Still Jim Part 21

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 a.s.sociate 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 h.e.l.l. 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 G.o.dsend 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 n.o.body knows."

Iron Skull grunted. After a moment he said: "Folks down at Cabillo are peeved at the way you are making the main ca.n.a.l. 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, "h.e.l.lo, 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 ap.r.o.n.

"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. G.o.d knows, if I'd thought you'd be here for another hour I'd have had something against your coming. And if G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sociates 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. "h.e.l.lo, 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.

"h.e.l.lo, Still! The mountains have come to Mahomet!"

"And a poor welcome I gave you," replied Jim. "h.e.l.lo, 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 s.p.a.ce. 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.