Jim turned a curiously shaken face on Dennis. "Do you mean that Pen, _Pen_ is out at the Dam? That she will be there when I get back?"
Uncle Denny nodded. "Pen and _Sara_! Don't forget Sara. Me heart misgives me as to his purpose in going."
Uncle Denny looked at Jim's tanned face. Then he looked away and his Irish eyes were tear-dimmed. He said no more until they were in Jim's room at the hotel. Jim began to pack rapidly and Uncle Denny remarked, casually:
Jim's drawl was razor-edged. "Uncle Denny, she never was and never will be Saradokis' wife."
"Oh, I know! Only in name! But--I may as well tell you that I think she was unwise in going to you."
Jim walked over to the window, then slowly back again. His clear gray eyes searched the kindly blue ones. "Uncle Denny, why do you suppose this thing happened to Pen?"
The Irishman's voice was a little husky as he answered: "To make a grand woman of her. She's developed qualities that nothing else on earth could have developed in her. It's because of her having grown to be what she is that I didn't want her to go to you. I--Oh, Still Jim, me boy! Me boy!"
For just a moment Jim's lips quivered, then he said, "We shall see what the desert does for us," and he closed his suitcase with a snap.
"Old Jezebel is a woman. For years she keeps her appointed trail until the accumulation of her strength breaks all bounds and she sweeps sand and men before her."
There is a butte in the Cabillo country that they call the Elephant.
Picture a country of lavenders and yellows and blues; an open, barren land, with now a wide sweep of desert, now a chaos of mesa and mountain, dead volcano and eroded plain. The desert, a buff yellow where blue distance and black shadow and the purple of volcano spill have not stained it. The mountains, bronze and lavender, lifting scarred peaks to a quiet sky; a sky of turquoise blue. The Rio del Norte, a brown streak, forcing a difficult and roundabout course through ranges and desert.
In a rough desert plain, which is surrounded by ranges, stands a broad backed butte that was once a volcano. The Rio del Norte sweeps in a curve about its base. Time and volcanic crumblings and desert wind have carved the great beast into the semblance of an elephant at rest. The giant head is slightly bowed. The curved trunk droops, but the eyes are wide open and the ears are slightly lifted. By day it is a rich, red bronze. By night, a purple that deepens to black. Watching, brooding, listening, day or night, the butte dominates here the desert and the river and the ranges.