Still Jim Part 11

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I'm going away, Pen, to make some kind of a name to bring back to you and then, when I've made it, I'm coming for you, Penelope." He put his strong young hands on Pen's shoulders and looked clearly into her eyes.

"You belong to me, Penelope. You never can belong to Sara. You know that."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER VII

THE CUB ENGINEER

"Humans constantly s.h.i.+ft sand and rock from place to place.

They call this work. I have seen time return their every work to the form in which it was created."

MUSINGS OF THE ELEPHANT.

It was hard to go. But Jim was young and adventure called him. As the train began its long transcontinental journey, Jim would not have exchanged places with any man on earth. He was a full-fledged engineer.

He was that creature of unmatched vanity, a young man with his first job. And Jim's first job was with his government. The Reclamation Service was, to Jim's mind, a collection of great souls, scientifically inclined, giving their lives to their country, harvesting their rewards in adventure and in the abandoned grat.i.tude of a watching nation.

Jim was headed for the Green Mountain project which was located in the Indian country of the far Northwest. There were not many months of work left on the dam or the ca.n.a.ls. But Jim was to report to the engineer in charge of this project to receive from him his first training.

This was Jim's first trip away from the Atlantic coast. He was a typical Easterner, accustomed to landscapes on a small scale and to the human touch on everything. Until he left St. Paul, nothing except the extreme width of the map really surprised him. But after the train had crossed the Mississippi valley, it began to traverse vast rolling plains, covered from horizon to horizon with wheat. At endless intervals were set tiny dwellings like lone sentinels guarding the nation's bread.

After the plains, came an arid country where a constantly beaten vegetation fought with the alkali until at last it gave way to a world of yellow sand and purple sky.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Let her rip, Bill," said the fireman. And she proceeded to rip. Jim held his hat between his knees and clung to the bench with both hands.

The d.i.n.ky whipped around curves and across viaducts, the grade rising steadily until just as Jim had made up his mind that his moments were numbered, they reached the first steep grade into the mountain. From this point the ride was a slow and steady climb up a pine-covered mountain. Just before sunset the engine stopped at a freight shed.

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

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

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

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

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