"Oh, Suma-theek, you don't understand! He loves the dam. It will break his heart to leave it. Even I couldn't comfort him for that. Are you sure you are right?"
Yet even as she repeated the question, Pen's own sick heart answered. This was what had put the new strain into Jim's face, the new pleading into his voice.
"How shall I help him," she moaned.
"You no tell him, you sabez," repeated Suma-theek. "He want you think he Boss here long as he can. All men's like that with their squaw."
"I won't tell him," promised Pen. "But what shall I do?" She clasped and unclasped her fingers, then she sprang to her feet. "I know! I know! It will be like a strong arm under his poor overburdened shoulders!"
* * *
CHAPTER XXIII
THE SILENT CAMPAIGN
"I have seen that those humans who seek strength from Nature never fail to find it."
Musings of the Elephant.
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:
"'Lift ye the stone or cleave the wood to make a path more or flat,
Lo, it is black already with blood, some Son of Martha spilled for that.
Not as a ladder from Earth to Heaven, not as an altar to any creed,
But simple Service, simply given, to their own kind, in their common need.'"
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 washin
g 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."
Still Jim Page 24
