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"Dick Baker's Cat" was one of these, the jay-bird and acorn story in "A Tramp Abroad" was another. Mark Twain had little to add to these stories. "They are not mine, they are Jim's," he said, once; "but I never could get them to sound like Jim they were never as good as his."
No one else seemed tempted; so, following Jim's example, I stripped to my flannel shirt and moccasins, and crossed the river, which was easier to get into than out of, and soon reached the 'village. Jim was right, they were Sioux, and friendly. Seeing one of their 'braves' with three fresh scalps at his belt, I asked for the history of them. In Sioux gutturals the story was a long one.
While Jim had learned what no other man knew, that Williams' life-long, futile passion had been for a college education and that he was a bachelor because a blue-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. The opening up of a project is a rough and lonesome job.
Without turning toward him, she touched his arm lightly with her hand and went into the house. Jim's first effort had not encouraged Dr. Jebb to transfer much of the pulpit service to the young man. Subsequently, he had a long talk with him and pointed out some of the defects as Belle had done; also a number of lapses which, though purely academic, he considered of prime importance.
The two men leaned against Jim's sled and exchanged samples of tobacco while Dick briefly told the tale of his travels, with his mad charge, from a lonely silver-mining camp near the Great Slave Lake. It seemed Dick had had some ground for fearing that he had stumbled upon some horrible kind of epidemic of madness in the lone land he had been traversing.
'Weel, aa niver! he exclaimed, when Jim's explanatory remarks had come to an end, swinging himself up on to his seat and gathering up the reins. 'Yur a boald 'un to tell the missus theer to hur feeace as how ya wur' tossicatit whan yur owt ta been duing yur larful business. Aa've doon wi' yer. Aa aims to please ma coostomers, an' aa caan't abide sek wark.
He scoured the valley for reports on the state of mind of every water user and business man on the Project. Oscar and Murphy, when not with Jim, devoted themselves to Uncle Denny. Both the men were frankly giving all their time to the Project these days. The weeks sped by all too rapidly. One evening Uncle Denny called a conference at Jim's house.
"But there's wan thing Jim's got that no other wan of my b'ys has," she continued. Jim pricked up his ears. "He's the born foighter, is Jim. If he was big now, and there was a war to come, he'd be a soldier, I'm thinkin'. He's for foightin' iverything, even the words of a body's mouth." This praise might be equivocal, but little Jim did not so understand it, and his pride returned.
But the monster gave no indication of doing such a thing. Another worker termite flung its bulk at them. Its mandibles, tiny in comparison with those of the great guards but still capable of slicing either of the men in two, snapped perilously close to Jim's body. There was a second's concerted action: Dennis' club lashed against the thing's head, Jim's spear tore into the vulnerable body.
Somehow she did not look exotic among the Englishwomen at the hotel, and when Mordaunt met them at the station she had, with a kind of natural tact, struck the proper note. She knew Mordaunt was a relation of Jim's, but she met him without reserve or an obvious wish to please. If either were conscious of surprise or embarrassment, Jim thought it was Mordaunt.
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