Still Jim

by Honoré Morrow

  CHAPTER XV

  THE HEART OF A DESERT WIFE

  "The squaws who come at times to crouch upon my back have the slow listening patience of the rabbits."

  MUSINGS OF THE ELEPHANT.

  Pen paused, eyes angry, mouth disgusted: "You are the last person I'dever tell, Sara, if I were. Don't add idiocy to your otheraccomplishments."

  Sara's black eyes continued to glare for a moment. Then for the secondtime he astonished Penelope by laughing. He dropped back on his pillow.

  "Pen! Pen! a lawyer could have given no better answer than that! I'm notworrying, Pen. You've stuck by me all these years. I know I'm safe tothe end."

  Penelope's scorn changed to pity. "I've been horrid today. You will haveto forgive me, Sara. You must remember that you are no mild June day tolive with!"

  Sara gave a short nod. "Give me my pipe, Pen, and then jolly Mrs. Flynnup."

  Mrs. Flynn, whose curiosity was only equaled by her kindness of heart,was only too willing to take care of Sara. Had a caged South Africanlion been placed in her care she would have had the same thrill at thethought of caring for it as at watching Sara. Great stories of Sara'smarvelous temper had gone about the camp. Any extra steps he caused Mrs.Flynn she felt would be more than compensated for in the delectablegossip she would pick.

  Pen did not ask Jim to take her down to the Ames place. She arranged togo down with Bill Evans, who kept a hog ranch near the dam. Bill fed hishogs on the camp table scrapings and filled in odd moments "renting out"his automobile. This was a sad-looking vehicle of an early vintage, heldtogether by binding wire and bits of sheet iron. But Bill got twentymiles an hour out of the machine and took better care of it than he didof his wife.

  The Ames ranch lay in the desert valley below the dam. Two hours afterthey left the dam, Bill drew up before the Ames door with a rattle and aseries of staccato explosions that would have done credit to anapproaching army.

  The trip down had been a noisy rush through multicolored ranges out ontoa desert floor of brilliant yellow dotted with giant cactus, thataustere sentinel of the desolate plains. Long before they left themountain road Bill pointed out to Penelope the green spot in the desertthat was the Ames ranch. The road, leaving the desert, ran along anirrigating ditch fringed with cotton woods. Beyond the road lay acreafter acre of alfalfa, its peculiar living green melting far beyond inthe shimmering of olive orchard and orange grove.

  The ranch house was of yellow gray adobe, long and low, with a red roof.Oscar had made no attempt at beauty when he had added, year after year,room on room to the original box he had built for Jane. But heunknowingly had kept close to real art. He had built of the material ofthe country in the manner best suited to the exigencies of the country.The result, consequently, was satisfying to eye and taste.

  The walls of a desert house must be thick, for coolness. The lines ofthe house must be broad and low and strong, to withstand the fearfulwinds of late winter and early spring. The Ames house lay comfortably onthe desert as if it had grown up out of the sand and proposed to liveforever. It was as natural a part of the landscape as the sentinelcactus.

  Jane Ames, in a blue gingham dress, was standing in the door. She wavedboth hands as she recognized Pen. When the machine stopped she tookPen's bag.

  "Of course I knew it was Bill's machine half an hour ago, but I didn'tknow my luck had changed enough to bring you."

  "I can stay over night," said Pen, like a child out of school.

  "Come straight into the parlor bedroom," said Jane. "Bill, you'll findOscar in the lower corral."

  Pen followed into the house. Jane led her through a vista of rooms intothe parlor, which was furnished with a complete "near" mahogany set ingreen velvet. The parlor bedroom was furnished to match. Jane alwaysshowed the people whose opinion she valued her parlor first that theedge might be taken off the living room. After Pen had taken off herhat, she followed her hostess kitchenward.

  The living room was big and square, the original house. It contained awide adobe fireplace and its windows opened toward the orange grove. Itwas furnished with tables and chairs that Mrs. Ames had bought from anold mission in the neighborhood. They were hand-hewn and black with age.The Navajo floor rugs were soft and well worn. Jane apologized for theroom, saying she left it old and ugly for the hired men and thechildren, then she established Pen in a rocking chair in the kitchen.

  The kitchen was a model of convenience, boasting running water as wellas a kitchen cabinet and a gasoline range.

  "It took me just five years to raise enough chickens and eggs to buy thecabinet and the range," said Jane, taking a peep at the bread in theoven. "I begged and begged Oscar to get me things to work with everytime he sent to the mail-order house to get farm machinery. But he'djust grunt. Finally I got mad. He had running water put in the barn andwouldn't send it on up to the house. He went to San Francisco that falland I had men out here and put water in the kitchen. When he got backthe bill was waiting for him and he was ashamed to complain. It isn'tthat men are so bad. It's just because they haven't any idea what realwork housework is. How is your husband?"

  "About as usual," replied Pen.

  Jane Ames looked out the door, then back at Pen. "Are you ever sorry yougot married?"

  Pen looked a little startled, but after a moment she answered, "I usedto be."

  "You mean you aren't now?" asked Jane.

  "I mean I'm glad I've got the things marriage has brought me."

  Jane's eyes lighted. She sat down opposite Pen. "I'm just starved for atalk with some woman who isn't afraid to say what she really thinksabout this marriage business. What have you got out of being married toa cripple?"

  Pen chuckled. "Well, I'm really a first-class nurse, and like Bismarck,I can keep my mouth shut in seven different languages."

  "Isn't that so!" exclaimed Jane. "Oscar insists on doing all the talkingfor us and I let him. Some day if I ever find anything worth saying,though, I'll surprise him. I'm in the 'What's the use?' stage right now.Men are awful hard to live with."

  "Almost as hard as women!" said Pen. "We're all so silly about it. Weexpect marriage to bring us happiness with no effort on our own parts,just as if the only aim of getting married were to be happy."

  "Mercy sakes!" exclaimed Jane. She sat forward on the edge of the chair."Go on! Don't stop. I knew the minute I saw you that talking to youwould beat writing to the advice column of a woman's magazine. What isit we marry for, anyhow?"

  Pen laughed. "Well, when we don't marry to be happy, we marry out ofcuriosity. It's funny when you think of it. Two people with nothing incommon have a period of insanity during which they tie themselvestogether in a hard knot which they can't undo and then they must feed oneach other for the rest of their lives."

  Jane gasped a little. "You--you aren't bitter, are you, Mrs. Penelope? Ican't say your other name easy. You believe there are _some_ happymarriages, don't you?"

  Pen shrugged her shoulders. "No, I'm not bitter. I've just lost myillusions. I don't happen to know of any marriages so happy that theywould tempt me to marry again."

  "I feel kind of wicked talking this way," said Jane. "But," recklessly,"you've seen the world and I haven't. And it's my chance to learn reallife. You don't mean people ought not to marry, do you?" This in ahalf-whisper of utter demoralization.

  "Oh, no! Marriage is the best means we've found for perpetuating andimproving the race. It's a duty we owe society, to marry. I don'tbelieve much in divorce either. Except for unfaithfulness. Unless theaverage lot of us are true to the marriage ideal the whole institutionwill be tainted. I guess the safety of society lies in each of uslooking at ourselves as average and not exceptional persons. Then westick to the conventions. And the conventions weren't foisted on societyfrom above. They were sweated out from beneath to satisfy; make itpossible for us to endure each other."

  Jane Ames threw up both her hands. "O my! You have been hurt or you'dnever be so cold-blooded! I can't lo
ok at it as calmly as you do as ifit all belonged to someone else. You never bore children to a man. Youcan't realize what selfishness and unkindness from the father of yourchildren can mean. Do you know that I've borne two babies in thisroom--alone--not even a squaw to help me? And I've watched the desertthrough the door and I've cursed it for what it's made of my marriage!"Jane gave a short laugh and held up her knotted, rough hands. "I haddimples on my knuckles when I came to this country."

  Pen looked out the door and tried to picture to herself this otherwoman's life.

  "I--I guess my safety has lain in my getting an impersonal view ofthings," she said apologetically.

  "There, the bread is burning!" exclaimed Jane.

  Pen laughed reminiscently. "There's a verse that says:

  "'Ice cream is very strange; so's a codfish ball, But the people people marry is the strangest thing of all!'"

  "I guess you need me," said Jane, "as much as I need you. There comesOscar and I haven't set the table."

  Oscar was coming up the dooryard. He stepped a little high, in the gaitof one accustomed to walking in shifting sands. He was big andupstanding, with a look of honesty that Pen liked.

  No one who has not known a desert farmer can realize what his acresmeant to Oscar Ames. The farmer of northern lands loves his acres. Buthe did not create them--he did not fight nature for them, until he hadmade himself over along with his land.

  Nature fights inch by inch every effort of man to harness the desert tohis uses. She scorches the soil with heat. She poisons it with alkali.She infests it with deadly vermin and--last and supreme touch ofcruelty--she forbids the soil water unless she surrounds the getting ofit with infinite travail and danger.

  Heat and sandstorm, failure and famine, toil unutterable, these hadbeen Oscar Ames' portion. When at last he had won his acres, had broughtthe barren sand to bearing, had made three hundred acres of desert athing of breathing beauty from January to January, the ranch meantsomething to him that a northern farmer could not understand. And thesethree hundred acres were Oscar's world. He could not see beyond them.The dam was a mere adjunct to the Ames ranch. He would leave no stoneunturned to see that it served his own ranch's needs as he saw them. IfSara saw this quality in Oscar and had any motive for playing on it, hecould do infinite harm to Jim.

  It was something of all this that Pen was thinking as Oscar crossed theyard. He came into the kitchen in a leisurely way and greeted Pen withthe cordiality that belongs to the desert country. Penelope helped Janeto put the dinner on the table and the three sat down to eat.

  The two were eager to hear details of Iron Skull's death, and after Penhad described it to them, Oscar began to talk about Sara.

  "How long's your husband been bedridden?" he asked.

  "Oscar!" exclaimed Jane.

  "Jane, you keep quiet. What's the use of being secret about it? I guessboth him and her know he's bedridden."

  Pen told them the story of the accident.

  "Isn't that fierce!" exclaimed Oscar. "He's the smartest young fellowI've met in years. I wish even now he was running the dam instead ofManning."

  "Why?" asked Penelope.

  "He'd build it for the farmer and have some business sense about it."

  "You don't understand Mr. Manning," said Pen. "I wish you'd try to getto know him better."

  Oscar grunted. "Does the doctors think your husband will get well?" heasked, finishing off his pie.

  "Oscar!" cried Jane.

  "Jane, you keep quiet. These are business questions. If Sardox and I aregoing to run this dam, we got to understand each other's limitations. Ican't ask _him_ if he's going to die."

  "We just don't know anything about it," said Pen, gently. "Mr. Ames, I'mcurious to know just how you and Sara are going to run the dam."

  Oscar closed his mouth importantly to open it again and say, "I nevertalk business with ladies."

  Jane laughed suddenly. "Gracious, Oscar! I'm not worrying but what I'llget all the details. He's the original human sieve, Mrs. Penelope."

  Oscar joined in Pen's laugh and started for the door, shaking his headand picking his teeth. Pen looked after him uneasily.

  That afternoon Pen and Jane went with Bill and Oscar for an automobileride over the desert. The two women sat in the tonneau, Oscar in frontwith Bill. The desert road was rough, full of bowlders and ruts. Butneither Oscar nor Bill was hampered by roads. Whenever some distant spotroused their curiosity, the machine left the road and plunged madlyacross the desert, through cactus thickets and yucca clumps, throughdraws and over sand drifts.

  Oscar and Bill kept up a shouted conversation with each other. But Penand Jane each clutched a side of the machine, braced their feet andgave their entire attention to keeping from being flung bodily from thecar. Forewarned for miles, no living creature crossed their path. Thedin and the dust, the hairbreadth escapes made the discomfort of theride for the two women indescribable.

  When Bill finally drew up before the ranch house door with his usualflourish of staccato explosions, Oscar alighted and watched Pen and hiswife crawl feebly from the tonneau.

  "_Caramba!_" he said. "That was a fine ride! I've been wanting to get alook at that country and a talk with you, Bill, for a month. I feel wellrested."

  Pen and Jane looked at each other and at the two men's grins ofcomplaisance. Then, without a word, the two women sank against eachother on the doorstep and laughed until the men, bewildered andexasperated, took themselves off to the barn. Finally Jane rose andwiped her eyes.

  "There's not an inch on my body that isn't black and blue," she saidweakly.

  Pen pulled herself up by clinging to the door knob. "That was a real'pleasure exertion,'" she whispered feebly. "But I'd do it twice overfor a laugh like this. I haven't laughed so for eight years."

  Jane gave Pen a kitchen apron and tied one on herself while she nodded."Thank heaven! I always could laugh. It's saved my reason many a time. Idon't want you to do a thing about getting supper, but you'll be sittinground in the kitchen and that'll keep your skirt clean."

  Pen picked up a pan of cold boiled potatoes and began to peel them withmore good will than skill. "I do like you, Jane Ames," she said. "Twopeople couldn't laugh together like that and not have been meant tounderstand each other."

  Jane set the tea kettle firmly on the stove. "We'll see each other a lotif we have to walk. Peel them thin, dear child. I'm a little low onpotatoes."

  "I'm not very expert," apologized Pen. "Sara is putting up with a gooddeal just now, for I'm learning how to cook."

  "I guess he don't suffer in silence!" sniffed Jane.

  The next morning, when Penelope climbed regretfully onto the front seatof the automobile, Oscar came hurriedly from the corral with adark-mustached young man in a business suit.

  "This is Mr. Fleckenstein, Mrs. Sardox," he said. "He's a lawyer and himand I are going up to the dam with you. He just stopped here on his way.I'm leaving his horse in the corral, Jane."

  Jane and Penelope exchanged puzzled looks. "Your hair needs fixing, Mrs.Penelope," said Jane. "Come in the house for a minute."

  Pen clambered down obediently and Jane led her far into the parlorbedroom. "Your hair was all right," she whispered, "but I want to warnyou. Oscar is just a great big innocent. He is crazy over anyone hethinks is smart. That Fleckenstein is a shyster lawyer. I wouldn't trusta hot stove in his hands. You see that your husband don't get thick withhim. Do you trust your husband in business?"

  Pen winced but she looked into Jane's blue eyes and answered, "No."

  "Do you like Mr. Manning and want him to succeed?"

  "Yes," replied Pen.

  "Well then, it's time I took notice of things on this project and youcan help me by watching things up there. I won't take time to say anymore right now. Oscar will be storming in here in a minute."

  When they reached the dam that afternoon, Oscar and Fleckenstein calledon Sara. Pen found that they would talk nothing but land values whileshe was in the tent, so she wandere
d out in search of Jim.

  She found him at the dam site. He was talking to a heavy-set, red-facedman in khaki. He was considerably older than Jim, who introduced thestranger as Mr. Jack Henderson.

  "Henderson will take Iron Skull's place," explained Jim. "You mustremember how I wrote home of him and how he helped me save my reputationas a road-builder on the Makon. He's been down on the diversion dam."

  Penelope held out her hand. "I shall never cease regretting that Ididn't get to see the Makon," she said.

  Henderson's gray eyes lost their keenness for a moment. "It was hard forme to come up knowing I was to take Iron Skull's job." Pen listened insurprise to his low, gentle voice. "You know, Boss Still Jim, if he'dhad a better chance for a education he'd have made his mark. He was justnaturally big. He could see all over and around a thing and what it hadto do with things a hundred years back and a hundred years on. That'swhat I call being big. A good many fellows that lives a long time in thedesert gets a little of that, but Iron Skull had it more than anyone Iknow. I wish he'd had a better chance. I can fill his job, Boss, as faras the day's work goes, but I can't give you the big look of things hecould."

  Henderson was standing with his hat off, and now he rumpled his grayhair and shook his head. Pen liked him at once.

  Jim nodded. "I miss him. I always shall miss him. I often thought thatif my father had come out to this country, he'd have grown to be likeIron Skull. And they are both gone."

  "That's the way life acts," said Henderson. "It's always the man thatought to stay that goes. And there's never any explanation of how you'regoing to fill the gap. He's jerked out of your life and you will go lamethe rest of your life for all you know. These here story books that tryto show death has got a lot of logic about it are liars. There ain't anyreason or sense about death. It just goes around, hit or miss, like alizard snapping flies."

  There was a moment's silence during which the three stared at theElephant. Then Jack cleared his throat and said casually, in his gentlevoice:

  "You're going to have a devil of a job enforcing your liquor ruling,Boss. It'll make trouble with the whites and more with the _hombres_."

  Jim's steel jaw set. "There's not to be a drop of liquor on this damexcept in the hospital. I expect you to back me in this, Jack. You knowwhat trouble I had on the Makon because I never came down hard."

  "Sure, I'll back you," said Henderson gently. "But I just wanted you torealize that it's going to be hell round a half mile track to enforceit. You never saw me backward about getting into a fight, did you?"

  Jim smiled reminiscently and then said, "I'm going to start an icecream and soft drink joint next to the moving picture show."

  Here Pen laughed. "I asked one of the oilers in the cable tower theother day if he liked to work for the government. He grunted. I askedhim if Uncle Sam didn't take good care of him and he said: 'Yes, and sodoes a penitentiary! What does men like the Big Boss know about what wewant? Why don't he ask me?'"

  Jim nodded. "That's typical. One of the hoboes I brought in half-starvedthe other day came to my office this morning and told me how to feed thecamp. He doesn't like our menu. As near as I can make out this was hisfirst experience at three meals a day and he never saw a bathtub before.There isn't a rough-neck in the camp that isn't convinced he could buildthat dam better than I. Eh, Jack?"

  "Sure, all except the old Makon bunch."

  "Well, we're up against the same old problem here, Henderson. We've gotto have better co-operation and yet enough rivalry to keep every man onthe job working his limit. The foremen don't pull together."

  "In that case," said Henderson tenderly, "I'll begin by going over andkick the head off the team boss."

  He smiled at Pen and started up the trail. Pen watched the workmen whowere cleaning up the top of the concrete section.

  "Did you have a good time with Mrs. Ames?" asked Jim.

  "Still, she's a dear! And Oscar isn't so bad when you know him. Do youknow, Jim, he actually believes that you are not building the dam forthe farmers! Can't you do something to make him understand you?"

  "Look here, Pen," replied Jim, "I'm building this dam for this valley,for all time, not for Oscar Ames or Bill Evans, nor for any one man. I'mdoing my share in building. I'm not hired to educate these idiots."

  Pen eyed Jim intently, trying to get his viewpoint and turning old IronSkull's words over in her mind. Jim was standing with his hat under hisarm and his brown hair blowing across his forehead.

  "Pen," he said suddenly, "you are the most beautiful woman in theworld."

  Pen blushed clean to her eyebrows. Jim went on eagerly: "Penelope, Iwant to tell you how I feel about you. Will you let me?"

  Pen looked at the Elephant helplessly. But the great beast lay mute andinscrutable in the sun. There was a look in Jim's eyes that Pen wouldhave found hard to control had not Jim's secretary chosen that moment tointerrupt them.

  "Mr. Manning," he said, "a letter has just come in for you from theSecretary of the Interior. You told me to notify you when it came."