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. Running surveys through unknown country where supplies are hard to get and distances are huge, makes men very dependent on one other for companionship. Jim liked the 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 all in turn liked Jim. But Jim had not the easy coin of word exchange that makes for quick and promiscuous acquaintanceship. So he grew very dependent on Iron Skull, who, in a way, filled both Sara's and Uncle Denny's place.
The old Indian fighter had that strange sense of proportion, that eagle-eyed view of life that the desert sometimes breeds. All the love of a love-starved life he gave to Jim.
One evening in April Jim came in from a hard day on horseback. The spring rains were on and he was mud-splashed and tired but full of a great content. He had found a short cut on the crevice end of the road that would save thousands of dollars in time and material.
He lighted the lamp in his tent and saw a letter from Uncle Denny on the table. There was nothing unusual about a letter from Uncle Denny and ordinarily Jim waited for his bath and clean clothes before reading it. But this time, with an inexplicable sense of fear, he picked it up and read it at once.
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.