Still Jim

by Morrow, Honore

"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 God! 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 God, 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 hell for two nigger 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 Washington."

  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."

  The two started along the road that wound up to the low mountain top where the group of adobe cottages known as "officers' quarters" was located. The cottages were occupied by Jim's associate engineers and their families.

  "I suppose you learned that your friends came," said Iron Skull. "They wanted a tent for his health, so I put them in the tent house back on the level behind the quarters.

  "I didn't know of their coming until I was leaving Washington," said Jim. "How are they?"

  "She stood the trip fine. He was pretty well used up, poor cus! She is awful patient with him. She's all you've said about her and then some. The ladies have all called on her but he don't encourage them. I stood a good deal from him, then I just told him to go to hell. Not when she was round, of course."

  Jim listened intently. He knew the whole camp must be alive with gossip and curiosity over his two guests. An event of this order was a godsend in news value to the desert camp.

  "Much obliged
to you," was Jim's comment.

  "How'd the Hearing go?" asked Iron Skull.

  Jim shook his head and sighed. "They are convinced down there, I guess, that the Service is rotten. I kept my mouth shut and sawed wood. The Secretary is good medicine. You should have heard Uncle Denny jump in and make a speech. Bless him. I felt like a fool. What the Secretary thinks about the whole thing nobody knows."

  Iron Skull grunted. After a moment he said: "Folks down at Cabillo are peeved at the way you are making the main canal. Old Suma-theek is back with fifty Apaches. That's one of them we pulled out of the sand. I've fixed a separate mess for them. I think we can reorganize one of the shifts so as to reduce the number of foremen."

  Jim paused before the door of his little gray adobe. "Will you come in, Iron Skull?"

  "I'll wait for you in the office," replied Williams. He turned down the mountainside toward a long adobe with a red roof.

  Jim walked in at the open door of his house. The living room was long and low, with an adobe fireplace at one end. The walls were left in the delicate creamy tint of the natural adobe. On the floor were a black bearskin from Makon and a brilliant Navajo that Suma-theek had given him. The walls were hung with Indian baskets and pottery, with photographs of the Green Mountain and the Makon, with guns and canteens and a great rack of pipes. This was the first home that Jim had had since he had left the brownstone front and he was very proud of it. He had inherited his predecessor's housekeeper, who ruled him firmly.

  Jim dropped his suit case and called, "Hello, Mrs. Flynn!"

  A door at the end of the room opened and a very stout woman came in, her ruddy face a vast smile, her gray hair flying. She was wiping her hands on her apron.

  "Oh, Boss Still, but I'm glad to see you! You look pindlin'. Ain't it awful about the dam! I bet you're hungry this minute. God knows, if I'd thought you'd be here for another hour I'd have had something against your coming. And if God lets me live to spare my life, it won't happen again."

  She talked very rapidly and as she talked she was patting Jim's arm, turning him round and round to look him over like a mother.

  Jim flashed his charming smile on her. "Bless you, Mother Flynn! I know it's a hundred years since you've told me what God knows! I'll have a bath and go down to the office. I've had nothing to eat since morning." This last very sadly.

  It had the expected effect on Mrs. Flynn, whose idea of purgatory was of a place where one had to miss an occasional meal.

  She groaned: "Leave me into the kitchen! At six o'clock exactly there will be fried chicken on this table!"

  Mrs. Flynn made breathlessly for the kitchen pausing at the door to call back: "And how's your mother and your Uncle Denny? I've been doing the best I can for your company. They ate stuff I took 'em only the first day, then she went to housekeeping."

  "Thank you," said Jim, absently. He went into his bedroom. This, too, was uncolored. It was a simple little room with only a cot, a bureau and a chair in it. The walls were bare except for the little old photograph of Pen in her tennis clothes.

  In half an hour Jim had splashed in and out of his bath, was shaved and clad in camp regalia; a flannel shirt, Norfolk coat and riding breeches of tan khaki, leather puttees and a broad-brimmed Stetson. At his office awaiting him were his engineer associates and Iron Skull, and he put in a long two hours with them, his mind far less on the flood and the Hearing than on the fact that Penelope was waiting for him, up in the little tent house.

  It was not quite eight o'clock when Jim stood before the tent house, waiting for courage to rap.

  Suddenly he heard Sara's voice. "I won't have women coming up here to snoop! Understand that, Pen, right now. Hand me the paper and be quick about it."

  Jim felt himself stiffened as he listened for Pen's voice in answer.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XII

  THE TENT HOUSE

  "Leave Old Jezebel to herself and she soon returns to old ways. She likes them best for she is a woman."

  Musings of the Elephant.

  Pen's voice, when it came, was lower and fuller than he had remembered it but there was the old soft chuckle in it.

  "Cross patch! Draw the latch! Say please, like a nice child and then I'll play a game of cards with you."

  Jim rapped on the door and stepped in. "Hello, Pen!" he said, holding out his hand.

  She was changed and yet unchanged. A little thinner, older, yet more beautiful in her young womanhood than in her charming girlhood. Her chestnut hair was wrapped in soft braids around her head instead of being bundled up in her neck. Her eyes looked larger and deeper set but they were the same steady, clear eyes of old; ageless eyes; the eyes of the woman who thinks. She had the same full soft lips, and as Jim held out his hand the same flash of dimples.

  "Hello, Still! The mountains have come to Mahomet!"

  "And a poor welcome I gave you," replied Jim. "Hello, Sara."

  Jim turned to the great invalid chair. There, propped up in cushions, lay a fat travesty of the old Saradokis. This was a Sara whose tawny hair was turning gray with suffering; whose mouth, once so full and boyish, was now heavy and sinister, whose buoyancy had changed to the bitter irritability of the hopeless invalid.

  Sara looked Jim over deliberately, then dropped his hand. "How do you think I am? Enjoying the dirty deal I've had from life?"

  Jim had not realized before just what a dirty deal Sara had been given. "I'm sorry about it, Sara," he said.

  Saradokis gave an ugly laugh. "Sounds well! I've never heard a word from you since the day we ran the Marathon. You hold a grudge as well as a Greek, Jim."

  "Gee, I'd forgotten all about the race!" exclaimed Jim.

  "I haven't," returned Sara. "Neither the race nor several other things."

  Jim shrugged his shoulders and turned to Pen, who was watching the two men anxiously.

  "Tell me about your plans. I'm mighty happy to have you here."

  "Sara's had the feeling for a long time that this climate would help him, and we've talked in a general way about coming. It was Mr. Freet that told Sara he thought there were some good real estate chances here and that decided Sara. Sara has done him a number of good turns in investments round New York."

  Jim looked at Sara sharply but made no comment on Pen's remarks. "Are you comfortable here?" he asked, looking about the tent house.

  It was a roomy place. There was a good floor and a wooden wainscoting that rose three feet above it. The tent was set on this wainscoting, which gave plenty of head space. A gasolene stove in one corner with a table and chairs and a cupboard formed the kitchen. A cot for Pen and a book shelf or two with a corner clothes closet and some hammock swung chairs completed the furniture. Pen had achieved the homelike with some chintz hangings and a rug.

  "I am getting our meals right here," said Pen. "The steward said we could have them sent up from the mess, but it's less expensive and more fun to get them camp fashion here. The government store is a very good one and all the neighbors have called and have brought me everything from fresh baked bread to cans of jelly. They are so wonderfully kind to me!"

  Sara was staring at Jim with an insolent sort of interest. He had full use of his arms, as was evident when he gave the great wheel chair a quick flip about so as to shade his eyes from the lamp. As Jim watched him all the resentment of the past eight years welled up within him with an added repugnance for Sara's fat helplessness and ugly temper that made it difficult for him to sit by the invalid's chair.

  When Pen had finished her account Sara said, "You made rather a mess, didn't you, in handling the flood today?"

  "You were splendid, Jimmy!" cried Pen. "I saw the whole thing!"

  Jim shook his head. "It was expensive splendor!"

  "You will find it difficult to explain your lack of preparation to an investigating committee, won't you?" asked Sara.

  "If you can give a recipe for flood preparation," said Jim good naturedly, "you will have every dam builder in the world at your feet."


  Sara grunted and changed the subject and his manner abruptly.

  "Got any decent smoking tobacco, Still?"

  "That is hard to find here," replied Jim. "It dries out fast and loses flavor. I've got some over at the house I brought back from the East. I'll go over and get it now. Will you let Pen walk over with me? I'd like to have her see my house."

  "Makes no difference to me what she does. Hand me that book, Pen, before you start."

  Out under the stars Jim pulled Pen's hand within his arm and asked, "Pen, is he always like that?"

  "Always," answered Pen. "Do you remember the 'Wood-carver of Olympus'? How he was hurt like Sara and how he blasphemed God and was embittered for years? He was reconciled to his lot after a time and people loved him. I have so hoped for that change in poor Sara, but none has come."

  "Pen!" cried Jim suddenly. "I gave you my sign and seal! Why did you marry Saradokis?"

  Pen answered slowly, "Jim, why wouldn't you understand and take me West with you when I begged you to?"

  "Understand what?" asked Jim, tensely.

  "That Sara's hold on me was almost hypnotic, that it was you I really cared for, as I realized as soon as Sara was hurt. If only you had had the courage of your convictions, Still!"

  Jim winced but found no reply and Pen went on, her voice meditative and soft as if she were talking not of herself but of some half-forgotten acquaintance.

  "I used to feel resentful that Sara thought I was worth such constant attention, while you, in spite of the Sign and Seal, were quite as contented with Uncle Denny as with me. And yet, after it all was over and I had settled down to nursing Sara for the rest of my life, I could see that I had had nothing to give you then and Uncle Denny had. Life is so mercilessly logical—to look back on, Jimmy."

  Jim put his hand over the cold little fingers on his arm. Pen went on. "I did not try to write to you. I——"

  But Jim could bear no more. "Pen! Pen! What a miserable fool I am!"