So as the last of the sand and gravel was being shoveled into the grave, the old Apache stepped forward and raised his lean brown hand.
"My blood brother," he said, "he lies in this grave. If he have squaw or childs, old Suma-theek, he go give life for them. Iron Skull he no have anyone left on this earth who carry his blood. He gone! He leave no mark but in my heart. Injun and white they come like pile of sand desert wind drifts up. They go like pile of sand desert wind blows down. Great Spirit, He say, 'Only one strength for mens; that the strength of many childs, Injuns, they no have many childs. They die. Mexicans they have many childs, they live. Niggers, they have many. They live. Whites they no have many childs. Come some day like Injuns, like Iron Skull, they see on all of earth, no blood like theirs. They lay them down to die alone. Old Iron Skull, he a real man. He fight much. He work hard. He keep word. He die for friend. Maybe when Great Spirit look down at Iron Skull, it make Him love Iron Skull to know old Injun carry Iron Skull's mark in his lonely heart. O friends, I know him many, many years! We smoke many pipes together. We hunt together. We sabez each other's hearts. Ai! Ai! Ai! Beloved!"
And old Suma-theek broke down and cried like a child.
The crowd dispersed silently. The rising night wind began its task of sifting sand across Iron Skull's grave. Coyotes howled far on the mountain tops. And the night shift began to repair the cofferdam for old Jezebel had dropped suddenly back into her old trail.
A day or so after the funeral Sara said to Penelope, "When are you going down to see Mrs. Ames?"
"What makes you so friendly to the Ames family?" Pen asked in surprise.
"Ames may be useful to me," replied Sara. "I want you to cultivate him."
"I'll not do it for any such reason," said Pen quickly. "I like Mrs. Ames and I plan to see a great deal of her. But I'll not play cat's paw for you. What are you up to, Sara?"
"None of your business," said Sara.
Pen flushed, but fell back on the whimsical manner that was her defense against Sara's ill-nature.
"It's your subtlety that fascinates me, Sara. Did you ever try a steam roller?"
Sara scowled: "Of course, I suppose it's too much to ask you to take an interest in my business affairs. If I were a well man, I might hope to make an impression on you."
"By the way, Sara," said Pen, "land speculation hurts these Projects. I don't think you ought to try to make money that way. Of course, if Mr. Ames wants to sell you some land, I suppose I can't keep you from buying, but Jim says that, coupled with the heavy building charges, inflated land values are doing the Service a lot of harm."
Pen watched Sara closely. Sara when calm was close-mouthed. Sara when angry was apt to talk! His face flushed quickly.
"Jim! Jim!" he sneered. "I heard it all the time in New York and now I'm getting it here. Oh, wait and see, the two of you!"
For the first time since the first years of bitter adjustment, Pen showed fire. She crossed the room and stood over Sara's couch, her cheeks scarlet, her hazel eyes deep with some suppressed fire.
"Do you think I fear you, with your vile tongue and your yellow heart, George Saradokis? There is neither fear nor love nor hope nor regret left in my heart! It long ago learned that marriage is a travesty and our marriage a nightmare. Do you think your impudence or your threats hurt me any more? You waste your breath if you do. You and I have made a hopeless mess of our lives. Jim is doing a big work. If I find you are laying a straw in his way, I'll—I'll shove you, couch and all, over the canyon edge."
Sara suddenly laughed. Even as she uttered her threat Pen was mechanically straightening his pillow!
"Look here, Pen," he said, "I know I'm a devil! The pain and the awful failure of my life make me that. But I'll try to be more decent. For the Lord's sake, Pen, don't you go back on me or I'll take an overdose of morphine. I do want to make some money and any land deal that Ames and I put through, I'll let Jim pass on. Does that satisfy you?"
It was not often that Sara tried to wheedle Pen. She looked at him suspiciously but nodded carelessly.
"All right! If Jim sees it I'll consent. If you get any honest enjoyment out of Mr. Ames, I'll get him up here often. Mrs. Ames is a dear."
"You are a good old sort, Pen," returned Sara. "Why can't you go down tomorrow? Mrs. Flynn would look out for me, I guess. They say that fellow Bill Evans will ride people anywhere in his machine."
"I'll go over and see Mrs. Flynn now," said Pen. She was really eager for a visit with Jane Ames. She wondered if Iron Skull might not have been over-suspicious regarding Sara's purposes. Sara had an unquenchable itch for money-making. During all his long illness he had never ceased, with his father's help, to trade in real estate. Pen suspected that the savings of many Greek immigrants were absorbed in Sara's and his father's schemes, none too honestly.
"Perhaps," said Pen, as she pinned on her hat, "Jim would take me down. Doesn't it seem natural though to have Jim doing things for me again!"
Some note in Pen's voice brought Sara to his elbow.
"Pen!" he shouted. "I've long suspected it. Are you in love with Jim Manning?"
* * *
CHAPTER XV
THE HEART OF A DESERT WIFE
"The squaws who come at times to crouch upon my back have the slow listening patience of the rabbits."
Musings of the Elephant.
Pen paused, eyes angry, mouth disgusted: "You are the last person I'd ever tell, Sara, if I were. Don't add idiocy to your other accomplishments."
Sara's black eyes continued to glare for a moment. Then for the second time he astonished Penelope by laughing. He dropped back on his pillow.
"Pen! Pen! a lawyer could have given no better answer than that! I'm not worrying, Pen. You've stuck by me all these years. I know I'm safe to the end."
Penelope's scorn changed to pity. "I've been horrid today. You will have to forgive me, Sara. You must remember that you are no mild June day to live with!"
Sara gave a short nod. "Give me my pipe, Pen, and then jolly Mrs. Flynn up."
Mrs. Flynn, whose curiosity was only equaled by her kindness of heart, was only too willing to take care of Sara. Had a caged South African lion been placed in her care she would have had the same thrill at the thought of caring for it as at watching Sara. Great stories of Sara's marvelous temper had gone about the camp. Any extra steps he caused Mrs. Flynn she felt would be more than compensated for in the delectable gossip she would pick.
Pen did not ask Jim to take her down to the Ames place. She arranged to go down with Bill Evans, who kept a hog ranch near the dam. Bill fed his hogs on the camp table scrapings and filled in odd moments "renting out" his automobile. This was a sad-looking vehicle of an early vintage, held together by binding wire and bits of sheet iron. But Bill got twenty miles an hour out of the machine and took better care of it than he did of his wife.
The Ames ranch lay in the desert valley below the dam. Two hours after they left the dam, Bill drew up before the Ames door with a rattle and a series of staccato explosions that would have done credit to an approaching army.
The trip down had been a noisy rush through multicolored ranges out onto a desert floor of brilliant yellow dotted with giant cactus, that austere sentinel of the desolate plains. Long before they left the mountain road Bill pointed out to Penelope the green spot in the desert that was the Ames ranch. The road, leaving the desert, ran along an irrigating ditch fringed with cotton woods. Beyond the road lay acre after acre of alfalfa, its peculiar living green melting far beyond in the shimmering of olive orchard and orange grove.
The ranch house was of yellow gray adobe, long and low, with a red roof. Oscar had made no attempt at beauty when he had added, year after year, room on room to the original box he had built for Jane. But he unknowingly had kept close to real art. He had built of the material of the country in the manner best suited to the exigencies of the country. The result, consequently, was satisfying to eye and taste.
The walls of a desert house mu
st be thick, for coolness. The lines of the house must be broad and low and strong, to withstand the fearful winds of late winter and early spring. The Ames house lay comfortably on the desert as if it had grown up out of the sand and proposed to live forever. It was as natural a part of the landscape as the sentinel cactus.
Jane Ames, in a blue gingham dress, was standing in the door. She waved both hands as she recognized Pen. When the machine stopped she took Pen's bag.
"Of course I knew it was Bill's machine half an hour ago, but I didn't know my luck had changed enough to bring you."
"I can stay over night," said Pen, like a child out of school.
"Come straight into the parlor bedroom," said Jane. "Bill, you'll find Oscar in the lower corral."
Pen followed into the house. Jane led her through a vista of rooms into the parlor, which was furnished with a complete "near" mahogany set in green velvet. The parlor bedroom was furnished to match. Jane always showed the people whose opinion she valued her parlor first that the edge might be taken off the living room. After Pen had taken off her hat, she followed her hostess kitchenward.
The living room was big and square, the original house. It contained a wide adobe fireplace and its windows opened toward the orange grove. It was furnished with tables and chairs that Mrs. Ames had bought from an old mission in the neighborhood. They were hand-hewn and black with age. The Navajo floor rugs were soft and well worn. Jane apologized for the room, saying she left it old and ugly for the hired men and the children, then she established Pen in a rocking chair in the kitchen.
The kitchen was a model of convenience, boasting running water as well as a kitchen cabinet and a gasoline range.
"It took me just five years to raise enough chickens and eggs to buy the cabinet and the range," said Jane, taking a peep at the bread in the oven. "I begged and begged Oscar to get me things to work with every time he sent to the mail-order house to get farm machinery. But he'd just grunt. Finally I got mad. He had running water put in the barn and wouldn't send it on up to the house. He went to San Francisco that fall and I had men out here and put water in the kitchen. When he got back the bill was waiting for him and he was ashamed to complain. It isn't that men are so bad. It's just because they haven't any idea what real work housework is. How is your husband?"
"About as usual," replied Pen.
Jane Ames looked out the door, then back at Pen. "Are you ever sorry you got married?"
Pen looked a little startled, but after a moment she answered, "I used to be."
"You mean you aren't now?" asked Jane.
"I mean I'm glad I've got the things marriage has brought me."
Jane's eyes lighted. She sat down opposite Pen. "I'm just starved for a talk with some woman who isn't afraid to say what she really thinks about this marriage business. What have you got out of being married to a cripple?"
Pen chuckled. "Well, I'm really a first-class nurse, and like Bismarck, I can keep my mouth shut in seven different languages."
"Isn't that so!" exclaimed Jane. "Oscar insists on doing all the talking for us and I let him. Some day if I ever find anything worth saying, though, I'll surprise him. I'm in the 'What's the use?' stage right now. Men are awful hard to live with."
"Almost as hard as women!" said Pen. "We're all so silly about it. We expect marriage to bring us happiness with no effort on our own parts, just as if the only aim of getting married were to be happy."
"Mercy sakes!" exclaimed Jane. She sat forward on the edge of the chair. "Go on! Don't stop. I knew the minute I saw you that talking to you would beat writing to the advice column of a woman's magazine. What is it we marry for, anyhow?"
Pen laughed. "Well, when we don't marry to be happy, we marry out of curiosity. It's funny when you think of it. Two people with nothing in common have a period of insanity during which they tie themselves together in a hard knot which they can't undo and then they must feed on each other for the rest of their lives."
Jane gasped a little. "You—you aren't bitter, are you, Mrs. Penelope? I can't say your other name easy. You believe there are some happy marriages, don't you?"
Pen shrugged her shoulders. "No, I'm not bitter. I've just lost my illusions. I don't happen to know of any marriages so happy that they would tempt me to marry again."
"I feel kind of wicked talking this way," said Jane. "But," recklessly, "you've seen the world and I haven't. And it's my chance to learn real life. You don't mean people ought not to marry, do you?" This in a half-whisper of utter demoralization.
"Oh, no! Marriage is the best means we've found for perpetuating and improving the race. It's a duty we owe society, to marry. I don't believe much in divorce either. Except for unfaithfulness. Unless the average lot of us are true to the marriage ideal the whole institution will be tainted. I guess the safety of society lies in each of us looking at ourselves as average and not exceptional persons. Then we stick to the conventions. And the conventions weren't foisted on society from above. They were sweated out from beneath to satisfy; make it possible for us to endure each other."
Jane Ames threw up both her hands. "O my! You have been hurt or you'd never be so cold-blooded! I can't look at it as calmly as you do as if it all belonged to someone else. You never bore children to a man. You can't realize what selfishness and unkindness from the father of your children can mean. Do you know that I've borne two babies in this room—alone—not even a squaw to help me? And I've watched the desert through the door and I've cursed it for what it's made of my marriage!" Jane gave a short laugh and held up her knotted, rough hands. "I had dimples on my knuckles when I came to this country."
Pen looked out the door and tried to picture to herself this other woman's life.
"I—I guess my safety has lain in my getting an impersonal view of things," she said apologetically.
"There, the bread is burning!" exclaimed Jane.
Pen laughed reminiscently. "There's a verse that says:
"'Ice cream is very strange; so's a codfish ball,
But the people people marry is the strangest thing of all!'"
"I guess you need me," said Jane, "as much as I need you. There comes Oscar and I haven't set the table."
Oscar was coming up the dooryard. He stepped a little high, in the gait of one accustomed to walking in shifting sands. He was big and upstanding, with a look of honesty that Pen liked.
No one who has not known a desert farmer can realize what his acres meant to Oscar Ames. The farmer of northern lands loves his acres. But he did not create them—he did not fight nature for them, until he had made himself over along with his land.
Nature fights inch by inch every effort of man to harness the desert to his uses. She scorches the soil with heat. She poisons it with alkali. She infests it with deadly vermin and—last and supreme touch of cruelty—she forbids the soil water unless she surrounds the getting of it with infinite travail and danger.
Heat and sandstorm, failure and famine, toil unutterable, these had been Oscar Ames' portion. When at last he had won his acres, had brought the barren sand to bearing, had made three hundred acres of desert a thing of breathing beauty from January to January, the ranch meant something to him that a northern farmer could not understand. And these three hundred acres were Oscar's world. He could not see beyond them. The dam was a mere adjunct to the Ames ranch. He would leave no stone unturned to see that it served his own ranch's needs as he saw them. If Sara saw this quality in Oscar and had any motive for playing on it, he could do infinite harm to Jim.
It was something of all this that Pen was thinking as Oscar crossed the yard. He came into the kitchen in a leisurely way and greeted Pen with the cordiality that belongs to the desert country. Penelope helped Jane to put the dinner on the table and the three sat down to eat.
The two were eager to hear details of Iron Skull's death, and after Pen had described it to them, Oscar began to talk about Sara.
"How long's your husband been bedridden?" he asked.
"O
scar!" exclaimed Jane.
"Jane, you keep quiet. What's the use of being secret about it? I guess both him and her know he's bedridden."
Pen told them the story of the accident.
"Isn't that fierce!" exclaimed Oscar. "He's the smartest young fellow I've met in years. I wish even now he was running the dam instead of Manning."
"Why?" asked Penelope.
"He'd build it for the farmer and have some business sense about it."
"You don't understand Mr. Manning," said Pen. "I wish you'd try to get to know him better."
Oscar grunted. "Does the doctors think your husband will get well?" he asked, finishing off his pie.
"Oscar!" cried Jane.
"Jane, you keep quiet. These are business questions. If Sardox and I are going to run this dam, we got to understand each other's limitations. I can't ask him if he's going to die."
"We just don't know anything about it," said Pen, gently. "Mr. Ames, I'm curious to know just how you and Sara are going to run the dam."
Oscar closed his mouth importantly to open it again and say, "I never talk business with ladies."
Jane laughed suddenly. "Gracious, Oscar! I'm not worrying but what I'll get all the details. He's the original human sieve, Mrs. Penelope."
Oscar joined in Pen's laugh and started for the door, shaking his head and picking his teeth. Pen looked after him uneasily.
That afternoon Pen and Jane went with Bill and Oscar for an automobile ride over the desert. The two women sat in the tonneau, Oscar in front with Bill. The desert road was rough, full of bowlders and ruts. But neither Oscar nor Bill was hampered by roads. Whenever some distant spot roused their curiosity, the machine left the road and plunged madly across the desert, through cactus thickets and yucca clumps, through draws and over sand drifts.
Oscar and Bill kept up a shouted conversation with each other. But Pen and Jane each clutched a side of the machine, braced their feet and gave their entire attention to keeping from being flung bodily from the car. Forewarned for miles, no living creature crossed their path. The din and the dust, the hairbreadth escapes made the discomfort of the ride for the two women indescribable.
Still Jim Page 15
