Still Jim Part 12

A vast wall of masonry had been built to block the outlet of the ranges.

A curving wall of gray stone, so huge, so naked of conscious adornment that the hills might well have disbelieved it to be an enemy and have accepted it as part and parcel of their own silent grandeur.

Jim lifted his hat slowly and moistened his lips. This, then, was the labor to which he had so patronizingly offered his puny hands.

After a while, details obtruded themselves. Jim saw black dots of men moving about the top of the dam. He heard the clatter of concrete mixers, the raucous grind of the crusher, the scream of donkey engines and the shouts of foremen. Back to the right, among the trees, was a long military line of tents. Above the noise of construction the boy caught the silent brooding of the forest and, poured round all, the liquid glory of the sunset. Suddenly he saw the whole great picture as his own work, and it was a picture as elusive, as tantalizing, as a boy's first dreams of pirate adventure. Jim had come to his first great dam.

When he had shaken himself together and had swallowed the lump in his throat, he asked a pa.s.sing workman for Mr. Freet, the Project Engineer.

He was directed to a tent with a sheet iron roof. Jim stopped bashfully in the door. A tall man was standing before a map. Jim had a good look at him before he turned around.

Mr. Freet wore corduroy riding breeches and leather puttees, a blue flannel shirt and soft tie. He was thin and tall and had a shock of bright red hair. When he turned, Jim saw that his face was bronzed and deeply lined. His eyes were black and small and piercing.

"Mr. Freet," said Jim, "my name is Manning."

The project engineer came forward with a pleasant smile. "Why, Mr.

Manning, we didn't look for you until tomorrow, though your tent is ready for you. Come in and sit down."

Jim took the proffered camp chair and after a few inquiries about his trip, Mr. Freet said: "It's supper time and I'll take you over to the mess and introduce you. Only a few of the engineers have their wives here and all the others, with the so-called 'office' force, eat at 'Officers' Mess'. I'm not going to load you up with advice, Mr. Manning.

You are a tenderfoot and fresh from college. You occupy the position of cub engineer here, so you will be fair bait for hazing. Don't take it too seriously. About your work? I shall put you into the hands of the chief draughtsman for a time. I want you to thoroughly familiarize yourself with that end of the work. Then, although most of that part is done, you will go into the concrete works, then out on the dam with the superintendent. Remember that you have no record except some good college work. Forget that you ever were a senior. Look at yourself as a freshman in a difficult course, where too many cons means a life failure."

Jim listened respectfully. At that moment Arthur Freet was the biggest man on earth to him.

"Yes, sir," he said. "Thank you."

Freet pulled on a corduroy coat. "Come over to supper, Manning. Too much advice on an empty stomach is bad for the digestion."

Jim followed meekly after the Big Boss.

Jim reported to Charlie Tuck, the head draughtsman the next morning.

Tuck was a plump, middle-aged man, bald headed and clean shaven, with mild blue eyes. Jim put him down in his own mind as a sissy and chafed a little at being put into Tuck's care. But his discontent was shortlived.

Tuck proved to be a hard taskmaster. Before the end of the week Jim realized that he would not get out of Tuck's hands until he knew every inch of the design of the great dam from the sluice gates and the drainage holes to the complete vertical section. He had no patience with mistakes and Jim took his grilling in silence, for the fat little man showed a deep knowledge of the technical side of dam building that reduced the cub engineer to a humble pulp.

Also, Jim discovered that Tuck was an old Yale man and that his avocation in life seemed to be tennis. The engineers had a good court in the woods and after Tuck found that Jim liked the game, he took the boy over to the court every afternoon before supper and beat him with monotonous regularity. And Jim was a good player.

The dam was far from civilization and the engineers welcomed Jim, although they treated him with the jocularity that his youth and inexperience demanded. The novelty of his environment, the romance of the great gray dam, built with such frightful risk and difficulty, absorbed Jim for the first week or so. He had no thought of homesickness until the excitement of his new work began to recede. And then, quite unexpectedly, it descended on him like a leaden cloud.

The longing for home! The helpless, hopeless sickness of the heart for dear familiar faces! The seeing of alien places through tear-dimmed eyes, the answering to strange voices with an aching throat, and the poignancy of memory! Jim's mind dwelt monotonously on the worn spot in the library hearth rug where he and Uncle Denny had spent so many, many hours. There was the crack in the brown teapot that his mother would not discard because she had poured Big Jim's tea from it. There was Uncle Denny's rich Irish voice, "Ah, Still Jim, me boy!" And there was Pen--dear, dear Penelope, with her woman's eyes in her child's face--with her halo of hair. Pen's "Take me with you, Still," was the very peak of sorrow now to the boy. Jim was homesick. And he who has not known homesickness does not know one of life's most exquisite griefs.

It seemed to Jim now that he hated the Big Country. At night in his tent he was conscious of the giant dam lying so silent in the darkness and it made him feel helpless and alone. By day he hid his unhappiness, he thought. He worked doggedly and did not guess that Charlie Tuck understood that many times he saw the designs for the wonderful bronze gates of the sluicing tunnel over which Charlie heckled him for days, through tear-dimmed eyes.

The camp was lighted by electricity. Jim would sit watching the lights flare up after supper, watching the night shift on the broad top of the dam which was as wide as a street and try to pretend that the noise and the light and the figures belonged to 23rd street. Jim was sitting so in the door of his tent one night after nearly a month in camp. He held his pipe but could not smoke because of the ache in his throat. He had not been there long when Charlie Tuck came up the trail and with a nod sat down beside Jim.

"Let me have a light," he said. "The fellows are having a rough house over in the office tonight. Why don't you go over?"

"I don't feel like it, somehow," replied Jim.

Tuck nodded. "You may have hated New York while you lived there, but it looks good now, eh?"

"Yes," answered Jim.

"You'll feel better when the Boss begins to give you some responsibility. Were you ever up in the Makon country, Manning?"

"No," said Jim.

"Don't strain yourself talking," commented Tuck, sarcastically. "You are rather given to blathering, I see. Well, the Makon country wants a dam.

It wants it bad but the Service doesn't see how to get in there. There is a big valley that has been partially farmed for years. It is enormously fertile, but there is only enough water in it to irrigate a limited number of farms.

"Now, ten miles to the north, is the Makon river that never fails of water. But as near as anyone can find out the only feasible place for damming it is somewhere in a beastly canyon that no man has ever gone through alive. The river is treacherous and the country would make this look as well manicured as the Swiss Alps."

Jim listened intently. Charlie Tuck pulled at his pipe for a time, then he said: "My end of this job is about finished. I like the exploring end of the work best, anyhow. I was with the Geological Survey for ten years before the Reclamation Service was created. I made the preliminary surveys for this project and for the Whitson. I tell you, Manning, that's the greatest work in the world--getting out into the wilderness and finding the right spot for civilization to come and thrive. There's where you get a sense of power that makes you feel like a Pilgrim Father. The Reclamation Service is a great pipe dream. Some of the finest men in the country are in it today and n.o.body knows it."

"Like Mr. Freet," said Jim.

Jim thought that Tuck hesitated for a moment before he answered. "Yes, and a dozen others. I consider it a privilege to work with them. Say, Manning, if some way they could find the right level in that canyon and drive a tunnel through its solid granite walls, they could send the Makon over into the valley."

"Why doesn't the Service send a man to explore the crevice?" asked Jim.

"That's what I say!" cried Tuck. "Just because a lot of cold feet claim it can't be done, just because no man has come through that crevice alive, is no reason one won't. Say, Manning, if I can get the Service to send me up there, will you go with me?"

"Me!" gasped Jim.

Tuck nodded in his gentle way. "Yes, you see I like you. You are more congenial than most of the fellows here to me. On a trip like that you want to be mighty sure you like the fellow you are going to be with.

Then I think you would learn more on a trip like that than in a year of the sort of work Freet plans for you. And last, because I think you've got the same kind of feeling for the Service that I have though you've been here so short a time. It's something that's born in you. What do you say, Manning?"

Jim never had felt so flattered in his life. And Adventure called to him like a ship to a land-locked mariner.

"Gee!" he cried, "but you're good to ask me, Mr. Tuck! Bet your life I'll go!"

Tuck emptied his pipe and rose. "I'll go see Freet now and persuade him to get busy with the Chief in Washington. One thing, Manning. It will be a dangerous undertaking. We may not come through alive. You must get used to the idea, though, that every Project demands its toll of deaths.

People don't realize that. Are you willing to go, knowing the risk?"

With all the valor of youth and ignorance, Jim answered, "I'm ready to start now."

Mr. Freet was not adverse to the undertaking and the Washington office shrugged its shoulders. The Project engineer talked seriously to Jim, though, about the danger of the mission and insisted that he write home about it before finally committing himself. Jim's letter home, however, would have moved a far more stolid spirit than Uncle Denny, for he sketched the danger hazily and dwelt at length on the honor and glory of the undertaking. The reply from the brownstone front was as enthusiastic as Jim could desire.

Tuck undertook the preparations for the expedition with the utmost care.

Only the two of them were to go. The outfit must be such as they could handle themselves, yet as complete as possible. Two folding canvas boats, two air mattresses, life preservers, waterproof bags, first aid appliances, brandy, sweet oil, surveying implements, food in as compact form as possible, guns and fishing tackle made a formidable pile for two men to manage. But at Jim's protest Charlie answered grimly that they would not be heavily laden when they came out of the canyon.

It was mid-August when the two men reached the Makon country. They arranged with a rancher to take them and their outfit up to the river.

There was no road, scarcely even a trail up to the canyon. The green of the ranches was encircled by a greasewood-covered plain that, toward the river, became rock covered and rough so that a wagon was out of the question and the st.u.r.dy pack horses themselves could move but slowly.

Jim's first view of the Makon Canyon was of a black rift in a rough brown sea of sand, with a blue gray sky above. As the little pack train drew nearer he saw that the walls of the rift were weathered and broken into fissures and points of seeming impa.s.sable roughness. So deep and so craggy were these walls that the river a half mile below could be seen only at infrequent intervals. The labor of getting into the crevice would be quite as difficult, Jim thought, as going through it.

They made camp that night close beside the canyon edge. Early the next morning the rancher left them and Charlie and Jim prepared to get themselves and their outfit down over the mighty, bristling walls.

Lowering each other and the packs by ropes, sliding, rolling, jumping, crawling, it was night before they reached the river's edge, where they made camp. There was a narrow sandy beach with a cottonwood tree growing close to the granite wall. Under this they put their air mattresses and built their fire.

Jim did not like the feeling of nervousness he had in realizing how deep they were below the desert and how narrow and oppressive were the canyon walls. He was glad that the strenuous day sent them off to bed and to sleep as soon as they had finished supper. They were up at dawn.