Still Jim Part 24

"I have two left," replied Mrs. Ames. "They're at school in Cabillo. I was bound they should have their chance. I'd like to ask you something.

Have you got a pattern for the waist you've got on? I'd like to make one for my Mary. Though I don't know! My hands are so rough I can't handle embroidery silks very good."

She held up two work distorted hands. "I made this blouse myself," said Pen. "I'd love to make one for your Mary. Time will hang on my hands out here, some days."

"That's nice of you," said the little desert woman, taking the gift as simply as it was offered. "You tell me what materials to get. I guess I can find some way to pay you up."

"Come to see me, or let me come to see you," exclaimed Pen. "That will be pay enough. I have few friends, for my husband doesn't like them. But I can see that he has taken a liking to you two."

"The minute I saw you, I knew something pleasant had happened to me,"

said Jane Ames. "You don't mind having an old woman for an admirer, do you?"

Pen's dimples showed. "The more I see of men, Mrs. Ames, the better I like women."

Jane Ames nodded understandingly. "The women I know all have got it hard one way or another but I guess desert farming ain't the worst thing that can happen to a woman. Here comes Oscar. I suppose he's mad because I ain't down at the buckboard counting the minutes till he gets to me.

Good-by, my dear! I'll see you soon."

Pen did not return to the tent house at once. She saw Iron Skull up on the mountainside watching a group of Indians break out the first line of a road and she strolled over to talk to him. Jim's letters home had been full of Iron Skull and Pen felt as if she knew him well.

"How do, Mrs. Saradokis?" said Williams.

"Are they all Indians?" asked Pen staring round-eyed at the group of workmen.

Iron Skull nodded. "Jicarilla and Mohave Apaches. I've fought with the older men. They make good workmen if you understand them. Old Suma-theek over there is one of my best friends."

There might have been fifty of the Indians, stalwart fellows, using pick and shovel with a deliberate grace that fascinated Pen. She watched in silence for a moment, then she said:

"Mr. Williams. I'm worried about Jim. Is it really true that they are trying to oust him?"

Iron Skull looked at Pen's anxious hazel eyes, then out at the ranges.

Then he scratched his head.

"I'm a little worried myself, Mrs. Saradokis. He's up against a bad proposition and he just won't admit it. I don't like to nag him. You see, him and me are just naturally partners though I am old enough to be his father. And there's some ways a man can't nag another man."

"Do you think I could help him?" asked Pen. "He and I've always been good friends."

Williams hesitated, then he spoke with a sudden deep earnestness that surprised Pen: "If you don't help him, things will be bad for Boss Still. And you're the only person I know of that could influence him."

He paused as he saw Pen flush painfully, then he went on a little awkwardly: "Maybe you'll understand me better if--if I tell you I was with Boss Still when a--Mr. Dennis wrote about your marriage. I know about how he felt and all and I sort of look on your coming at this particular time as a kind of a G.o.dsend.

"Now I'm going to tell you some things confidential and leave it to your judgment how to act. Boss Still, he sort of wors.h.i.+ped Freet. You know who he is?"

Pen nodded. Williams went on. "Freet, as I size it up, wanted to break a smart cub in to be a kind of cat's paw for him in selling water power to the right folks and running the ca.n.a.ls right. It's darn seldom you meet a good engineer that's money hungry. But Freet is. He's a miser in a way. But up on the Makon, he found out the Boss is as innocent as a baby of graft and more'n that he had his head in the clouds so's there was mighty little hope of his coming down to earth. So Freet got him sent down here.

"Well, the time's coming down here when there'll be a nice lot of water power. It belongs to the farmers after they pay for the dam, but the idea is for the engineer in charge to show 'em where to sell it to best advantage. If the engineer here ain't the right kind, the Water Power trust can make him trouble. All sorts of ways, you see. Getting the farmers sore at him is one. See?"

Pen nodded again, her eyes wide and startled. "Now," said Iron Skull, "don't be offended, but I'm wondering about your husband. I know Freet knows him and if it should just happen that your husband had any old scores to settle with the Boss----"

He paused and Pen exclaimed: "I believe we'd better go right back to New York, though as far as I know we're out here just for Sara's health and for him to buy up some land Mr. Freet knew about."

"Now don't get excited," said Williams. "Remember this here is all speculation on my part. You stay right here. If it wasn't your husband, it would be someone else and I'd rather it would be someone that has you to watch 'em! And that ain't the most important part of your job, either. Mrs. Saradokis, somehow the Boss ain't getting the grip on things he'd ought to. I don't mean in engineering. He just can't be beat at that. I don't know just what it is, but he's a big enough man to have this valley in the hollow of his hand. And he ain't. I want you to help me find out why and then _make_ him get away with it. This little old United States needs men of his blood and kind of mind. I've fell down on my job. Don't you let him fall down on his. It's the one way you can pay up for--for the other thing you took out of his life."

Pen stood with tear-blinded eyes and trembling lips. Iron Skull cleared his throat: "I hope you don't mind my b.u.t.ting in this-a-way!"

Pen shook her head. "I'll do my best," she said. "Only I'm pretty small for the job."

"Here he comes now," said Williams.

Jim rode up and dismounted. "h.e.l.lo, Pen! What do you think of my roads?

I'm crowding as many men onto the roads as I can until the water goes down. Idleness is bad for them. You see, in spite of electric lights and a water system we're a long way from civilization and it gets on the men's nerves unless we keep 'em busy. I'm going to start a moving picture show in the lower camp. The official photographer will run it for us. Just the usual five-cent movies, you know. Anything above running expenses will go toward the farmers' debt."

Iron Skull moved away to speak to Suma-theek. Jim went on slowly: "You can see what I'm up against in Ames. Any day I may get a recall. Every farmer on the project hates me for some reason or other. I tell you, Pen, if they don't let me finish my dam and the roads to and from it, it will ruin my life."

Pen's tender eyes studied Jim's face. Long and thin, with its dreamer's forehead and its steel jaw, it was the same dear face that Penelope had carried in her heart since that spring day long ago when a long-legged freshman had said to her, "I'm glad you came. I'm going to think a lot of you. I can see that."

"You know, Jim," she said, "that your mother and Uncle Denny always shared your letters with me?"

Jim nodded. "I wrote them for that."

"And so I really know a good deal about your work. Uncle Denny and I studied the maps and the government reports and then he actually saw the dams, you know, and would tell me all the details. Honestly, we'd qualify as experts in any court! And if you'll just let me share your worries while I'm out here, I shall be prouder even than Uncle Denny after you've asked his advice. And won't I crow over him after I get back to New York!"

A glow came to Jim's eyes that had not been there for years. "Gee, Pen!

You tempt me! But I'm not going to load you up with my troubles. You have enough with Sara. Perhaps Sara will shoot Ames for me! Sara looks like a sure-enough gunman, now. How he has changed, Pen!"

"If only you could have forgiven him enough to have written him once in a while, Jim. After all he's been more than punished, even for the Marathon matter or for that crazy romance about the ducal inheritance. I realized, Jim, after I had married him, that Sara was quite capable of the Marathon incident. Yet I wish you had forgiven him!"

"The Marathon, Pen!" cried Jim. "For heaven's sake, don't suppose that was why I didn't write to Sara! It's the dirty trick he did in marrying you that I'll never get over!"

"Oh, but that's not fair!" returned Pen. "He--well, anyway, he's a cripple now and needs your help."

"I--help Sara!" exclaimed Jim. "Why I simply don't know he's living!

It's my turn now. Sara has had his innings. Desert methods are perfectly simple and direct and I'm a desert man. You are here with me, Penelope, and you are going to stay with me."

Iron Skull was coming back. Pen laughed. "You and Sara ought to write movie dramas, Jim." Then she sobered. "Don't misunderstand my coming to the dam, Jimmy. I've learned a good many things since you left me in New York. One thing is that we can't cut our lives loose from other lives and be a law to ourselves. Another is that any responsibility we take up voluntarily ought to be carried to the end."

Jim looked at Pen curiously and his jaw set. She was several years younger than Jim, yet something had come to her in the years just past that made him in some ways feel immature. But Jim had not hungered and thirsted for eight years in starry solitudes with one memory and one dream to keep his heart alive, to relinquish the dream without a fight.

"Penelope," he said, "you don't know me."

Pen smiled. "I know you to the last hair in that brown thatch of yours, Still Jim." Then she turned to Iron Skull, who was eager to have her talk to old Suma-theek.

For some days Jim had no opportunity to continue Pen's education with himself as textbook. He was engrossed in watching and tending the flood.

Old Jezebel enjoyed herself thoroughly for a week. She fought and scratched at the mountainsides, but save the chafing of purple lava dust from their sides she made no impression on their imperturbability. She ripped down the last pouring, contemptuously leaving tons of rock and concrete at the foot of the concrete section. She roared and howled and shook the good earth with the noise of a railway train tearing through a tunnel. And Jim laughed.

"If it wasn't for you, old girl," he told her one afternoon, "I'd go crazy with the flea bitings of the Enemy. But you, bless your wicked soul, are an honest part of the game. I was bred from the beginning to fight floods. You attack in the open, like an honest vixen. Wait till I get my clutches on you again."

As Jim finished this soliloquy with considerable satisfaction to himself, Iron Skull came up and laid a newspaper on his saddle horn.

"The newspapers are roasting you, Boss Still."