farmers and rough-necks in time to lick Fleckenstein."

"And what is his other idea?" asked Dennis.

Murphy smoked and stared into space for a time before he answered. "I can best tell you that by giving you an incident. I went with Ames and the Boss while he called on a farmer named Marshall. Marshall is a bright man and no drinker. He has been loud in his howls about the Boss being incompetent and kicking about the farmer having to pay the building charges. Marshall was cleaning his buckboard and the Boss, sort of easy like, picks up a brush and starts to brush the cushion.

"'My father used to make me sweep the chicken coop,' says the Boss. 'We were too poor to keep a horse. If I couldn't build a dam better than I used to sweep that coop, I'd deserve all you folks say about me.'

"He says this so sort of sad like that Marshall can't help laughing, and he starts in telling how he used to sojer when he was a kid. And once started, with the Boss looking like his heart would melt out of his eyes, Marshall kept it up till the whole of his life lay before the Boss like an illustrated Sunday Supplement.

"'You've had great experiences,' says the Boss. 'I've not had much experience in dealing with men as you have. I'm wondering if you would help me get this idea across with the folks round here. I want them to see this; that America has never made a more magnificent experiment to see if us folks can handle our own big business and pay a debt contracted by ourselves. I'd like to see this done, Marshall,' he says sad like, 'as a sort of last legacy of the New England spirit, for we old New Englanders are going, Marshall, same as the buffalo and the Indian.'

"Something about the way he said it sort of made your eyes sting and Marshall says, rough-like, 'I'll think it over and I'd just as soon tell what you said to the neighbors,' Then, while the Boss went up to the house to get a drink of water, Marshall says to us, 'He's got a good shaped head. I wouldn't a made so many fool cracks about him if I'd known he could be so sort of friendly and decent.'"

During this recital, Mrs. Flynn had drawn near and now with eyes on Murphy she was absently polishing the teaspoons with the dustcloth.

"Why don't you send some of those folks to me?" she cried. "I'd tell 'em a thing or two about the Big Boss. There's a letter over there now on the desk from the German government, asking him questions and offering him a job. Incompetent!"

"How do you know what's in the letter, Mrs. Flynn?" asked Uncle Denny, with a wink at Murphy.

"Because I read it," returned Mrs. Flynn, with shameless candor. "Somebody's got to keep track of the respects that's paid that poor boy or nobody'd ever know it. God knows I hate the Dutch, but they know a good man when they hear of one better than the Americans. And I wish you two'd get out of here while I set the table for dinner."

The two men laughed and got their hats. "I'll meet you at the office shortly," said Uncle Denny. "I've a call to make."

Pen was sitting on the doorstep when Uncle Denny came up. She was looking very tired and her cheeks were flushed. She rose and led him away from the tent.

"Sara is very sick, Uncle Denny. I've given him some morphine, but he'll be coming out of it soon. Will you telephone from the office for the doctor?"

"Is it the same old pain?" asked Dennis.

"Yes, only worse. I—I am to blame, in a way. He has been growing worse lately and any excitement is dreadful for him. And then, I struck him, Uncle Denny! I shall never forgive myself for that. And yet, this morning he laughed at it. He said he never had thought so much of me as he had for that slap."

Uncle Denny nodded. "He's deserved it a hundred times, Penny! That never made him worse. But this is no place for him. When I go back to New York, you and he must go with me."

"Yes, I have felt the same way, about the excitement here. We'll go when you say, Uncle Denny."

"Is the doctor here a good one?"

"Splendid! A Johns Hopkins man here for his health."

"What else can I do?" asked Uncle Denny. "Shall I come in and sit with him?"

"No; ask Mrs. Flynn to come over after dinner. You go out and see the dam and be proud of your boy."

"And of me girl," said Uncle Denny. He had been standing with his hat in his hand and now he bent and kissed Pen's cheek.

"Erin go bragh!" said Pen. "Uncle Denny, I'm tired! I feel as if I were running on one cylinder and three punctured tires. I have to talk that way after my close association with Bill Evans!"

Uncle Denny had a delightful trip over the Project with Murphy. He dined with the upper mess so that Mrs. Flynn could devote herself to Pen. After eating, he started down the great road to the tower foot to meet Murphy.

Before he came to the tower, however, he came on a group of men hovering over the canyon edge. Uncle Denny gave an exclamation of pity. A mule with a pack on its back had slipped off the road and hung far below by the rope halter that had caught around a projecting rock. The hombre who had been driving the mule had gone for ropes.

"See how still he keeps, the old cuss," said Jack Henderson gently. "A horse would have kicked himself to death long ago. That mule knows just what's holding him. A mule forgets more in a minute than a horse knows in a year."

Uncle Denny almost wept. The mule pressed his helpless forelegs against the wall and except that he panted with fright and that his ears moved back and forth as he listened for his hombre's voice, he was motionless. His liquid eyes were fastened on the group above with an appeal that touched every man there.

"What can you do for the poor brute!" cried Uncle Denny.

"Wait till the hombre gets back," said Henderson. "If he can hang on that long, we can save him. Nothing like this happens to a mule very often. You can't get a mule to try a trail that isn't wide enough for his pack. They can reason, the old fools! Bill Evans' auto shoved this fellow over. The steering gear broke."

At this moment a panting hombre arrived with two coils of rope. The men hastily fastened one rope under the Mexican's arms. He seized the other and they lowered him into the canyon. He talked to the mule in soft Spanish all the way down and the great beast began to answer him with deep groans. With infinite care, the hombre cut the packs loose and they went crashing into the river bed. Still the mule did not move. His driver carefully made the rope fast round the mule. The waiting men then drew the little Mexican up, and when he was safe all hands, including Uncle Denny, drew the mule up. When the big gray reached the road, he tried each leg with a gentle shake, walked over to the inside edge of the road and lifted his voice in a bray that shook the heavens.

The men laughed and patted him. "When I was in the Verde river country one spring, years ago," said Henderson, in his tender, singing voice, "I had a mule train up in the hills. They was none of them broke and they wouldn't cross the river till I took off my clothes and swam with 'em, one at a time. It was fearful cold. The water was just melted snow and I was some mad. But I finally got all but one across. He was a big gray like this. I was so cold and so hungry and so mad, I tied his head up a tree and swam off and left him to die.

"I made camp across the river and two or three times in the night I woke up and thought of that old gray mule. I was still sore at him, but I made up my mind I wouldn't go off and leave him to starve to death, that I'd shoot him in the morning. But in the morning I got to looking at him and I was afraid a shot from across the river would just wound him. I wouldn't risk my gun again in the water, so I takes off my clothes, takes my knife in my teeth and," Henderson's voice was very sweet as he scratched the mule's ear, "and swims back to cut his throat. When I got up to him I cussed him out good. And I says, 'I'll give you one more chance. Either you swim or I cut your throat.' I untied him and that old gray walked down to the water's edge and you'd ought to see him hustle in and swim! He'd reasoned out I was a man of my word!"

Jim had come up in time to hear the story and when Henderson had finished he said: "I've always claimed it was the mules that built the government dams. What would we have done with our fearful trails and distance and heavy freight without the mule? Some day when I get time, I'll write a rhapsody on the mule."

The men laughed and made way for the doctor on his horse. But the doctor stopped and spoke very gravely to Uncle Denny.

"Mrs. Saradokis wants you. Her husband is very low."

CHAPTER XXV