CHAPTER VIII
THE BROKEN SEAL
"When I was young I thought the world was made for love. Now I know that love made the world."
MUSINGS OF THE ELEPHANT.
How he passed the night that followed Jim never was sure. He knew thathe fought his way down stream until long after darkness set in. Then,utterly exhausted, bleeding and bruised, he crawled up onto a rock underthe wall and lay dripping and shivering until dawn.
He watched the light touch the far top of the crevice, saw the azurestrip of the sky appear and then with a deep groan he forced himself toeat from his grub bag and started hurriedly on down the river. Thestream was much deeper below the point of the accident, with severallarge falls. Jim worked his way along carefully, swimming or floatingfor the most part, for the walls for many miles offered not even ahand-hold nor did they once give back in beach or eddy.
The loneliness was appalling. The hardship of the work was astonishinglyincreased, robbed of Tuck's unfailing cheerfulness and faith. There wasone moment when, toward sunset, Jim's strength almost failed him. Thewalls were rougher now. He had found a hand-hold but no place for thenight. He clung here until his exhausted arms were able to endure nomore.
"I can't do any more!" panted Jim. "I'll have to go down." And then hegave a little childish sob. "'Hang on to what you undertake like a houndto a warm scent, Jimmy!'" he said, brokenly. And new strength flowedinto his arms and he swam on for a few moments, finding then a bit ofshore on which to spend the night. He and Charlie had each carried a mapand a set of instruments. Jim felt that he bore now not only his own butCharlie's responsibility to deliver the maps to Freet. As he lay lookingup at the stars, that second night alone in the crevice, Jim realizedever since he and Charlie had started on the expedition, he had ceasedto be homesick. He realized this when, on this second night, he tried tokeep his nerves in order by thinking very hard of home and he found thathe dwelt most on Exham and his father and the Sign and Seal he had givenPenelope. And that while he longed vaguely for the old brownstone front,he felt with a sudden invigorating thrill that he belonged where he wasand that he was nearer to Exham than he had been since he had leftthere.
It was nearing evening of the fourth day after Charlie's disappearancethat Jim suddenly saw the canyon walls widen. He struggled at last uponto a sandy beach and looked about him. The canyon walls here, thoughvery rough, gave promise of access to the top. Jim examined the beachcarefully for trace of Charlie and, finding none, he prepared to spendthe night in resting before the stiff climb of the next day. He built afire and ate his last bit of grub, a small can of beans, and fell asleepimmediately.
At dawn the next morning he began his climb up the bristling walls ofthe canyon. Eleven days before he would have said that to scale thesesickening heights was impossible. But Jim would never be a tenderfootagain. He had been on short rations for three days and was weak fromoverwork. But he had a canteen of water and rested frequently and hewent about the climb with the care and skill of an old mountaineer. Hehad learned in a cruel school.
Late in the afternoon he crawled wearily over one last knife-edged ledgeand hoisted himself up onto the canyon's top. He was greeted by a faintshout.
Three men on horseback were picking their way carefully toward him. Jimwaved his hand and dropped, panting, to await their arrival. When theywere within speaking distance, he rose weakly and called:
"Where's Charlie Tuck?"
The three men did not answer until they had dropped from their horsesbeside Jim; then the rancher who had packed the expedition to thecrevice said:
"They picked his body up near Chaseville this morning. We come up asquick as we could for trace of you. You look all in. Here, Dick, getbusy! We brought some underclothes; didn't know what shape you'd be in.Here is the suit you left at my place. God! I thought you'd never needit. Billy, start a fire and cook the coffee and bacon. You've had anawful experience, Mr. Manning, I guess. You don't look the tenderfootkid that went into the canyon!"
"We found the dam site," said Jim hoarsely.
"Don't try to talk till you get some grub," said the man called Billy.
Clothed and fed, Jim told his story, a little brokenly. The group of menwho listened were used to hardy deeds. They had seen Nature demand hertoll of death again and again in the wilderness. And yet as they satlooking at the young fellow with his gray eyes shocked andgrief-stricken and perceived his boyish idolatry of Charlie Tuck,something like moisture shone in their eyes. They shook hands with Jimwhen he had finished, silently for the most part, though the ranchersaid:
"You're the only man ever came through there alive. They had to buryTuck right off. They'd ought to build a monument for him. Where is hisfolks?"
"He had none," said Jim. "I want to put up his headstone for him, and Iknow just what lines are going to be put on the stone."
"They ought to be blamed good," said Dick.
"What are they?" asked the ranchman.
Jim sat for a moment looking down into the fearful depths where Charlieand he had lived a lifetime. Then he said:
"'Lift ye the stone or cleave the wood, to make a path more fair or flat, Lo, it is black already, with blood some Son of Martha spilled for that! Not as a ladder from Earth to Heaven, not as an altar to any creed, But simple Service, simply given, to his own kind, in their common need.'"
And so Charlie Tuck crossed the Great Divide.
Jim stopped two days with the rancher and then went back to the GreenMountain dam. The story of the trip through the crevice had precededhim. The men of the Service were inured to the idea of the sacrifice ofblood for the dams. There was little said, some silent handshakes given,and they ceased to haze Jim. He had become one of them.
The plans for the preliminary surveys of the Makon Project were begun atonce. Jim remained at Green Mountain during the winter, serving hisapprenticeship to the concrete works and the superintendent as Mr. Freethad planned. But in the spring he had his wish and was sent to lay outthe road on the Makon project.
All this time letters came regularly from the brownstone front, but theywere from Jim's mother and his Uncle Denny for the most part, and theywere very silent about Penelope. Jim wrote Pen from time to time, but hewas not an easy writer and Pen wrote him only gay little notes that werevery unsatisfactory. But Jim was absorbed in his work and did not worryover this.
Mr. Freet explained to Jim that he needed an "Old Timer" in laying outthe Makon road whose practical experience would supplement Jim'stheories. When Jim reached the survey camp in the Makon valley he foundwaiting for him a small man of about fifty, with a Roman nose, brightblue eyes and a shock of gray hair. This was Iron Skull Williams, whomFreet had described in detail to Jim and who was to be Jim's right hand.He was an old Indian fighter. The Apaches, Freet said, had given him hisnickname because they claimed he would not be killed. Bullets glancedoff his head like rain. Williams was an expert road maker and hadworked much for Freet in various parts of the west.
Jim and Williams looked each other over carefully and liked each otherat once. They found immediately in each other's society something verychoice. The friendship had not been a week old before Iron Skull hadheard of Exham and the brownstone front and of Penelope. While Jim hadlearned what no other man knew, that Williams' life-long, futile passionhad been for a college education and that he was a bachelor because ablue-eyed, yellow-haired girl had been buried in the Arizona ranges,twenty-five years before.
Jim's quiet ways and silent tongue did not make him an easy mixer. Theopening up of a project is a rough and lonesome job. Running surveysthrough unknown country where supplies are hard to get and distances arehuge, makes men very dependent on one other for companionship. Jim likedthe young fellows who ran the road surveys with him. He enjoyed the"rough necks," the men who did the actual building of the road. They allin turn liked Jim. But Jim had not the easy coin of word exchange thatmakes for quick and promiscuous acquaintancesh
ip. So he grew verydependent on Iron Skull, who, in a way, filled both Sara's and UncleDenny's place.
The old Indian fighter had that strange sense of proportion, thateagle-eyed view of life that the desert sometimes breeds. All the loveof a love-starved life he gave to Jim.
One evening in April Jim came in from a hard day on horseback. Thespring rains were on and he was mud-splashed and tired but full of agreat content. He had found a short cut on the crevice end of the roadthat would save thousands of dollars in time and material.
He lighted the lamp in his tent and saw a letter from Uncle Denny on thetable. There was nothing unusual about a letter from Uncle Denny andordinarily Jim waited for his bath and clean clothes before reading it.But this time, with an inexplicable sense of fear, he picked it up andread it at once.
"STILL JIM, MY BOY:
We've had a blow. All the year Penelope has been seeing Saradokis. She has made no bones of it, and he would not let her alone. I could do nothing, though I talked till I was no better than a common scold. But it never occurred to your mother and me that Pen could do what she did.
Day before yesterday, just at noon, she called me up at the office and told me she and Sara had just been married at the Little Church Round the Corner and were leaving for Montauk Point in Sara's new high power car. She rang off before I could answer.
I sat at my desk, paralyzed. I couldn't even call your mother up. I sat there for half an hour, seeing and hearing nothing when your mother called me up. There had been an accident. Sara had disobeyed a traffic policeman, they had run into a truck at full speed. His car was wrecked. Pen escaped with a broken arm. Sarah had been apparently paralyzed. Pen had him brought to our house.
Well, I got home. It has been a fearful two days. Sara is hopelessly paralyzed from the waist down. He may live forever or die any time. He is like a raving devil.
Pen--Still Jim, my boy--Little Pen is paying a fearful price for her foolishness. She is like a person wakened from a dream. She says she cannot see what made her give in to Sara.
I've made a bad job of telling you this, Jimmy. Your mother says to tell you she understands. She will write later.
Love, dear boy, from UNCLE DENNY."
Jim crumpled the letter into his pocket and dashed out into the night.For hours he walked, heedless of rock or cactus, of rain or direction.He took a fiendish satisfaction in the thought of Sara's tragedy. Otherthan this he did not think at all. He felt as he had at his father'sdeath, rudderless, derelict.
It was dawn when Iron Skull found Jim sitting on a pile of rock fivemiles from camp. He put his hand on Jim's shoulder.
"Boss Still," he said, "what's broke loose? I've trailed you all overthe state."
Jim looked up into the kindly face and his throat worked. "Iron Skull,"he got out at last, "my--my girl has thrown me down!"
Williams sat down beside him. "Not Penelope?"
Jim nodded and suddenly thrust the crumpled letter into his friend'shands. In the dawn light Williams read it, cleared his throat, and said:
"God! Poor kids! I take it your folks don't like this Sara, though younever said so."
Jim put his hand on Iron Skull's knee. "Iron Skull," he said, hoarsely,"I'd rather see Pen laid away there in the Arizona ranges beside yourMary than married to him. He's got a yellow streak."
The two sat silent for a time, then Williams said: "This love businessis a queer thing. Some men can care for a dozen different women. Butyou're like me. Once and never again. I ain't going to try to comfortyou, partner. I know you've got a sore inside you that'll never heal.It's hell or heaven when a woman gets a hold on your vitals likethat.--My Mary--she had blue eyes and a little brown freckle on hernose--I was just your age when she died. And I never was a kid again.You gotta face forward, partner. Work eighteen hours a day. Marry yourjob. You still owe a big debt for your big brain. Go ahead and pay it."
Jim did not answer, but he did not remove his hand from Williams' knee,and finally Williams laid a hard palm on it. They watched the sun rise.The rain had ceased. Far to the east where the little camp lay, crimsonspokes shot to the zenith. Suddenly the sun rolled above the desert'sbrim and leading straight and level to its scarlet center lay the roadthat Jim was building.
"It's a good road," said Jim unevenly. "It's my first one. I'd plannedto show it to her, this summer. And now, she'll never see it--nor any ofmy work. Iron Skull, she had a bully mind. Just the little notes she'ssent me, show she got the idea of the Projects. I guess I'm a quitter.If I can't keep my girl, what's the use of living?"
The old Indian fighter nodded. "Life is that away, partner. You mostlydo what you can and not what you dream. Some day you'll have to marry.That's where I fell down. These days all us old stock Americans ought tomarry. First you marry your job, Boss Still, then you marry a mother foryour children."
Jim shook his head. "Pen's thrown me down," he said drearily.
Iron Skull waited patiently. At last Jim rose and held out his hand.
"Thank you, Williams," he said.
"Don't mention it," said Iron Skull Williams. "Glad to do it anytime--that is, I ain't but--Hell, you know how I feel. Come home forsome breakfast."
Before he went to work that day, Jim wrote a note to Pen.
"DEAR PENELOPE: If there is anything I can do, send for me. I can't bear to think of that occasional look of tragedy in your eyes standing for fact. I shall not get over this. Good-by, little Pen!
JIM."
Pen's answer to this reached Jim the following week.
"DEAR STILL: There is nothing you or anyone else can do. Sara and I must pay the price for our foolishness. I have learned more in the past two weeks than in all my life before. And I shall keep on learning. I can't believe that I'm only eighteen. Write to me once in a while.
PENELOPE."
This was Jim's answer:
"DEAR PEN: Uncle Denny wrote that you are to stay with him and mother and that Sara's father has arranged matters so that money pinch will not add to your burdens. We three are still mere kids in years so I suppose we shall get over our griefs to some extent. Let me keep at least a part of my old faith in you, Pen. In spite of the Hades you are destined to live through, keep that fine, sweet spirit of yours and keep that unwarped clarity of vision that belonged to the side of you, you showed me. It will help you to bear your trouble and I need this thought of you as much as Sara needs your nursing. I can't write you, Pen, but wire me if you need me.
JIM."
And then, as Iron Skull had bade him, Jim married his job.