"I'll go over and see Mrs. Flynn now," said Pen. She was really eager for a visit with Jane Ames. She wondered if Iron Skull might not have been over-suspicious regarding Sara's purposes. Sara had an unquenchable itch for money-making. During all his long illness he had never ceased, with his father's help, to trade in real estate. Pen suspected that the savings of many Greek immigrants were absorbed in Sara's and his father's schemes, none too honestly.

"Perhaps," said Pen, as she pinned on her hat, "Jim would take me down.

Doesn't it seem natural though to have Jim doing things for me again!"

Some note in Pen's voice brought Sara to his elbow.

"Pen!" he shouted. "I've long suspected it. Are you in love with Jim Manning?"

CHAPTER XV

THE HEART OF A DESERT WIFE

"The squaws who come at times to crouch upon my back have the slow listening patience of the rabbits."

MUSINGS OF THE ELEPHANT.

Pen paused, eyes angry, mouth disgusted: "You are the last person I'd ever tell, Sara, if I were. Don't add idiocy to your other accomplishments."

Sara's black eyes continued to glare for a moment. Then for the second time he astonished Penelope by laughing. He dropped back on his pillow.

"Pen! Pen! a lawyer could have given no better answer than that! I'm not worrying, Pen. You've stuck by me all these years. I know I'm safe to the end."

Penelope's scorn changed to pity. "I've been horrid today. You will have to forgive me, Sara. You must remember that you are no mild June day to live with!"

Sara gave a short nod. "Give me my pipe, Pen, and then jolly Mrs. Flynn up."

Mrs. Flynn, whose curiosity was only equaled by her kindness of heart, was only too willing to take care of Sara. Had a caged South African lion been placed in her care she would have had the same thrill at the thought of caring for it as at watching Sara. Great stories of Sara's marvelous temper had gone about the camp. Any extra steps he caused Mrs.

Flynn she felt would be more than compensated for in the delectable gossip she would pick.

Pen did not ask Jim to take her down to the Ames place. She arranged to go down with Bill Evans, who kept a hog ranch near the dam. Bill fed his hogs on the camp table sc.r.a.pings and filled in odd moments "renting out"

his automobile. This was a sad-looking vehicle of an early vintage, held together by binding wire and bits of sheet iron. But Bill got twenty miles an hour out of the machine and took better care of it than he did of his wife.

The Ames ranch lay in the desert valley below the dam. Two hours after they left the dam, Bill drew up before the Ames door with a rattle and a series of staccato explosions that would have done credit to an approaching army.

The trip down had been a noisy rush through multicolored ranges out onto a desert floor of brilliant yellow dotted with giant cactus, that austere sentinel of the desolate plains. Long before they left the mountain road Bill pointed out to Penelope the green spot in the desert that was the Ames ranch. The road, leaving the desert, ran along an irrigating ditch fringed with cotton woods. Beyond the road lay acre after acre of alfalfa, its peculiar living green melting far beyond in the shimmering of olive orchard and orange grove.

The ranch house was of yellow gray adobe, long and low, with a red roof.

Oscar had made no attempt at beauty when he had added, year after year, room on room to the original box he had built for Jane. But he unknowingly had kept close to real art. He had built of the material of the country in the manner best suited to the exigencies of the country.

The result, consequently, was satisfying to eye and taste.

The walls of a desert house must be thick, for coolness. The lines of the house must be broad and low and strong, to withstand the fearful winds of late winter and early spring. The Ames house lay comfortably on the desert as if it had grown up out of the sand and proposed to live forever. It was as natural a part of the landscape as the sentinel cactus.

Jane Ames, in a blue gingham dress, was standing in the door. She waved both hands as she recognized Pen. When the machine stopped she took Pen's bag.

"Of course I knew it was Bill's machine half an hour ago, but I didn't know my luck had changed enough to bring you."

"I can stay over night," said Pen, like a child out of school.

"Come straight into the parlor bedroom," said Jane. "Bill, you'll find Oscar in the lower corral."

Pen followed into the house. Jane led her through a vista of rooms into the parlor, which was furnished with a complete "near" mahogany set in green velvet. The parlor bedroom was furnished to match. Jane always showed the people whose opinion she valued her parlor first that the edge might be taken off the living room. After Pen had taken off her hat, she followed her hostess kitchenward.

The living room was big and square, the original house. It contained a wide adobe fireplace and its windows opened toward the orange grove. It was furnished with tables and chairs that Mrs. Ames had bought from an old mission in the neighborhood. They were hand-hewn and black with age.

The Navajo floor rugs were soft and well worn. Jane apologized for the room, saying she left it old and ugly for the hired men and the children, then she established Pen in a rocking chair in the kitchen.

The kitchen was a model of convenience, boasting running water as well as a kitchen cabinet and a gasoline range.

"It took me just five years to raise enough chickens and eggs to buy the cabinet and the range," said Jane, taking a peep at the bread in the oven. "I begged and begged Oscar to get me things to work with every time he sent to the mail-order house to get farm machinery. But he'd just grunt. Finally I got mad. He had running water put in the barn and wouldn't send it on up to the house. He went to San Francisco that fall and I had men out here and put water in the kitchen. When he got back the bill was waiting for him and he was ashamed to complain. It isn't that men are so bad. It's just because they haven't any idea what real work housework is. How is your husband?"

"About as usual," replied Pen.

Jane Ames looked out the door, then back at Pen. "Are you ever sorry you got married?"

Pen looked a little startled, but after a moment she answered, "I used to be."

"You mean you aren't now?" asked Jane.

"I mean I'm glad I've got the things marriage has brought me."

Jane's eyes lighted. She sat down opposite Pen. "I'm just starved for a talk with some woman who isn't afraid to say what she really thinks about this marriage business. What have you got out of being married to a cripple?"

Pen chuckled. "Well, I'm really a first-cla.s.s nurse, and like Bismarck, I can keep my mouth shut in seven different languages."

"Isn't that so!" exclaimed Jane. "Oscar insists on doing all the talking for us and I let him. Some day if I ever find anything worth saying, though, I'll surprise him. I'm in the 'What's the use?' stage right now.

Men are awful hard to live with."

"Almost as hard as women!" said Pen. "We're all so silly about it. We expect marriage to bring us happiness with no effort on our own parts, just as if the only aim of getting married were to be happy."

"Mercy sakes!" exclaimed Jane. She sat forward on the edge of the chair.

"Go on! Don't stop. I knew the minute I saw you that talking to you would beat writing to the advice column of a woman's magazine. What is it we marry for, anyhow?"

Pen laughed. "Well, when we don't marry to be happy, we marry out of curiosity. It's funny when you think of it. Two people with nothing in common have a period of insanity during which they tie themselves together in a hard knot which they can't undo and then they must feed on each other for the rest of their lives."

Jane gasped a little. "You--you aren't bitter, are you, Mrs. Penelope? I can't say your other name easy. You believe there are _some_ happy marriages, don't you?"

Pen shrugged her shoulders. "No, I'm not bitter. I've just lost my illusions. I don't happen to know of any marriages so happy that they would tempt me to marry again."

"I feel kind of wicked talking this way," said Jane. "But," recklessly, "you've seen the world and I haven't. And it's my chance to learn real life. You don't mean people ought not to marry, do you?" This in a half-whisper of utter demoralization.

"Oh, no! Marriage is the best means we've found for perpetuating and improving the race. It's a duty we owe society, to marry. I don't believe much in divorce either. Except for unfaithfulness. Unless the average lot of us are true to the marriage ideal the whole inst.i.tution will be tainted. I guess the safety of society lies in each of us looking at ourselves as average and not exceptional persons. Then we stick to the conventions. And the conventions weren't foisted on society from above. They were sweated out from beneath to satisfy; make it possible for us to endure each other."

Jane Ames threw up both her hands. "O my! You have been hurt or you'd never be so cold-blooded! I can't look at it as calmly as you do as if it all belonged to someone else. You never bore children to a man. You can't realize what selfishness and unkindness from the father of your children can mean. Do you know that I've borne two babies in this room--alone--not even a squaw to help me? And I've watched the desert through the door and I've cursed it for what it's made of my marriage!"

Jane gave a short laugh and held up her knotted, rough hands. "I had dimples on my knuckles when I came to this country."

Pen looked out the door and tried to picture to herself this other woman's life.