Still Jim Part 31

Henderson followed the Big Boss meekly. They started up the road in silence, Jim leading his horse. Suddenly Jack pulled off his hat and ran his fingers through his bush of hair.

"Boss," he said, "I chin a lot to keep me cheered up while I finish Iron Skull's job. I wish he could have stayed to finish it. Of course he helped on the Makon but he never had as good a job as he's got here.

Ain't it h.e.l.l when a man goes without a trace of anything living behind him! A man ought to have kids even if he don't have ideas. I often told Iron Skull that. But he said he couldn't ask a woman to live the way he had to. I always told him a woman would stand anything if you loved her enough."

Jim nodded. Iron Skull's life in many ways seemed a personal reproach to Jim for his own way of living.

The work at the abutments absorbed Jim until late afternoon; absorbed him and cheered him. About five o'clock he started off to call on Pen, and tell her about the Secretary's letter. He found her plodding up the road toward the tent house with a pile of groceries in her arms.

"I missed the regular delivery," she replied to his protests as he took the packages from her, "and I love to go down to the store, shopping.

It's like a glorified cross-roads emporium. All the hombres and their wives and the 'rough-necks' and their wives and the Indians. Why it's better than a bazaar!"

Jim laughed. "Pen, you are a good mixer. You ought to have my job. You'd make more of it than I do."

"That reminds me," said Pen. "Jim, that man Fleckenstein is going to run for United States Senator. He's going to promise the ranchers that he'll get the government to remit the building charges on the dam. Will that hurt you?"

"Where did you hear this?" asked Jim.

"Fleckenstein and Oscar came up this morning and they talked it over with Oscar. Sara was guarded in what he said before me, but I believe he's going to get campaign money back East. Why should he, Jim?"

She eyed Jim anxiously. There was hardly a moment of the day that the thought of the responsibility that Iron Skull had placed on her shoulders was not with her. But she was resolved to say nothing to Jim until she had a vital suggestion to make to him.

Jim looked at the s.h.i.+mmering lavenders and grays of the desert. It had come. A frank step toward repudiation. A blow at the fundamental idea of the Service. That was to be the next move of the Big Enemy. And what had Sara to do with it? All thought of the Secretary's letter left Jim. He must see Sara. But Penelope must not be unduly worried. He turned to her with his flas.h.i.+ng smile.

"Some sort of peanut politics, Pen. Is Sara alone now? I'll go talk to him."

As if in answer Sara's voice came from the tent which they were almost upon. "Pen, come here!"

Pen did not quicken her pace. "I don't like to change speeds going up a steep grade," she called.

"You hustle when I call you!" roared Sara.

Jim pulled the reins off his arm and dropped them to the ground over the horse's head, the simple process which hitches a desert horse. He left Pen with long strides and entered the tent.

"Sara, if I hear you talk to Pen that way again, I don't care if you are forty times a cripple, I'll punch your face in! What's the matter with you, anyhow? Did your tongue get a twist with your back?"

"Get out of here!" shouted Sara.

Jim recovered his poise at the sight of Pen's anxious eyes. "Now Sweetness," he said to Sara, "don't hurry me! You make me so nervous when you speak that way to me! I think I'll get a burro up here for you to talk to. He'd understand the richness of your vocabulary. Look here now, Sara, we all know you're having a darned hard time and there isn't anything we wouldn't do for you. Don't you realize that Pen is sacrificing her whole life to being your nurse girl? Don't you think you ought to make it as easy for her as you can?"

"Easy!" mocked Sara. "Easy for anyone that can walk and run and come and go? What consideration do they need?"

Pen and Jim winced a little. There was a whole world of tragedy in Sara's mockery. He looked fat and middle-aged. His hair was graying fast. His fingers trembled a good deal although the strength in his arms still was prodigious. Yet Pen and Jim both had a sense of resentment that Sara should take his life tragedy so ill, a feeling that he was indecorous in flaunting his bitterness in their faces. As if he sensed their resentment, Sara went on sneeringly:

"Easy for you two, with your youth and good looks and health to patronize me and fancy how much more decently you could die than I. I wish the two of you were chained to my inert body. How sweet and patient you would be! Bah! You weary me. Pen, will you go over to Mrs. Flynn's for the root beer she promised me?"

Pen made her escape gladly. When she was out of hearing Jim said, "Sara, why do you want the building charges repudiated?"

"Who said I wanted them repudiated?" asked Sara.

"A tent is a poor place to hold secrets," replied Jim. "Did you come here to do me dirt, Sara? Did I ever do you any harm?"

Sara turned purple. He raised himself on his elbow. "Why," he shouted, "did you destroy my chances with Pen by getting her love? You wanted it only to discard it!"

CHAPTER XVII

TOO LATE FOR LOVE

"Honor is the thing that makes humans different from dogs--some dogs! When women have it, it is mingled always with tenderness."

MUSINGS OF THE ELEPHANT.

Jim jumped to his feet and took a stride toward Sara's couch, then checked himself.

"Oh, I'm not accusing you of planning the thing!" sneered Sara. "I'd have more respect for you if you had. Pen doesn't know that I know. If I hadn't got hurt I'd probably never dreamed of it. Pen and I would have raised a family and I'd have had no time to think of you. But it didn't take more than a year of lying on my back and watching her to see that it was more than my crippled condition that was changing Pen. d.a.m.n you!

Why should you have it all, health and success and Pen's love? I'll get you yet, Jim Manning!"

Jim stood with his arms folded fighting desperately to keep his hands off Sara. Deep in his heart Jim realized, there was none of the pity for Sara's physical condition that civilized man is supposed to feel for the cripple. Far within him was the loathing of the savage for something abnormal; the loathing that once left the physically unfit to die. Yet superimposed on this loathing was the veneer of civilization, that forces kindness and gentleness and self-denial toward the fit that the unfit may be kept alive.

So Jim gripped his biceps and ground his teeth and the crippled man in the chair stared with bitter black eyes into Jim's angry gray ones. Jim fought with himself until the sweat came out on his lips, then without a word he left the tent, mounted his horse and rode back to the dam site.

He wanted time to think. It was very evident that Sara meant mischief, but just how great was his capacity for doing him harm Jim could only guess. The idea of his extremely friendly relations with Arthur Freet bothered Jim now. If Freet were really trying to influence the sale of the water power through Sara, the wise thing to do would be to send Sara back to New York. And yet, if Sara went, Pen would go, too! Jim's heart sank. He could not bear to think of the dam now without Pen. He squared his shoulders suddenly. He would not send Sara away until he had some real proof that his threats were more than idle. At any rate, it was not his business to worry over the sale of the water power. If he produced the power he was doing his share. And when he had fallen back on his old excuse Jim gave a sigh of relief and went home to supper.

Henderson was in the office the next morning when Jim opened a letter from the Director of the Service. He was sorry, said the director, that there had been so much loss of time and property in the flood. He realized, of course, that Jim had done his best, but people who did not know him so well would not have the same confidence. The Congressional Committee on Investigation of the Projects, on receipt of numerous complaints regarding the flood, had decided to proceed at once to Jim's project and there begin its work.

Jim tossed the Director's letter to Henderson and laid aside the Secretary's letter, which he had planned to answer that morning.

"More time wasted!" grumbled Jim. "There will be a hearing and talky-talk and I must listen respectfully while the abutments crumble.

Why in thunder don't they send a good engineer or two along with the Congressmen? A report from such a committee would have value. How would Congress enjoy having a committee of engineers pa.s.sing on the legality of the work it does?"

Henderson laid the letter down, rumpling his hair. "h.e.l.l's fire!" he said gently. "My past won't stand investigating. You ask the Missis if it will! I'm safe if they stick to Government projects and stay away from the mining camps and the ladies."

Jim's eyes twinkled. "Perhaps your past is black enough to whiten mine in contrast. I'll ask Mrs. Henderson."

Henderson suddenly brightened. "I've got a dying favor to ask of you.

Let me take the fattest of 'em to ride in Bill Evans' auto?"

Jim looked serious. "Your past must have been black, all right, Jack!

You show a naturally vicious disposition. Really, I haven't anything personal against these men. It's just that they take so much time and insist on treating us fellows as if we were pickpockets."

"I ain't as ladylike as you," said Henderson, in his tender way. "I just naturally hate to be investigated. My Missis does all that I can stand.

I won't do anything vicious, though. I'll just show a friendly interest in them. I might la.s.so 'em and hitch 'em behind the machine, but that might hurt it and, anyhow, that wouldn't be subtle enough. These here Easterners like delicate methods. I do myself. At least, I appreciate them. The delicatest attention I ever had that might come under the head of an investigation was by an Eastern lady. It was years ago on an old irrigation ditch. Her husband was starting a ranch and I caught him stealing water. I was pounding him up when she landed on me with a steel-p.r.o.nged garden rake. She raked me till I had to borrow clothes from her to go home with. That sure was some delicate investigation."

"The world lost a great lyric soloist in you, Jack," commented Jim.

"Jokes aside, it's fair enough for them to investigate us. If the members of the committee are straight, it ought to do a lot toward stopping this everlasting kicking of the farmers. We've nothing to fear but the delay they cause."