"No, we ain't got all you have. We ain't got your job and your chance. You get homesick yourself even on your pay and your chance. What do you think of us boys, with nothing but wages and a kickout? Let me tell you, boss, it's the man that takes care of his men's idle hours that gets the work out of 'em."
Jim looked at the camp. It was merely a straggling line of tents set along the crevice edge. The day's work was ended and the men lounged listlessly about the tents or hung over the corral fence where the mules munched and brayed. At that moment Jim made an important stride in his education in handling men. He saw the job for the first time through the workmen's eyes. Why should they care for the job?
"Look here," said Jim, "if I send to Seattle and get a good phonograph and a couple of billiard tables and some reading matter and set them up in a good big club tent, will you agree to keep a hundred men on the job until I finish the road?"
"Government won't pay for them," said Henderson.
"I'll pay for them myself," returned Jim. "I tell you, Henderson, this road means a lot to me. It's my—my first important job and the rest of my work on the Makon depends on it. And—and a friend of mine lost his life finding the dam site and he wanted to build this road. I feel as if I'm kind of doing his work for him. If doing something to give you boys amusement will keep you here, I'll do it gladly. I haven't anything to save my money for."
Henderson cleared his throat and looked down into the awful depths of the Makon Canyon. "I heard about that trip," he said. "If—if you feel that way about it, Mr. Manning, I guess us boys'll stand by you. And much obliged to you."
"I'm grateful to you," exclaimed Jim. "Tell the boys the stuff will be here in less than a month."
There was a noticeable change in the atmosphere of the camp after this episode. The Indians, in their own camp, were perfectly contented with their quarters and their hoop game and "kin-kan" for recreation. The phonograph and billiard tables arrived on time and were set up in the club tent and Jim and his camp began to do team work. The trouble with shifting labor disappeared except for the liquor trafficking that always hounds every camp. From dawn until dark, the canyon rang periodically with the thunder of blasts. Scoops shrieked. Mules brayed. Drivers yelled. Pick and shovel rang on granite.
Jim grew to know every inch of that granite wall. He lived on the road with the men. No detail of the job was too trivial for his attention. A more experienced man would have left more to his foremen. But Jim was new to responsibility and his nervousness drove him into an intimate contact with his workmen that was to stand him in good stead all his life. It was in building this road on the Makon that Jim learned the hearts of those who work with their hands.