The bronzed elderly man who was with Oscar listened intently. Oscar went on:
"The details on a place like this are enough to drive a man crazy. He dassent let 'em pour concrete without him or his cement expert is round. If the rocks aren't just right or the surface of the section isn't just right or they slip up a little on the mixture, the whole thing will go to thunder some day. He's got to spend ten million dollars with eighty million people watching him and all us farmers kicking every minute. How'd you like his job?"
"He was over at my place the other day," said the farmer. "I see how he got his nickname. But he's awful easy to talk to. I got to telling him what a hard time I had the first year or two I was irrigating alfalfa and how I get five good cuttings a year now, regular. He wants me to show that new fellow Hunt how I did it. Guess I will. I always thought Manning hated the farmers. But I guess he was just busy with his own troubles."
Pen fell back and climbed the trail to a point where she could look down on Jim. He was listening to his master mechanic, interjecting a word now and then at which his subordinate nodded eagerly. Pen wondered sadly, what Jim would do with his life when he could no longer work for the Projects. The thought of this sudden thwarting of all his plans haunted her and she longed almost unbearably to talk to him about it, but his silence on the subject she felt that she must respect. As she sauntered on along the trail to meet Bill Evans exploding into camp with the mail, she was thinking back over Jim's life and of how much of it had been spent in listening rather than in speaking. His silence, she thought, was a part of his great personal charm. From it his companions got a sense of a keen, sympathetic intelligence focused entirely on their own problems that was very attractive. Somehow, Pen had faith that his campaign of silence would defeat Fleckenstein.
Bill had a lone passenger in his tonneau. Pen's pulse quickened. As the machine reached her side, Bill stopped with his usual flourish, and Uncle Denny, without waiting to open the door which was fastened with binding wire, climbed out over the front seat.
"Pen! Pen! The door of me heart has hung sagging and open ever since you left!"
* * *
CHAPTER XXIV
UNCLE DENNY GETS BUSY
"Coyotes breed only with coyotes. Men talk much of pride of race, yet they will breed with any color."
Musings of the Elephant.
Pen clung to Uncle Denny with a breathless sob. She had not realized how heavy her burden was until Uncle Denny had come to share it.
"Uncle Denny! You didn't answer my telegram and I didn't dare hope you would get here."
"Where is Jim, Penny, and how is me boy?"
"I'll take you to him now. He has no idea of your coming. Bill, we will walk. Take the trunk on up to Mr. Manning's house, will you?"
"I was afraid 'twould get out and I knew he'd never stand for me coming out to help. That's why I sent you no word," said Uncle Denny, beginning to puff up the trail beside Pen.
"He's just the same old Jim," said Pen, "but under a terrific strain just now, of course. You can understand from my letters just how great that is."
"And Sara?" asked Uncle Denny.
"Not so well," replied Pen. "He is very quiet, these days. There is the first glimpse of the dam, Uncle Denny."
Uncle Denny stopped and wiped the sweat out of his eyes with his silk handkerchief. He gazed in silence for a moment at the mammoth foundations, over which the workmen ran like ants.
"'Twas but a hole in the ground when I last saw it," he said. "Pen, it's so big you can't compass it in your mind. And they are pecking at me boy while he builds mountains!"
"There he is!" exclaimed Pen, pointing to the tower foot.
"It is! It's Still Jim! Is me collar entirely wilted?"
Pen laughed. "Uncle Denny, you're as fussed as a girl at meeting her sweetheart! You look beautiful and you know it. There! He sees us!"
Uncle Denny lost a little of his color and stood still. Jim came striding down the road. His eyes were black with feeling. Without a word he threw his arms around Uncle Dennis and hugged that rotund person off his feet.
"Still Jim, me boy!" cried Uncle Denny. "I've come out to lick the world for ye!"
Jim loosened his bear hug and stepped back. His smile was brilliant.
"Uncle Denny, you look like a tailor's ad! Doesn't he, little Penelope?"
There was something in Jim's voice as he spoke Pen's name that Michael Dennis understood as clearly as if Jim had shouted his feeling for Pen in his ear.
"I'm starving to death," he said hastily. "Take me home, Still. Come along, Pen."
Mrs. Flynn was surveying the trunk as it stood on end in the living room. She was talking rapidly to herself and as the three came up on the porch she cried:
"I said 'twas you, Mr. Dennis! I told myself fifty times 'twas your trunk and still myself kept contradicting me. You are as handsome as a Donegal dude. Leave me out to the kitchen till I get an early supper!"
After supper Jim and Dennis sat for a short time over their pipes before Jim left for some office work.
"Tell me what to do first, Still," said Uncle Denny, "and I'll start a campaign against Fleckenstein that'll turn the valley upside down. That's what I came out for. I'll fix them, the jackals!"
"Uncle Denny, it won't do," answered Jim slowly. "The uncle of a Project engineer can't carry on a political campaign in his behalf. You'd just get me in deeper with the public."
Uncle Denny stared. "But I came out for that very thing."
"I thought you had just come out for one of your usual visits. It won't do, dear Uncle Denny. I can't say anything against Fleckenstein nor must you."
"Me boy," said Michael Dennis, "all the public sentiment on earth can't keep me from fighting Fleckenstein. Pen sent for me and I'm here."
"Pen sent for you?" repeated Jim. "Why, Pen should not have done that."
"This is a poor welcome, Jim," said Uncle Denny, immeasurable reproach in his voice.
Jim sprang to his feet and put a long brown hand on Uncle Denny's shoulder. "You can't mean that, Uncle Denny. It's meat and drink to me to have you here. You can't doubt it."
"I can't, indeed," agreed Dennis heartily. "And somehow, I'm going to help. Go get your work done and then call for me at Pen's house."
Jim had been in the office but a few minutes when he came out again and stood on the edge of the canyon, staring at the silhouette of the Elephant against the night stars. After a moment he turned up the trail toward the tent house. He entered without ceremony and stood a tall, slender, commanding figure against the white of the tent wall. His eyes were big and bright. His lips were stiff as he looked at Sara and said:
"You are fully even now, Saradokis. I've a notion to kill you as I would a rattler."
The tent was bright with lamplight. The red and black Navajo across Sara's cot was as motionless over the outline of his great legs as though it covered a dead man. Uncle Denny stared at Jim without stirring. His florid face paled a little and his bright Irish eyes did not blink.
Pen could see a tiny patch that Mrs. Flynn had put on the knee of Jim's riding breeches. There swept over her a sudden appreciation of Jim's utter simplicity and sincerity under all the stupendous responsibilities he had assumed not only in the building of the dam, but in his less tangible building for the nation. As he stood before them she saw him not as a man but as the boy Uncle Denny often had described to her, announcing the vast discovery of his life work. Would he, had he known the bitter years ahead of him, have chosen the same, she wondered.
"I found two interesting communications in my mail tonight," said Jim, slowly. "One is a letter from the Washington Office containing clippings from eastern papers. Some reporter announces that he has discovered a fully developed scheme of mine and Freet's to sell out to the Transatlantic people. He gives a twisted version of the conversation here, the other night, that sounds like conclusive evidence. The matter is so well handled that even the Washington office is convinced that I'm a crook. The loca
l papers will, of course, copy this."
Sara did not stir. Jim moistened his lips. "While I knew that I lived under a cloud of suspicion," he said, "I thought to be able to leave the Service with nothing worse than suspicion on my name. I shall never be able to live this down. Yet this is not the worst. I received tonight an anonymous letter. It states that unless I drop my silent campaign, the name of the wife of my crippled friend will be coupled with mine in an unpleasant manner."
Pen's eyes were for a moment horror-stricken. Then they blazed with anger. And so suddenly that Jim and Dennis hardly saw her leave her chair. She sprang over to Sara's couch and struck him across the mouth with her open hand. The stillness in the room for a second was complete, except that Sara breathed heavily as he rose to his elbow.
"I may or may not have produced the newspaper copy, but so help me the God I have blasphemed, I have never used Pen's name," said Sara.
"But you have," said Jim. "You used it before Freet. You probably have cursed me out before Fleckenstein as you did before him and Ames!"
"And there was my trying to help Jane Ames in the valley!" cried Pen suddenly. "She's talking with the farmers' wives for Jim and I went with her until the women were cattish. Oh, Jim, what have we done to you, Sara and I?"
"I shall have to give up the fight a little earlier, that is all," answered Jim. "Don't feel badly, Pen. If I only had some way of punishing Sara and stopping his mischief! Though it's too late now."
"Just be patient, Jim," said Sara. "My mischief will soon end."
Pen had heard only Jim, the first sentence of Jim's remarks. She stood beside the table, white to the lips. "Jim, if you want to wreck my life, stop the fight! Do you suppose, except for the moment's shame, I care what they say about me? If you will only go on with your fight, Jim, let them say what they will. I can stand it. My strength—my strength——" Pen paused with a little sob, as if Uncle Denny reminded her of her girlhood dreams, "my strength is in the eternal hills!"
"I have lived with George Saradokis all these years," Pen went on, "and he's almost broken my faith in life. When I found I could help you, Jim, I thought that I was making up for some of the wrong of my marriage. I even thought that I'd be willing to go through my marriage again because it had taught me how to help you fight. Jim, it will ruin my life if you stop now!"
And Pen suddenly dropped her face in her hands and broke down entirely. Jim never had seen Pen cry. He took a step toward her, then looked pitifully at Uncle Denny.
Uncle Denny sprang from his chair.
"Go on out, Jim," he said. Then he folded Pen in his arms. "Rest here, sweet, tired bird," he said in his rich voice. "Rest here, for I love you with all me soul."
Jim's lips quivered. He went out into the night and once more climbed the Elephant's back. For a long time he sat, too exhausted by his emotions to think. With head resting on his arms, he let the night wind sweep across him until little by little his brain cleared and he looked about him. Far and wide, the same wonder of the desert night; the stars, so low, so tender, so inscrutable, the sky so deep, so utterly compassionate; the far black scratch of the river on the silver desert, the distant black lift of the mountains—Pen's eternal hills!
Over the flagpole on the office the flag rippled and floated, sank and rose, dancing like a child in the joy of living. Jim looked at it wistfully. Flag that his forefathers had fashioned from the fabric of their vision, must the vision be forgotten? It was a great vision, fit to cover the yearnings of the world. His grandfather had fought for it at Antietam. His father had lost it and had died, bewildered and hungry of soul. Was he himself to lose it, son of vision seekers?
The Elephant beneath him seemed to listen for Jim's reply. "God knows," he said at last, "I would not deny the vision to all the immigrant world. All I wish is that we who made the vision had kept it and had taught it to these others to whom our heritage must go. You can scoff, old Elephant, but the struggle is worth while. You can say that nothing matters but Time. I tell you that eternity is made up of soul fights like mine and Pen's!"
Suddenly there came to him the fragment that Pen had quoted to him days before:
"What though the field be lost?
All is not lost—the unconquerable will,
And courage never to submit nor yield;
And what is else, not to be overcome!"
Jim suddenly rose with his blood quickened. "Not to be overcome! And God, what stakes to fight for! To build my father's dream in stone and to make a valley empire out of the tragedy of a woman's soul!"
With renewed strength Jim went down the trail, crossed the canyon and went up to his house.
Uncle Denny was waiting for him. It was nearly midnight. He had kindled a fire in the grate and was brewing some tea. "Mrs. Flynn would have it you'd fallen off a peak but I got her to bed. Have some tea, me boy."
Uncle Denny's voice was cheerful, though his eyes were red. He watched Jim anxiously.
"You should have gone to bed yourself, Uncle Denny. I have a letter to write, then I'm going to turn in."
Uncle Denny's hand shook as he poured the tea. "I had to see you, Still, because I promised Pen I'd go back over there tonight and tell her what your decision was."
Jim caught up his hat. "I'll go!"
But Uncle Denny laid his hand on Jim's arm. "No, me boy. Pen's had all she can stand tonight. I'll take her your word. What shall it be, Still?"
Jim brought his fist down on the table. "Tell her, with her help, I'll keep up the fight!"
Uncle Denny's blue eyes blazed. "I'm prouder of the two of you than I am of me Irish name," he said, and, seizing his hat, he hurried out.
While he was gone Jim wrote this note:
"My dear Mr. Secretary:—Some time ago I wrote you that I did not think an engineer should be asked to build the dam and at the same time handle the human problems connected with the Project. Subsequent events lead me to believe that as your letter suggests it is the duty of the government to look on these Projects not as engineering problems so much as the building of small democracies that may become the living nuclei for the rebirth of all that America once stood for. I do not believe that I am big enough for such a job, but I am putting up a fight. I have been asked to resign within a few weeks from now. I think, looking at the matter from the point of view I have just expressed, that I am dismissed with justice. This letter is to ask you to see that my successor is chosen with the care that you would give to the founder of a colony."
Uncle Denny returned and waited until Jim had finished his letter. Then he said:
"Sara spoke just once after you left. He denied any knowledge of the anonymous letter."
"I'm going to put it up to Fleckenstein," said Jim. "The newspaper dope, of course, was Sara's. I can only ignore that except to answer any questions the farmers may put to me about it. How is Pen?"
"She cried it out on me shoulder after you left and felt better for the tears. Your message will send her to sleep. Still Jim, if I had a jury of atheists and could put Pen on the stand and make her give her philosophy as she has sweated it out of her young soul, I could make them all believe in the eternal God and His mighty plans. To be bigger than circumstance, that's the acid test for human character."
Jim nodded and looked into the fire. This suggestion that he might be the instrument of a mighty plan, he and Pen and Uncle Denny, awed him. Uncle Denny eyed the fine drooping brown head for a moment.
"Ah, me boy! Me boy!" he said tenderly. "The old house at Exham is not a futile ruin. 'Tis the cocoon that gave birth to the butterfly wings of a great hope. Look up, Still! You've friends with you till the end of the fight."
Jim reached for Michael Dennis' hand and held it with both his own, while he said: "Stay with me for a month or two, Uncle Denny. Don't go away. I need you. I've neither wife nor father and I haven't the gift of speech that makes a man friends."
Jim was off the next morning before daylight. Uncle Denny slept late and while he was eating his breakfast,
the ex-saloonkeeper, Murphy, came in.
"The Big Boss sent me up to spend the day with you, Mr. Dennis. He can't get back till late in the afternoon. He told me to talk Project politics to you. My name is Murphy. I'm timekeeper down below, but I've left the job for a while for reasons of my own."
Uncle Denny pulled a chair out for Murphy and looked at him thoughtfully.
"Do you know this jackal, Fleckenstein?"
"I do. The Boss showed me that letter. I suppose you know how a man like Mr. Manning would take to a fellow like Fleckenstein?"
"Know!" snorted Uncle Denny. "Why, young fellow, I'd know Jim's disembodied soul if I met it in an uninhabited desert."
Murphy raised his eyebrows. "You're Irish, I take it."
"You take it right."
"I was born in Dublin myself."
The two men shook hands and Murphy went on. "I told the Boss to forget that letter. I know Fleckenstein. I know all his secrets just as I do about every other man's in the valley. I know their shames and their business grafts. In fact I know everything but the best side of 'em. I've been in the saloon business in this valley for twenty years, Mr. Dennis."
"Ah!" said Uncle Denny. "I understand now!"
"All I've got to do," said Murphy, "is to drop in on Fleckenstein and mention this letter and suggest that my own information is what you might call detailed. 'Twill be enough."
"Of course, it might not be Fleckenstein," said Dennis.
"Never mind! My warning will reach the proper party, if I go to Fleckenstein," said Murphy. He smacked his lips over the cup of coffee Mrs. Flynn set before him.
"And how came you to be helping the Boss instead of distributing booze?" asked Uncle Denny.
"I was about ready to quit, anyhow," said Murphy. "A man gets sick of crooked deals if you give him time. And time was when a man could keep a saloon in this section and still be the leading citizen and his wife could hold up her head with the banker's wife. That time's gone. I've been thinking for a long time of marrying and settling down. Then the Boss cleaned me out." Murphy chuckled.
Still Jim Page 25
