s old friend's mind.

A useless death! A life too soon withdrawn! Suddenly Jim's whole heart
rose in longing for his friend and in loyalty to him. His death must not
be useless! The simple sweetness of the sacrifice must not go
unrewarded. His life would not be ended!

Jim looked far over the glistening, glowing night and registered a vow.
So help him God, he would not die childless and forlorn as Iron Skull
had done. Some day, some way, he would marry Penelope. And somehow he
would make the dam a success, that in it Iron Skull's last record of
achievement might live forever.

Strangely comforted, Jim went home.

The Secretary's letter remained unanswered for several days. The next
morning Henderson reported that a section of the abutments showed signs
of decomposition. At the first suggestion of a technical problem with
which to wrestle, Jim thrust the Secretary's elusive one aside. He
started for the dam site eagerly, and refused to think again that day of
the shadow that haunted his work.

In excavating for the abutments a thick stratum of shale had been
exposed that air-slaked as fast as it was uncovered. Jim gave orders
that drifts be driven through the stratum until a safe distance from
possible exposure was reached. These were to be filled with concrete
immediately. It was careful and important work. The concrete of the dam
must have a solid wall to which to tie and drift after drift must be
driven and filled to supply this wall. Jim would trust no one's judgment
but his own in this work. He stayed on the dam all the morning, watching
the shale and rock and directing the foremen.

At noon he went to the lower mess where he could talk with the masonry
workers. Five hundred workmen were polishing off their plates in the
great room. Jim chuckled as he sat down with Henderson at one of the
long tables.

"If I could get the _hombres_ to work as fast as they eat," he said, "I
could take a year off the allotted time for the dam."

The masonry workers and teamsters at whose table Jim was sitting
grinned.

"There's only one form of persuasion to use with an _hombre_," commented
Henderson, gently. "There's just one kind of efficiency he gets, outside
of whisky."

"What kind is that?" asked a teamster.

"The kind you get with a good hickory pick-handle across his skull,"
said Henderson in a tender, meditative way as he took down half a cup of
coffee at a gulp. "I've worked hombres in Mexico and in South Americ