Jim Plans A Last Fight

: Still Jim

"The coyotes are going leaving behind them bleaching bones.

The Indians are going leaving a few arrow heads and water

vessels. What will the whites leave?"



MUSINGS OF THE ELEPHANT.





Jim was angry. All night he lay staring into the dark with his wrath

accumulating until it finally focused itself, not on the Director or on

Sara o on the farmers, but on himself! He reviewed the years

mercilessly. He saw how he had refused again and again to shoulder the

responsibilities that belonged to him--belonged, because of his fitness

to carry them. Charlie Tuck and Iron Skull both had done what they could

to make him see, but wrapped in his futile dreams he had refused to

look, and, he told himself, long before he had left Exham, his father

had tried to set him on the right path but he always had put off the

quest on which his father had sent him, always thrust it over into

tomorrow when today was waiting for his start.



The very peak of his anger was reached when it suddenly came home to Jim

that he had failed his father, had proved renegade to old Exham.



Three months! A cool dismissal after over eight years of his heart's

blood had been given to the Service! Jim groaned, then sat erect.



"Serves you right, you dreaming fool! Nobody to blame but yourself!

Three months! And in that time the farmers will elect Fleckenstein to

Congress and the open fight for repudiation will be on!"



Jim groaned again. Then abruptly he jumped out of bed, turned on the

light, and looked at the little picture of Pen on the wall.



"Pen," he said, "Fleckenstein shan't be elected! I'm going out of this

Project, fighting like a hound. I've been a quitter all my life, I'll

admit, but I'm going to put up my fists at the end. I'll rush the work

here and I'll keep Fleckenstein out of Congress. I'll spend no time

belly-aching but I'll stand up to this like a man. Honestly, I will,

Penelope."



Dawn was coming in at the window. Jim filled the bathtub and took a cold

plunge. The sun was just rimming the mountains when he began to tune up

his automobile. He filled the tank with gasoline and cranked the engine

and was starting out the door when old Suma-theek appeared. Jim stopped.



"Where you go, Boss?" asked the Indian.



A sudden desire to talk to Iron Skull's old friend made Jim say, "Get in

and ride to the bridge with me, Suma-theek."



The chief clambered into the seat by Jim. "Suma-theek, the Big Boss at

Washington has given me three months before I must leave the dam."



"Why?" asked Suma-theek.



"Because I darn well deserve it. I've got everybody here sore at me.

Everybody on this Project hates me, so he's afraid it will hurt all the

dams the Big Sheriff at Washington wants to build for all the whites."



"He's a heap fool, that Big Boss at Washington. All the people that know

you love you in their hearts. It hurt your heart because you have leave

dam?"



Jim nodded. The old Indian eyed him keenly. Then his lean, bronze face

turned sad. "Why you suppose Great Spirit no care how much heart aches?

Why you suppose he let that little To-hee bird all time sing love to

you, then no let you have your love? Maybe, Boss Still, all those things

you believe, all those things you work for, Great Spirit think no use.

Huh?"



"The Great Spirit didn't explain anything to us, Suma-theek, but he gave

us our dreams. I want to fix my tribe's dream so firmly it can never be

forgotten. As for my own little dream of love, what does it matter?"



Suma-theek responded to Jim's wistful smile with an old man's smile of

lost illusions. "Dreams are always before or behind. They are never

here. You are young. Yours are before. Suma-theek is old. His are

behind. Boss Still, you no sabez one thing. All great dreams of any

tribe they built by man for love of woman."



Jim stared for a moment at the purple shadow of the Elephant. Then he

stopped the machine at the bridge to let Suma-theek out. In a moment the

machine was climbing the mesa on the road to Cabillo.



Jim always thrilled to his first view of Cabillo as he swung down into

the valley. It is a little town lying on a desert plain three thousand

feet above the sea. Flood or drought or utter loneliness had not

prevailed to keep men from settling there. It is set in the vivid green

of alfalfa field, of vineyards, and of orchards. Around about the town,

the desert lies, rich, yellow, and to the east rise mountains that stand

like deep purple organ pipes against the blue desert sky. It seemed to

Jim this morning that the pipes had forever murmured with the wordless

brooding music of the desert winds. That age after age they had been

uttering vast harmonies too deep for human ears to hear, uttering them

to countless generations of men who had come and gone like the desert

sand.



In Cabillo Jim went, after a hasty breakfast, to see John Haskins.

Haskins was a banker and a Harvard man who had come to Cabillo thirty

years before with bad lungs. He was, Jim thought, an impartial, though

keen, observer of events in the valley. He was in the banker's office

but a few minutes.



"Mr. Haskins," he said, "do you consider fifty dollars an acre too heavy

a debt for the farmers to carry on their farms?"



"Not for the experienced irrigation farmer," replied Haskins.



Jim paused thoughtfully. "Experienced! And not twenty per cent. of them

will be experienced." He made an entry in his notebook, then asked, "Is

ten years too short a time to give the farmers to pay for the dam?"



"Not with wise cropping."



"Is it possible to find sufficient water power market to practically pay

for the dam, without reference to the crops?" Jim went on.



"Yes," answered Haskins.



"If a group of farmers and business men will assume a debt,

voluntarily, then repudiate it, are they sufficiently responsible

persons to assume for all time the handling of the irrigation system and

water power the government is developing for them?" Jim's voice was slow

and biting.



Haskins answered clearly, "No!"



Jim's last question made Haskins smile. "Is this an intelligent group of

men, these farmers and business men?"



"Unusually so, especially the men who have been long in the desert and

have struggled with its vicissitudes. Some of the Mexican farmers are

difficult to handle, though, because they don't understand what the

government is trying to do. For heaven's sake, Manning, why this

catechism?"



Jim laughed. "Oh, I want your opinion to quote. I'm about to put up a

fight against Fleckenstein."



"But that will be hardly proper, will it, considering your job? Not but

what I think Fleckenstein ought to be fought!"



"Oh, I'm not going on the stump. I'm merely going to fight him by

attending to certain portions of my job that I've always neglected."



Jim rose and Haskins shook his head ruefully. "More power to your elbow,

old man. But nothing can beat Fleckenstein now, I'm afraid."



"I'm going to mighty well try it," said Jim as he hurried out the door.



His next visit was along the irrigation canal to a point where his

irrigation engineer was watching the work on a small power station.



"Hello, Marlow, how is Murphy doing?"



Marlow laughed. "I made him timekeeper. He's assumed the duties of

policeman, ward boss and of advertising agent for you."



"Where is he?" asked Jim.



"Coming right along the road there now."



Jim started the machine on to meet the stocky figure that Marlow pointed

out.



Murphy grinned broadly as Jim invited him into the machine. "I want to

talk to you, Murphy? How does the job go?"



"Aw, it's no job! It's a joy ride. I thought I knew every farmer in the

county but I didn't. A new one turns up every day to tell the Little

Boss how to irrigate."



"Murphy," said Jim, "how do you size up Fleckenstein?"



Murphy looked at Jim curiously. "Just like everyone else does, as a

crook."



"How much pull has he with the farmers?"



Murphy shrugged his shoulders. "How much pull would the devil himself

have if he promised repudiation? Tell me that, Boss!"



"Is the chap who is running against him any good?"



"Who, Ives? Is a bag of jelly an implement of war? What have you got on

your mind, Boss?"



"Well, to tell the truth, Murphy, I've just come to! The election is

just three months off, isn't it? I am going to try to lick Fleckenstein

in that time."



"Can't be done, Boss, unless you'll take the stump yourself."



"Of course, that's out of the question," replied Jim. "But this is what

I'm going to do. I'm going to see every farmer in the valley and have a

good talk with him. I'm going to make him see this Project as I do. And

I'm going to send for half a dozen of the best men in the Department of

Agriculture to come out here and get the newcomers interested in

scientific farming. I'm not going to mention Fleckenstein's name."



Murphy looked at Jim, then out at the irrigating ditch along which the

machine was moving slowly. "Boss," he said, "go ahead if it'll ease you

up any, but you might as well try to fight a hydrophobia skunk with a

perfume atomizer as to try them high-brow methods on Fleckenstein."



Jim laughed. "Well, do you know of a better method, Murphy?"



"Yes, the good, old-fashioned way of putting up more whisky, more money

and more free rides than the other fellow does."



Jim turned the machine back toward the power station. "Of course, you

know that that is out of the question, Murphy."



"Well, what do you want me to do, Boss?" asked Murphy.



"Tomorrow is Sunday," said Jim. "I want you to come up to my house and

discuss with me the characteristics of every man in the valley. I don't

know anyone better qualified to know them."



"I'll be there," said Murphy, climbing from the machine. He watched Jim

drive away. "There's something about him that gets under my skin," said

the ex-saloonkeeper. "I'll be holding his hand, next. Poor snoozer!

Think of him trying to fight mud like Fleckenstein. But I'll back him if

it'll relieve his mind any."



Jim was back at the dam by mid-afternoon. He found Pen with Mrs. Flynn

in the shining little kitchen of his adobe.



"Penelope," he said, "is there any way we can rob Sara of his poison

fangs? Certainly sending him away will do little good. I have been

thinking of giving him his choice of being under espionage or of being

turned over to the government. I've played with him, Pen, a little too

long. Now that it's too late, I'm going to lock the door."



Mrs. Flynn looked frightened. She never had seen this expression on

Jim's face before. The scowl between his eyes was deep, his jaw was

tense and his eyes were too large and too bright. But Pen's face flushed

eagerly.



"You are angry at last, Jimmy! Thank heaven for that! We can watch Sara,

easily, if you will use your authority. And oh, I do so want to stay and

help! Your temper is touched at last, Jim. I am thankful to Freet for

that."



Jim nodded grimly. "Will you go over to the tent with me? Or had I

better have it out with Sara alone?"



"Neither," said Pen. "I'll settle him myself. I feel like having a scrap

with someone. What else are you going to do, Still? Shall you report

Freet?"



"That's out of the question. Freet is the least of my troubles, anyhow.

I'll tell you all my plans." He looked from Mrs. Flynn, whose anxious

eyes did not leave his face, to Pen, with her cheeks showing the scarlet

of excitement. Something in their tense interest in him was suddenly

very comforting to Jim and he smiled at them. And though it was a

little strained it was the old flashing, sweet smile that those who

knew him loved.



"I don't know how I'm to get through the next few weeks," he said,

"unless you two are very kind and polite to me."



Mrs. Flynn suddenly threw her apron over her head. "God knows," she

sobbed, "I've waited for you to smile this weary time! I've washed and

mended all your clothes and cleaned your room and cooked everything I

ever heard of and not a smile could I get. I thought you had something

incurable!"



Jim made a long stride across the room and hugged Mrs. Flynn, boyishly.

"Didn't you tell me you felt like my mother? Don't you know mothers have

to see through their boy's stupidity and selfishness down to the real

trouble that lies underneath? No one will do it but a mother!"



Mrs. Flynn wiped her eyes on her apron. "God knows I'm an old fool," she

said. "Change that dirty khaki suit so's I can wash it."



Jim chuckled and turned to Pen. She was watching the little tableau with

all her hungry heart in her eyes.



"Pen! Oh, my dearest!" breathed Jim. Then he paused with a glance at his

near-mother, who immediately began to rattle the stove lids.



"Get out and take a walk, the two of you. God knows I'm a good Catholic,

but there's some things--get out, the two of you! Let your nerves ease

up a bit. Sure we all pound and twang like a wet tent in the wind."



Out on the trail Jim spoke a little breathlessly: "Pen! If you would

just let me put my head down on your shoulder, if you'd put your dear

cheek on mine and smooth my hair, the heaven of it would carry me

through the next few weeks. Just that much, Pen, is all I'd ask for!"



Tears were in Pen's eyes as she looked up into the fine, pleading face.

"Jim, I can't!"



"You wouldn't be taking it from Sara."



"Sara! Poor Sara! He wants no embraces from anyone! I'm no more married

to Sara than a nurse to her patient. But I mean that as long as things

are as they are, the honest thing, the safe thing, is for me not

to--to--Oh, Jim, it's not square to any of us. We must keep on the

straight, clear basis of friendship!"



But Jim had seen Pen's heart in her eyes and the call of it was almost

more than his lonely heart could bear.



"Great heavens, Pen!" he cried. "Life is so short! We need each other

so! What does it profit us or the world that all your wealth of

tenderness should go untouched and all my hunger for it unsatisfied? If

your touch on my hair will brace me for the fight of my life, why should

you deny it to me?"



Pen tried to laugh. "Still, what's happened to your morals?"



Jim replied indignantly: "You can't apply a system of ethics to your

cheek against mine except to say it's all wrong that I can't have you

now, in my great need. And I warn you, Pen, I shall come to you thirsty

until at last you give me what is mine. Only your cheek to mine is all I

ask for, Penny."



Pen looked up at the pleading beauty of Jim's eyes. "Don't plead with

me, Jim," she half whispered, "or I think my heart will break."



The two looked away from each other to the Elephant. The great beast

seemed to sleep in the afternoon sun.



"Tell me about your plans, Still," said Pen, her voice not altogether

steady.



"Murphy thinks I'm a fool," said Jim. "Perhaps I am. But Oscar Ames has

been a good deal of a surprise to me: Just as soon as I took the trouble

to explain the concrete matter to him, he got it instantly. And in a way

he got my talk about the new social obligations you showed me."



Pen interrupted eagerly: "You don't know how much you did in that talk,

Jim. Oscar has discovered you and he's as proud as Columbus. He has made

me tell him everything I know about you. You see you have that rare

capacity for making anyone you will take the trouble to talk to feel as

if he was your only friend and confidant. Oscar has discovered that you

are misunderstood, that he is the only person that really understands

you and he's out now explaining to his neighbors how little they really

know about concrete."



Jim looked surprised. "I don't know what I did, except to follow your

instructions, but if it worked on Ames, it ought to work on the rest. I

believe that after a few more talks with Ames, he will work against

Fleckenstein, Pen, and that I will accomplish it by just talking the dam

to him until he understands the technical side of it and the ideal I

have about it. And if it will influence him, why not the others?"



Pen looked at him thoughtfully. "I believe you can do it, Jim. A sort of

silent campaign, eh? And then what?"



"Well, if I can keep Fleckenstein out of Congress by those means, I

believe that this project will never repudiate its debt! I am going to

get the Department of Agriculture to send a group of experts out here at

once. They will help not only the old farmers who over-irrigate but the

new farmers who can't farm. And I'm going to get the farmers who have

been successful to co-operate with the farmers who have failed. If I

only had more time!



"You have three months before election," said Pen. "A lot can be done in

three months."



Jim shrugged his shoulders. "I can only do my limit. Among other things

I'm going to try to get the bankers and business men in Cabillo to fight

the inflation of land values here on the Project. Incidentally, I'm

going to keep on building my dam."



"How can I help?" asked Pen.



"I've told you how," said Jim, quietly.



"Oh, Still, that's not fair!" exclaimed Pen.



"Why not?" asked Jim, coolly. Pen flushed and looked away. They were

nearing the tent house and she spoke hastily:



"I'll go in and talk with Sara."



"Better let me," said Jim.



"No," said Pen, "every woman has an inalienable right to bully and

intimidate her own husband."



Jim laughed and left her, reluctantly. Pen went into the tent. Sara was

looking flushed and tired. The look had been growing on him of late. He

had been unusually tractable for a day or so and Pen's heart smote her

as she greeted him. No matter how he tried her, Sara never ceased to be

a pitiful and a tragic figure to her in his wrecked and aborted youth.



"Sara," she said, her voice very gentle and her touch very tender as

she held a glass of water for him, "Jim wanted to come in and talk to

you but I wouldn't let him."



Sara pushed the glass away. "Why not?"



"Because you and he quarrel so. Sara, it's a fair fight. You warned Jim

that you would ruin him. He says you may have your choice of being

watched or turned over to the authorities."



"He is a mutton head!" said Sara. "I suppose he thinks the crux of the

matter is that seance with Freet. As if I'd do as coarse work as that!

That's what I'd like, to be turned over to the authorities. Couldn't I

tell a pretty story about the meeting with Freet up here? Freet actually

thought Jim would come across with the contract! But that wasn't what I

was after."



"Sara, when you talk like that, I despise you," said Pen.



"You despise me because I'm a cripple," returned Sara. "Why can't you be

honest about it?"



"Don't you know me yet, Sara?" asked Pen, sitting down on the foot of

his couch and looking at him entreatingly. "Don't you know that if you

had taken your injury like a man, you'd have gotten a hold on my

tenderness and respect that nothing could have destroyed? Sara, I've

watched you degenerate for eight years, but I never realized to what a

depth you had sunk until you came to the Project."



"What do you see in the Project," said Sara. "What does it really matter

whether private or public interests control it? Who really cares?"



"Lots of people care. Jim cares."



"Pshaw!" sneered Sara. "All Jim Manning really cares about is his own

pigheaded sense of race and nationality."



"Jim needs that sense for his propelling power," said Pen. "I believe

that just as soon as a man loses his sense of nationality, he loses a

lot of his social force. Love of country--a man that hasn't it lacks

something very fine, like family pride and honor. Jim's sense of race is

the keynote to his character. And just as much as the New Englanders

have lost that sense, have they lost their grip on the trend of the

nation. They are the type that can't do without it."



Sara eyed Pen curiously. She had turned to look out over the desert

distances so that Sara saw her profile clean cut against the sky. She

was only a girl and yet she had lived through much. Sara looked at her

noble head, high arched above her ears; at her short nose and full soft

mouth, at her straight brow, all blending in an outline that was that of

the thinker, infinitely sad in its intelligence.



"That was a very highbrow statement of yours, Pen," he said, less

harshly than usual. "How did you come to think about these things?"



Pen turned to look at him. "Marrying you made me," she said. "I had to

use my mind. I had no family. I had no talents. I had to teach myself a

sense of proportion that would keep you from wrecking me. I wanted to

get to look at myself as one human living with millions of other humans

and not as Pen, the center of her own universe." Pen laughed a little

wistfully. "Since I couldn't mother children of my own, naturally, I had

to mother the world."



Sara grunted. "Huh! Who can say my life has been altogether a failure?"



Sudden tears sprang to Pen's eyes. "Why, Sara, what a dear thing to say!

And I thought you would remove my hair because of Jim's message."



The sneer returned to Sara's voice. "You ask Jim if he ever heard of

locking the barn too late? Tell him to bring on his 'armed guards.'"



Pen was startled. "Sara, what have you done?"



Sara laughed. "If you and Jim don't know, I'm not the proper one to tell

you! One of your gentleman friends is outside, evidently waiting for

you."



Pen looked out. Old Suma-theek was standing on the trail, arms folded,

watching the tent patiently. He had had one interview with Sara soon

after the crippled man had appeared at the dam. The talk had been

desultory and in Pen's presence, but never after could the old Indian be

induced to come into the tent.



"He like a broken backed snake, your buck," he had said calmly to Pen,

whom he had obviously adored from the first.



Pen came down the trail to see what Suma-theek wanted. She knew there

was no hurrying him, so she sat down on a stone and waited. Suma-theek

seated himself beside her and rolled a cigarette. After he had smoked

half of it, he said:



"Boss Still Jim, he heap sad in his heart."



Pen nodded.



"You love him, Pen Squaw?" asked Suma-theek, earnestly.



"We all do," replied Pen. "He and I have known each other many, many

years."



"Don't talky-talk!" cried Suma-theek impatiently. "I mean you love him

with a big love?"



Pen looked into Suma-theek's face. She had grown very close to the old

Indian. And then, as if the flood in her heart was beyond her control,

she said:



"You will never tell, Suma-theek?" and as the Apache shook his head she

went on eagerly, "I love him so much that after a while I must go away,

old friend, or my heart will break!"



The old Indian shook his head wonderingly. "Whites are crazy fools," he

groaned. "You sabez he be here only three months more?"



Pen started. "What do you mean, Suma-theek?"



"You no tell 'em!" warned the old chief. "He tell Suma-theek this

morning. Big Boss in Washington tell 'em he only stay three months, then

be on any Projects no more."



Pen sat appalled. "Oh, Suma-theek, that can't be true! You couldn't have

heard right. I'll go and ask him now."



Suma-theek laid a hand on her arm. "You no talk to him about it! You

last one he want to know. I tell you so you go love him, then he no care

what happen."



"Oh, Suma-theek, you don't understand! He loves the dam. It will break

his heart to leave it. Even I couldn't comfort him for that. Are you

sure you are right?"



Yet even as she repeated the question, Pen's own sick heart answered.

This was what had put the new strain into Jim's face, the new pleading

into his voice.



"How shall I help him," she moaned.



"You no tell him, you sabez," repeated Suma-theek. "He want you think he

Boss here long as he can. All men's like that with their squaw."



"I won't tell him," promised Pen. "But what shall I do?" She clasped

and unclasped her fingers, then she sprang to her feet. "I know! I know!

It will be like a strong arm under his poor overburdened shoulders!"