aving fed on loneliness, whispered threats of
trouble to the narrow flume that for a moment throttled her. One knew
that the Elephant never for a moment lost his sardonic sense of the
impermanence of human effort.

When Jim reached his house, he found old Suma-theek camped on the
doorstep.

"What is it, Suma-theek?" asked Jim.

"Old Suma-theek, he want make talk with you," replied the Indian.

Jim nodded. "I'd like to talk with you, Suma-theek. Wait till I get
enough tobacco for us both and we'll go up on the Elephant's back, eh?"

Suma-theek grunted. The two reached the Elephant's top without
conversation and sat for perhaps half an hour, smoking and mute. This
was quite an ordinary procedure with them.

Finally Suma-theek said, "Why you make 'em this dam?"

"So that corn and cattle and horses will increase in the valley,"
replied Jim.

The Indian grunted. "Much talk! Why _you_ make 'em?"

"It's my job; the kind of work I like."

"What use?" insisted Suma-theek. "People down in valley they much swear
at you. Big Sheriff at Washington, he much swear at you. You much
lonely. Much sad. Why you stay? What use? Much old Suma-theek wonder at
that. Why old Iron Skull work on this dam? Why you, so young, so strong,
no have wife, no have child, marry dam instead? You tell old Suma-theek
why."

Jim had learned on the Makon that while war and hunting might have been
an Indian's business in life, his avocation was philosophizing. He had
learned that many a pauperized and decrepit old Indian, warming his back
in the sun, despised of the whites, held locked in his marvelous mind
treasures of philosophy, of comment on life and living, Indian and
white, that the world can ill afford to lose, yet never will know.

Jim struggled for words. "Back east, five sleeps, where I was born,
there are many people of many tribes. They fight for enough food to eat,
for enough clothes to wear. When I was a boy I said to myself I would
come out here, make place for those people to come."

"But," said Suma-theek, "the dam it will no keep whites from fighting.
They fight now in valley to see who can get most land. What use?"

"What use," returned Jim, "that you bring your young men up here and
make them work? I know the answer. You are their chief. It is your
business to do what you can to keep their stomachs full and their backs
warm. You don't ask why or the end."

The Indian rolled another cigarette. He was like a fine dim cameo in