Still Jim Part 15

"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--h.e.l.l, 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 s.h.i.+fting 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 leaders.h.i.+p 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 n.i.g.g.e.r. 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 friends.h.i.+p, 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, astonis.h.i.+ng in so rough a man.

"h.e.l.lo, Henderson," said Jim. "What can I do for you?"

"Us boys is going out tomorrow. We ain't going to live like 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 att.i.tude. 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 flas.h.i.+ng 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.