The Indian peered down into her face and grunted as he recognized her. Then he suddenly stood in his stirrups and raised the fearful cry that had emptied the moving picture hall.
"Ke-theek! Ke-theek! Ke-theek! (To me! To me! To me!)"
Pen stood by the pony's head, trembling yet exultant. This, then, she thought was the life men knew. No wonder Jim loved his job!
Up on the mesa top, the night wind rushed against the encircling stars. The Indian chuckled.
"Mexicans, they no bother whites tonight. They know Apache call, it heap devil."
The sound of hoofs began to beat in about the waiting two. "You go," said the Indian. "Back along upper trail, it safe."
Pen started on a run toward the upper camp.
The surging crowd round Jim and the Indians heard the wild cry from the mesa top and the shouts and threats were stilled as if by magic. There was a moment of restless silence. That cry was a primordial thing, as well understood by every man in the mob as if he had heard it always. It was the cry of the hunted and the hunter. It was the night cry of forests. It was war with naked hands, death under lonely skies.
Jim called: "Some one is bound to get killed if you boys don't clear out. I'm not armed but a number of you are and the Indians are. If there are any of my Makon boys here, I want them to come over here and help me."
"Coming, Boss!" called a voice. "Only a few of the best of us here."
"You'll stay where you are," roared a big Irishman.
"Rush 'em, boys! Rush 'em! They don't dare to shoot!"
Old Suma-theek absent-mindedly sighted his gun in the direction of the last remark.
"Get a ladder! Get on top of the station. Altogether, boys!"
Fighting through the mob, half a dozen men suddenly ranged themselves with the Indians.
"Come into us!" one of them shrieked. "I ain't had a fight since I killed six Irishmen on the Makon and ate 'em for breakfast."
There was a swaying, a sudden closing of the crowd, when down from the mesa rushed old Suma-theek's bucks. They swept the mob aside like flying sand and closed about the little group against the wall. They were a very splendid picture in the arc light, these forty young bucks with their flying hair and plunging ponies. The moment must have been one of unmixed joy to them as the whites gave back, leaving them the street width.
Jack Henderson rushed up in Jim's automobile just as the street cleared. Jim hurried to the machine. "Jack, did you see Mrs. Saradokis?"
"Took her home in the machine. Had to argue with her to make her go. That's why I'm late. Just got back from delivering the committee."
The color came back under Jim's tan. "Get up to the wall there, Jack, with the machine and put the two hombres into the tonneau with two Indians and Suma-theek in front. The mounted Indians will act as your guard for a few miles out. Hit the high places to Cabillo. I guess you'd better keep the guard all the way. I wouldn't like you to meet a posse without one."
Jack nodded and began to work his way among the ponies. In a moment's time the touring car, with the cowering human bundles in the tonneau, had crossed the river. The crowd disappeared rather precipitately into the tents, no one courting conversation with Jim. He walked quietly up the road home.
Early the next morning, Billy Underwood brought Murphy up to Jim's house.
"Sorry my posse didn't get there in time to help you out, Boss," said Bill regretfully. "We didn't hear of it till it was all over."
Jim nodded. "Keep up your quarantine for a while, Bill. We won't risk booze for several days. Now, Murphy, who backed you in the saloon business?"
"Fleckenstein's crowd."
"How long have you known Mr. Saradokis?"
"Met him for the first time last night," replied the ex-saloonkeeper.
Jim eyed the man skeptically and Murphy spoke with sudden heat. "That's on the level. I heard he was backing Fleckenstein and so I thought he'd help me get back at you. But he cursed me as I'll stand from no man because Underwood made a monkey of me by lugging me up there before you. No wonder his wife left the tent before he began, if that's his usual style. I'll get even with that dirty Greek."
Bill nodded. "Boss, that friend of yours has a vocabulary that'd turn a mule into a race horse."
"Murphy," said Jim, "you are Irish. My stepfather is an Irishman. He is the whitest gentleman that ever lived. It's hard for me to realize after knowing him that an Irishman can be doing the dirty work you are. But I suppose Ireland must breed men like you or Tammany would die."
Murphy hitched from one foot to the other. Jim went on in his quiet, slow way.
"I suppose you know pretty well what I'm up against on this Project. What would you do with Murphy if you were Manning?"
"I'd beat three pounds of dog meat off his face," replied Murphy, succinctly.
Jim shrugged his shoulders. "That would do neither of us any good. If I let you go, Murphy, will you give me your word of honor to let the Project absolutely alone?"
The Irishman gave Jim a quick look. "And would you take my word?"
"Not as a saloonkeeper, but as Irish, I would."
Murphy drew a long breath. "Thank you, Mr. Manning. I'll get off the Project if you say so. But I think you'd be wiser to give me a job below on the diversion dam where I can keep track of Fleckenstein and his crowd for you. I'll show you what it means to trust an Irishman, sir."
Jim suddenly flashed his wistful smile. "I knew you had the makings of a friend in you as soon as I saw how you took the cleaning up I gave you yesterday. I'll give you a note to my irrigation engineer. He needs a good man."
Bill and Murphy went out the door together. "I'll bet you the drinks, Bill," said Murphy, "that he never made you his friend."
"I ain't drinking. I'm his trusted officer," said Bill. "Get me? If you try any tricks on him——"
Bill stopped abruptly, for Murphy's fist was under his nose. "Did you hear him take my word like a gentleman?" he shouted. "I'd rather be dead than double cross him!"
"Aw, go on down to the diversion dam," said Bill, irritably. "I've got no time to listen to your talk. You heard him tell me to guard the place!"
A part of Jim's day's work, after his letters were answered and written in the morning, was to tramp over every portion of the job. The quarry, in the mountain to the north of the dam whence were being taken the giant rock for embedding in the concrete was his first care. The stone must be of the right quality and of proper weight and contour to bind well with the cement. The quarrying itself must be going forward rapidly and without waste. Then came the giant sand dump, where the dinkies had filled a canyon with the sand from the river bed. This was the supply that fed the always hungry mixer. After this the warehouse and the power house, the laboratories and the concrete mixer, the cableway towers and the superintendent's office, with all the thousand and one details, expected and unexpected, that made or marred the success of the dam, must be looked over. The last visit was always at the dam itself, where Jim spent most of the day.
On the afternoon after Jim had hired Murphy he stood on the section of the dam which now showed no signs of old Jezebel's strenuous visit. Jim was watching the job with his outer mind, while with his inner mind he turned over and over the things that Pen had said to him the night before the mask ball. Even in the excitement that followed the ball, Pen's scolding, as he called it, had never been entirely out of his thoughts. In spite of their sting, Jim realized that Pen's words had cleared his vision, had given him a sense of content that was comparable only to the feeling he had had on the night so many years ago that he had discovered his profession.
To find that the cause of his failure lay in himself and not in intangible forces without that he could not combat was strangely enough a very real relief. For Jim was taking Pen's review of his weaknesses as essential truth!
Suddenly, with his eyes fastened critically on a great stone block that was being carefully bedded on the section, he laughed aloud and whispered to himself:
"I f
eel just the way I used to when I got mad because I couldn't get compound interest and Dad straightened me out, giving me a good calling down as he did so. Pen! Pen! My dearest!"
Oscar Ames, picking his way carefully among the derricks and stone blocks, grunted when he saw the smile on Jim's face. Jim did not cease to smile when he saw Oscar.
"Come up here, Ames! I want your advice!"
Oscar grunted again, but this time as if someone had knocked his breath out of him. He paused, then came on up to where Jim was standing. Men were busy preparing the surface on which they stood for the next pouring. In the excavation below, the channeling machine was gouging out a trench for the heel of the dam. Pumps were working steadily, drawing seepage water from the excavation. Men swarmed everywhere, on derricks, on engines, with guide ropes for cableway loads, scouring and chipping rock and concrete surfaces, ramming and bolting forms into place, shifting motors, always hurrying yet always giving a sense of direction and purpose.
"She's coming along, Oscar," said Jim.
Oscar nodded. Something in Jim's tone made his own less pugnacious than usual as he said:
"What you using sand-cement for instead of the real stuff?"
"It's stronger," said Jim. "A very remarkable thing! We've been testing that out five or six years."
Jim's tone was very amiable. Oscar looked at him suspiciously and Jim laughed. "Thought we were working some kind of a cement graft?" Jim asked.
"Well, that's the common report!"
"Oh, for heaven's sake, Oscar!" exclaimed Jim disgustedly.
"Well, now," said Ames doggedly, "just why should sand-cement be stronger than the pure Portland?"
Jim scowled, started to speak with his old impatience, then changed his mind.
"You come up to the laboratory with me, Oscar. I'll give you a lesson on cement that will put a stop to this gossip at once. A man of your experience ought to know better."
Conflicting emotions showed in Oscar's face, boyish despite his fifty years. This was the first time Jim had used the man to man tone with Ames. He cleared his throat and followed the Big Boss up the trail to the little adobe laboratory. The young cement engineer looked curiously at Jim's companion.
"Mr. Field," said Jim, "this is Mr. Ames. He is one of the most influential men in the valley. He is giving practically all of his time to watching our work up here. He tells me the farmers feel that sand-cement isn't good. We will put in an hour showing Mr. Ames our tests and their results for the last five years, both here and on the Makon."
Field did not show his surprise at Jim's about-face. But he did say to himself as he went into the back room for his old reports, "Evidently the farmer is no longer to be told to go to Hades when he kicks. I wonder what's happened."
An hour later Jim and Oscar walked slowly up the trail toward Jim's house. Jim had invited Ames up for a further talk. Oscar had shown a remarkable aptitude for the details that Jim and Field had explained. And his pleasure at finally understanding the whole idea upon which Jim was basing his concrete work was such that Jim felt a very real remorse. He recalled almost daily questions from Oscar and other farmers that he had answered with a shortness that was often contemptuous.
"Now you see," Oscar said as they entered the cottage, "we'll actually save money on that. Wonderful thing, Mr. Manning, how mixing the sand and cement intimately enough, as you say, turns the trick. I'll tell the bunch down at Cabillo about that tomorrow."
Jim shoved a box of cigars at Oscar and surveyed him with his wistful smile. There were dark circles round Jim's eyes that in his childhood had told of nerve strain. Jim at that moment wondered what Iron Skull would have made of the present situation. He was silent so long that Oscar spoke a little impatiently:
"If you ain't going to talk, Mr. Manning, Jane is waiting for me and I got to see Mr. Sardox yet."
Jim pulled himself together, and, a little diffidently, handed Ames the Secretary's letter with the copy of his own.
"Tell me what you think of these," said Jim.
Oscar read the two letters carefully, then said: "I'd think more of 'em if I had any idea what either of you was driving at."
"It means just this," said Jim, "that unless the engineers and the farmers work together, the Reclamation Service will get what the water power trust is trying to give it, and that is, oblivion."
"Aha," said Oscar, "that's why you've been so decent to me today?"
"Yes," replied Jim simply.
Oscar's look of suspicion returned. Jim went on slowly and carefully. "It will be bad business if the Service fails. It will retard the government control of water power greatly, and there is enough possible water power in this country, Oscar, to turn every wheel in it and to heat and light every home in the land. If the Service fails it will show just one thing; that the farmers and engineers on the Projects are too selfish to get together for the country's good, that the farmer is a stupid cat's paw for the money interests and the engineer a spineless fool who won't fight."
"Look here, Manning," cried Oscar, "don't you think I'm justified in thinking about nothing but my own ranch, considering what it's cost me?"
"Don't you think," Jim returned, "that I'm justified in thinking about nothing but my dam and in letting the water power trust eat it and you up, considering how hard I work on the building itself?"
Oscar stared and chewed his cigar and Jim smoked in silence for a moment.
"Ames," he said finally, "I wonder if you will get this idea as quickly as you did the sand-cement one. America isn't like England or Germany or France. Over there the citizens of each country are practically of one race. Fundamentally, they think about the same way and want the same things. If one man or many neglect public duties it makes no permanent difference. Someone else will take up the duty some time, and in just about the same way that the negligent man would have done. But in America we have become a hodge-podge of every race. We have no national ideals. You can't tell me now of a single national ideal you and I are working for or even thinking about. You can't tell me what an American is, or I you. Get me?"
Oscar nodded, his tanned face keen with interest.
"Now the time has come when if you or I want any particular one of the old New England ideals to live in this country we have got to fight for it, start an educational campaign for it. If we don't, the Russian Jews or the Italians or the Syrians will change things to suit their own ideals. Now they may be all right. Their ideals may be as good as mine. They have every right to be here and to rule if they can. But I don't like the kind of government they stood for in their native countries.
"I'm a pig-headed Anglo-Saxon, full of an egotism that dies hard. I believe that the Reclamation Service idea is an outgrowth of the fine democracy that our fathers brought to New England. I believe that the folks that are going to inherit America can't afford to lose the idea of the Service and I'm going to fight for it now till they get me. Am I clear?"
"Sure," said Oscar. "Ain't I of Puritan stock myself?"
"That's why I'm talking to you," said Jim. "Now I take the central idea of the United States Reclamation Service to be this. It is a return to the old principle of the people governing themselves directly, of their assuming individual responsibility for the details and cost of governing. It is the fine outgrowth of the industrial lessons we have learned in the past years, combined with the town meeting idea, brought up to date.
"One central organization can do work better and cheaper, if it will, than a dozen competing interests. If the central organization is privately owned it demands a heavy profit. But if it is owned by the government it takes no profit. On a Project, free individuals voluntarily combine to do business and to directly administer the products of that business to themselves. The Service is merely the tool of the people on the Projects.
"Oscar, it's up to you and me. In antagonizing you farmers, I've opened the way for the enemies of the Service to reach you. And you, in being reached, are endangering the Service. Is it true that you are
going to help Saradokis and Fleckenstein get your honest debts repudiated?"
The two men sat and stared at each other, Oscar with his years of unutterable labor behind him, his traditions that dealt with a constant hand-to-hand struggle with nature for his own existence; Jim with his long years of dreaming behind him and his awakening vision of social responsibility before him. Engineer and desert farmer, they were of widely differing characteristics, yet they had one fundamental quality in common. They both were producers. They were not little men. There was nothing parasitic in their outlook. They had always dealt with fundamental, primitive forces.
Suddenly Oscar leaned forward. "Are you trying to string me into saying the increased cost of the dam is all right?"
Jim tapped on the table. "Not five per cent of the increased cost but comes from the improvements you farmers have asked for. And not one cent of the cost of the entire Project but will be paid for by the water power produced and sold. You know that, Ames. Now pay attention."
Jim shook his finger in Oscar's face and said slowly and incisively:
"You farmers will never repudiate your honorable debts while I can fight. You are going to fight with me, Ames, to help me save the Service. You are going to put your shoulder to mine and fight as you did when the old dam was going out under your feet! Do you get that?"
Oscar opened his mouth but no words came. Then both men jumped to their feet as Mrs. Ames' gentle voice said from the kitchen door:
"Oscar will fight, or I'll leave him."
* * *
CHAPTER XXI
JIM GETS A BLOW
"The eagle has lived long in my side. He is cruel with talons built for seizing. Is this why so many nations choose him as their emblem?"
Musings of the Elephant.
Jane never had looked meeker or smaller or more desert worn than she did as she stood eying the two men; that is, meek except as to her eyes. These burned like sapphires in the sun. In them was concentrated the deathless energy that Penelope had found was Jane's chief characteristic.
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