"Mrs. Flynn says he's having some farmer up to supper nearly every night," said Jane. "Oscar, how comes it you always speak of Mr. Manning as the Boss, now? You never would call any other man that?"
Oscar squared his big shoulders. "He's the only man I ever met I thought knew more than I do. You ought to hear the things he can tell you about dam building. And he's full of other ideas, too. A lot of what you folks put down as stuckupedness is just quietness on his part while he thinks. I'm trying to pound that into these bullheaded ranchers round here. I tell 'em how to make sand-cement, for instance, and then ask 'em if a fellow didn't have to keep his mouth shut and saw wood while he thought a thing like that out. I'm willing to call him Boss, all right. He's got more in his head than sand cement, too. Last night, we was coming home just before supper. He's been on the job since four in the morning and I knew he had to get back and work half the night on office work. And I says:
"'Boss, what will you get out of it to pay you for half killing yourself this way?'
"He didn't answer me for a long time, then he begun to tell me a story about how he and another fellow went through the Makon canyon and how that other fellow felt about it and how he was drowned and how he had some verses that that fellow taught him printed on his gravestone. Thought I'd remember those lines. They made me feel more religious than anything I've heard at church. Something about Sons of Martha."
Pen had been listening, her heart in her eyes, trying not to envy Oscar his long days with Jim. Now she leaned forward eagerly.
"Oh, I know what he quoted to you:
"'Lift ye the stone or cleave the wood to make a path more or flat,
Lo, it is black already with blood, some Son of Martha spilled for that.
Not as a ladder from Earth to Heaven, not as an altar to any creed,
But simple Service, simply given, to their own kind, in their common need.'"
The three sat silent for a moment, then Oscar nodded. "That's them. He said he never got their full meaning till just lately and now he's trying to live up to 'em. I'm perfectly willing to call him Boss."
Pen and Jane were not finding the farmers' wives easy to influence. Their task was a double one. First they had to rouse interest in the coming election and then they had to persuade the women that their husbands were wrong. Moreover, after the first week or so, they found that Penelope's presence was a hindrance rather than a help. It was after their call on Mrs. Hunt that they reluctantly reached this conclusion.
Bill rattled them up to a bungalow on one of the new ranches. The Hunts were newcomers, having bad luck with their first attempts at irrigation. Mrs. Hunt was a hearty looking woman of forty. Pen stated the object of the call.