"Pen, don't you say that again!" exclaimed Jim, sharply. "I'm doing all I can!"

CHAPTER XIX

THE MASK BALL

"I have seen in the coyote pack that coyotes who will not hunt and fight for the pack must starve and die."

MUSINGS OF THE ELEPHANT.

"You are not!" returned Pen flatly. "You don't see the human side of your problem at all. You have made Oscar Ames hate you. Yet no man could live the life and do the things that Oscar has and not have developed a fine big side to his nature. You never see that. And the dam is more Oscar's than it is yours. It is _for_ him. Still, somehow you have got to make every farmer on the Project your partner. Make them feel that you and the dam are theirs. Show them how to take care of the things the dam will produce. Jim, dear, make your thumb print in the hearts of men as well as in concrete, if you would have your work endure."

Jim paced the floor steadily. Old visions were pa.s.sing before his eyes.

Once more he saw the degraded mansions on the elm-shaded streets. Old Exham, with its lost ideals. Ideals of what? Was Pen right? Was it the ideal of national responsibility that Exham had lost--the ideal that had built the town meeting house and the public school, that had produced the giants of those early days, giants who had ruled the nation with an integrity long lost to these later times.

"My father said to me, 'Somehow we Americans have fallen down on our jobs!'" said Jim, pausing before Pen, finally. "Pen, I wonder if he would have thought your reason the right one?"

Then he lifted Pen's chin to look long into her eyes. Slowly his wistful smile illumined his face. "Thank you, dear," he said and, turning, he went out into the night.

The next night was given the Mask Ball in honor of the committee. n.o.body knew what conclusion the eminent gentleman had reached in regard to Jim and his a.s.sociates. But everyone did his best to contribute to the hilarity of the occasion.

The gray adobe building where the unmarried office men and engineers lived was gay with colored lights and cedar festoons. The hall in the rear of the building had an excellent dancing floor. The orchestra was composed of three Mexicans--hombres--with mandolins and a guitar, and an Irish rough-neck who brought from the piano a beauty of melody that was like a memory of the Sod. The four men produced dance music that New York might have envied.

Several Cabillo couples attended the dance. Oscar Ames and Jane and one or two other ranchers and their wives were there. All the wives of the officers' camp came and the bachelors searched both the upper and lower camps for partners, with some very charming results. Mrs. Flynn sat with Sara, and Jim insisted that instead of going with Jane and Oscar, as she had planned, that he be allowed to take Pen to the first ball she had attended since her marriage.

Henderson had ordered that the costumes be kept a great secret. Through a Los Angeles firm he provided dominoes for the five committeemen. But there were half a dozen other dominoes at the ball, so the committee quickly lost its ident.i.ty. Oscar Ames came as a hobo. Henderson had a policeman's uniform, while the two cub engineers wore, one, a cowboy outfit; the other, an Indian chief's. Mrs. Henderson was dressed as a squaw.

Penelope wore a flower girl's costume, improvised from the remains of the chintz she had brought from New York. Jim viewed her with great complaisance. No one could look like Pen, he thought, and he would dance with her all the evening. Jim went as a monk. To his chagrin, when they reached the hall he found that Pen had made Mrs. Ames a costume exactly like her own, and with the complete face masks they wore, they might have been twins. They were just of a height and Mrs. Ames danced well.

The children and the phonograph had long ago attended to that.

There was nothing stupid about the ball from the very start. The policeman ended the grand march by arresting the hobo, who put up a fight that included two of the dominoes. The orchestra swung into "La Paloma" and in a moment the hall was full of swaying colors, drifting through the golden desert dust that filled the room. There were twice as many men at the ball as women. The latter were popular to the point of utter exhaustion.

Henderson looked over the tallest domino, seized him by the throat and with wild flourishes of his club, backed him into a corner.

"Say, Boss Still Jim," he whispered, "that old nut of a chairman doesn't look as if he had anything but skim milk in his veins. But do you sabez he's danced three times with that little fat ballet girl and he's hugging the daylights out of her. He'd ought to be investigated."

The tall domino looked at the couple indicated. "I'll start investigating, myself," he whispered.

"Wish I could get a dance with her, but I can't," said Henderson. "My Missis knows who I am. I ain't got her spotted yet, though. Yes, I have.

That flower girl's her. I'd know the way she jerks her shoulders anywhere."

He cut neatly in and separated the flower girl from the monk. "Look here, Minnie," he said gently. "You ain't called on to dance like a broncho, you know. Remember, you're the mother of a family! Cut out having too many dances with that monk. He holds you too tight. I think he's one of the committee men. You floss up to the tallest domino and give him a good time. That's the Boss."

The flower girl sn.i.g.g.e.red and Henderson pushed her from him with marital impatience and took an Indian squaw away from the hobo.

"Come on, little girl," he said. "You can dance all right. If my wife wasn't here I'd show you a time."

The squaw stiffened and the monk swung her away from Jack, who immediately arrested old Dad Robins, the night watchman, who was taking a sly peak off his beat at the festivities. Henderson forced the delighted old man through a waltz, with himself as a very languishing partner.

The hobo, dancing with one of the flower girls, said: "Jane, I've been trying to get a chance to warn you not to say anything to Mrs. Penelope about that deal with Freet. I was a fool to let you see that letter tonight. Now I'm getting into national politics, you've got to learn to keep your mouth shut."

"How'd you know me?" whispered the flower girl.

"You don't dance as good as Mrs. Pen," he replied.

Here the monk stole the flower girl and danced off with her, firmly.

"Remember the dance at Coney Island and how mean you were to me?" he whispered.

"And how bossy and high-handed you were about the bathing? How did you know me?"

The monk hugged the flower girl to him. "You haven't lived in my heart for all these years without my getting to _know_ you!"

And the flower girl sighed ecstatically.

The tall domino, dancing with the other flower girl, felt the strains of Espanita creeping up his backbone, and he said,

"There is something in the air out here that is almost intoxicating!"

The flower girl answered: "It'll do more than that for you, if you'll give it a chance. It will make you see things."

"I don't understand you," replied the domino in a dignified way.

"I mean you'd see if you stayed here long enough that what Jim Manning needs is help, not investigating."

"How do you know I'm not Manning?"

The flower girl sniffed. "I'm an old woman so I can tell you that no woman would ever mistake him for anyone else after she'd once danced with him."

"He is making a most regrettable record here," very stiffly from the domino.

"Shucks! Why don't you fire Arthur Freet? I warn you right now that he's trying to get his hooks into this dam."

"The Service might well dispense with both of them, I believe," said the domino.

The flower girl sniffed again. "You politicians--" she began, when she was interrupted by a call at the door.

The music stopped. A white-faced boy had mounted a chair and was shouting hysterically: "Where's the Boss? The hombres have shot my father!"

"It's Dad Robins' boy! Why, the old man was here a bit ago!" cried someone.

The monk pulled off his mask and flung his robe in the corner. "Oscar,"

he said to the hobo, who had unmasked, "see to Mrs. Penelope."

Then he grasped young Robins by the arm and rushed with him from the hall.