ear the ground, you know! After you
Anglo-Americans founded the government most of you went to money making
and left it to be administered by people who were racially and
traditionally different from you. You left your immigration problems to
sentimentalists and money-makers. You left the law-making to
money-makers. You refused to serve the nation in a disinterested,
future-seeing way which was your duty if you wanted your institutions to
live. You descendants of New England are quitters. And you are going to
lose your dam because of that simple fact."

Jim began to pace the floor. "Did you ever talk this over with Uncle
Denny, Penelope?"

"No!" she gave a scornful sniff. "If ever I had dared to criticize you,
he'd have turned me out of the house. No one can live in New York and
not think a great deal about immigration problems. And--I have been with
you much in the past eight years, Jimmy. I can't tell you how much I
have thought about you and your work. And then, just before old Iron
Skull was killed, he turned you over to me."

Jim paused before her. "He was worried about you, too," she went on. "He
said you were not getting the big grasp on things that you ought and
that I must help you."

"I wonder if that was what he was trying to tell me when he was killed,"
said Jim. "The dear old man! Go on, Pen."

"I've just this much more to say, Jim, and that is that if the
Reclamation Service idea fails, it's more the fault of you engineers
than of anyone else. The sort of thing you engineers do on the dam is
typical of the Anglo-American in the whole country. You are quitters!"

"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