Still Jim Part 20

"Take that to the steward. Eat all you can hold and report wherever the steward sends you."

Then he went on. Regardless of turn or precipice the road rose in a steady grade from the lower camp where the workmen lived, a half mile to the dam site. Jim whirled to the foot of the cable way towers and jumped out of the machine.

The dam site lay in a valley, a quarter of a mile wide, between two mountains. Above the dam lay the Elephant. A great cofferdam built near the Elephant's base diverted the river into a concrete flume that ran along the foot of one of the mountains. The river bed, bared by the diverting of the stream, was filled with machinery. An excavation sixty feet below the river bottom and two hundred feet wide was almost completed. Indeed, on the side next the flume there already rose above the river bed a mighty square of concrete, a third the width of the river. Jim had begun the actual erection of the dam.

The two mountains were topped by huge towers, supporting cables that swung above the dam site. The cables carried anything from a man to a locomotive, from the "grab buckets" that bit two tons of sand at a mouthful from the excavation, to a skid bearing a motion picture outfit.

Work was going on as usual when Jim arrived. The cable ways sang and shrieked. The concrete mixer roared. Donkey engines puffed and d.i.n.kees squealed. Jim dashed into a telephone booth and called up the office.

"This is Mr. Manning. Where is Williams?"

The telephone girl answered quickly: "Oh, how are you, Mr. Manning?

We're glad you are back. Why, Mr. Williams was called down to Cabillo to make a deposition for the Was.h.i.+ngton hearing, several days ago. And they made Mr. Barton and Mr. Arles go, too. I'm trying to get them on long distance now. You came by the way of Albuquerque, didn't you? We tried to reach you in Was.h.i.+ngton, but couldn't."

Jim groaned. His three best men were gone.

"We didn't expect high water for a week," the girl went on, "or else----"

"Miss Agnes," Jim interrupted, "call up every engineer on the job and tell them to report at once to me at Booth A. Whom did Iron Skull leave on his job?"

"Benson, the head draughtsman."

Jim hung up the receiver and stood a moment in thought. Iron Skull was now Jim's superintendent and right hand. His mechanical and electrical engineers were gone, too, leaving only cubs who had never seen a flood.

Benson came running down the trail from the office.

"For the Lord's sake, Benson, have you been asleep?" said Jim.

Benson looked at the roaring flume. "She'll carry it all right, don't you think? I haven't been able to get in touch with the hydrographer for twenty-four hours. The water only began to rise an hour ago."

"The poor kid may be drowned!" exclaimed Jim. He turned to the group of men forming about him. "We're in for a fight, fellows. This flood has just begun and it's higher now than I've ever seen the water in the flume. I'm going to fill the excavation with water from the flume and so avoid the wash from the main flow. Save what you can from the river bed.

Leave the excavation to me."

Five minutes later the river bed swarmed with workmen. The cable ways groaned with load after load of machinery. Jim ran down the trail, around the excavation and up onto the great block of concrete. The top of this was just below the flume edge. The foreman of the concrete gang was aghast at Jim's orders.

"We may have a couple of hours," Jim finished, "or she may come down on us as if the bottom had dropped out of the ocean. See that everyone gets out of the excavation."

The foreman looked a little pitifully at the concrete section.

"That last pouring'll go out like a snow bank, Mr. Manning."

Jim nodded. "Dam builders luck, Fritz. Get busy." He hurried into a telephone booth, even in the stress of the moment smiling ruefully as he remembered the complaint at the hearing. The booths _had_ been too well built. Jim's predecessor had been a government man of the old school in just one particular. Honest to his heart's core, he still could not understand the need of economy when working for Uncle Sam.

"Have you heard from Iron Skull?" Jim asked the operator.

"He ought to be here now, Mr. Manning," she replied. "I sent the car over to the kitchen."

"You are all right, Miss Agnes," said Jim. "Tell Dr. Emmet to be near the telephone. I don't like the looks of this."

Jim hung up the receiver, pulled off his coat and hurried out to the edge of the concrete section. A derrick was being spun along the cableway, just above the excavation. A man was standing on the great hook from which the derrick was suspended. Men were clambering through the heavy sand up out of the excavation. The man on the edge of the pit who was holding the guide rope attached to the swinging derrick was caught in the rush of workmen. He tripped and dropped the rope, then ran after it with a shout of warning. For a moment the derrick spun awkwardly.

The man in the tower rang a hasty signal and the operator of the cableway reversed with a sudden jerk that threw the derrick from the hook. The man on the hook clung like a fly on a thread. The derrick crashed heavily down on the excavation edge, and slid to the bottom, carrying with it a great sand slide that caught two men as it went.

Jim gasped, "My G.o.d! I hate a derrick!" and ran down into the excavation, the foreman at his heels. Men turned in their tracks and wallowed back after Jim.

The derrick had fallen in such a way that its broken boom held back a portion of the slide. From under the boom protruded a brown hand with almond-shaped nails; unmistakably the hand of an Indian. The least movement of the boom would send the sand down over the wreckage of the derrick.

Uncontrollably moved for a moment, Jim dropped to his knees and crawled close to touch the inert hand. "Don't move!" he shouted. "We will get you out!" For just a moment, an elm shaded street and a dismantled mansion flashed across his vision. Then he got a grip on himself and crawled out.

"Get a bunch of men with shovels!" he cried. "Dig as if you were digging in dynamite."

"They are dead under there, Boss!" pleaded the foreman. "And they ain't nothing but an Injun and a Mexican, an ornery _hombre_! And if you don't let the flume in this whole place'll wash out like flour. It'll take an hour to get them out."

Jim's lips tightened. "You weren't up on the Makon, Fritz. My rule is, fight to save a life at any cost. Keep those fellows digging like the devil."

He hurried back up onto the section, thence up to the flume edge. Then he gave an exclamation. The brown water had risen an inch while he was in the excavation. He ran for the telephone again.

In a moment a new form of activity began in the river bed. Every man who was not digging gingerly at the sand slide was turned to throwing bags of sand on cofferdam and flume edge to hold back the river as long as might be. Jim stood on the concrete section and issued his orders. His voice was steel cool. His orders came rapidly but without confusion. He concentrated every force of his mind on driving his army of workmen to the limit of their strength, yet on keeping them cool headed that every moment might count.

It was an uneven fight at that. Old Jezebel gathered strength minute by minute. The brown water was dripping over onto the concrete when someone caught Jim's arm.

"Where shall I go, Boss Still?"

"Thank G.o.d, Iron Skull!" exclaimed Jim. "Go down and get that _hombre_ and Apache out."

Iron Skull ran down into the excavation. The brown water began to seep over the edge of the pit. The men who were digging above the slide swore and threw down their shovels. Jim tossed his megaphone to the cement engineer and ran to meet the men.

"Get back there," he said quietly. The men looked at his face, then turned sheepishly back.

Jim picked up a shovel. Iron Skull already was digging like a madman.

One of the workmen, who never had ceased digging, snarled to another: "What does he want to let the whole dam go to h.e.l.l for two n.i.g.g.e.r rough-necks for?"

"Bosses' rule," panted the other. "Up on the Makon we'd risk our lives to the limit and fight for the other fellows just as quick. How'd you like to be under there? Never know who's turn's next!"

The brown water rose steadily, running faster and faster over into the excavation. The water was touching the brown hand which now twitched and writhed, when Jim said:

"Now, boys, catch the cable hook to the boom and give the signal."

The derrick swung up into the air. Jim and a Makon man seized the Indian, Iron Skull and another man the _hombre_. Both of them were alive but helpless. The cement engineer shouted an order through the megaphone and just as a lifting brown wave showed its fearful head beyond the Elephant, the river bed was cleared of human beings.

Up around the cable tower foot was gathered a great crowd of workmen, women and children. Jim, greeted right and left as he relinquished his burden, looked about eagerly. Penelope must have heard of the flood and have come to see it. But surrounded by his friends, Jim missed the girlish figure that had hovered on the outskirts of the crowd and that, after he had reached the tower foot in safety, disappeared up the trail.

Jim, with his arm across Iron Skull's shoulder, turned to watch the river. The moving brown wall had filled the excavation. It rushed like a Niagara over the flume edge. In half an hour it ran from bank to bank, with a roar of satisfaction at having once more regained its bed.

Jim sighed and said to Iron Skull: "She's taken a hundred thousand dollars at a mouthful. I'll put that in my expense account for my trip to Was.h.i.+ngton."

Iron Skull grunted: "We'll be lucky if we get off that cheap. This will make talk for every farmer on the Project. They'll all be up to tell you how you should have done it."

Jim shrugged his shoulders. "This isn't the first flood we've weathered, Iron Skull. Come up to the house while I change my clothes."