Jim ground his teeth and did not speak. Sara was obviously enjoying himself.
"You are mistaken, Pen. Jim and I have often discussed the divine origin of the New Englander. They are a pathetic lot of pifflers. They have no one to blame but themselves that they are going. Everywhere else the Anglo-Saxon has gone he has insisted that he had the divine right to rule and has kept it. Outsiders have had to conform or get out. But over here he promulgated the Equality idea. Isaac Gezinsky and Hans Hoffman and Pedro Patello are as fit to rule according to the Equality idea as anyone else. It didn't take much over two hundred years of this to crowd the New Englander out of the running. And who cares?"
"I do," said Jim, "because I believe in the things my race has stood for. Emerson says it's not chance but race that put and keeps the millions of India under the rule of a remote island in the north of Europe. Race is a thing to be reckoned with. Nations progress as their race dictates."
"Emerson!" jibed Sara. "Another inefficient highbrow!"
"I can't help believing," replied Jim doggedly, "that the world will lose in the submerging of the New England element in America."
"And yet right here, in your America," said Sara, "the leaders of the money trust are descendants of Puritans."
Jim winced. "'The strength of the pack is the wolf,' When we produced men of that type we should have recognized them and have controlled them. They are helping the pack down hill, all right. Be satisfied, Sara! Only you will not get me off this Project until it is finished."
"No?" sneered Sara.
Pen interrupted nervously: "A couple of men are coming up the trail."
Bill Underwood appeared at the tent door. Murphy was with him. "Boss," said Bill, "Murphy has got to see your Greek friend. I got him started south this noon, but he circled on me and I just picked him up on the mesa, headed this way. He wanted to come here on the quiet, but I brought him up in the open."