Still Jim

by Morrow, Honore

  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.

  "Dear Penelope: If there is anything I can do, send for me. I can't bear to think of that occasional look of tragedy in your eyes standing for fact. I shall not get over this. Good-by, little Pen!

  Jim."

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

  "Dear Still: There is nothing you or anyone else can do. Sara and I must pay the price for our foolishness. I have learned more in the past two weeks than in all my life before. And I shall keep on learning. I can't believe that I'm only eighteen. Write to me once in a while.

  Penelope."

  This was Jim's answer:

  "Dear Pen: Uncle Denny wrote that you are to stay with him and mother and that Sara's father has arranged matters so that money pinch will not add to your burdens. We three are still mere kids in years so I suppose we shall get over our griefs to some extent. Let me keep at least a part of my old faith in you, Pen. In spite of the Hades you are destined to live through, keep that fine, sweet spirit of yours and keep that unwarped clarity of vision that belonged to the side of you, you showed me. It will help you to bear your trouble and I need this thought of you as much as Sara needs your nursing. I can't write you, Pen, but wire me if you need me.

  Jim."

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

  * * *

  CHAPTER IX

  THE MAKON ROAD

  "Always the strongest coyote makes the new trail. The pack is content to continue in the old."

  Musings of the Elephant.

  The building of the road from the valley to the crevice edge was not a difficult task, although the country was rough. The material for making the road was at hand, for the most part, and by the end of the summer there was a broad oiled macadam road, grade carefully proportioned to grade, leading to the canyon's brim. It was a road built to withstand the wear of thousands of tons of freight that must be hauled over it.

  But the throwing of the road three thousand feet down into the canyon was a more difficult matter. Here must be built through solid granite a road down which mule teams could haul all the machinery for the making of the dam and the tunnel and all the necessities for building the workingmen's camp in the canyon bottom.

  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 lik
e 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 co
me 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.