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The She Boss: A Western Story

by Arthur Preston Hankins · English · Gutenberg #19129 · 435,858 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The She Boss: A Western Story

Author: Arthur Preston Hankins


        
Release date: August 27, 2006 [eBook #19129]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19129

Credits: Produced by Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SHE BOSS: A WESTERN STORY ***




Produced by Al Haines










[Frontispiece: "He was flailing right and left with a huge pine knot in
either hand."]






THE SHE BOSS

A WESTERN STORY


BY

ARTHUR PRESTON HANKINS




AUTHOR OF

THE HERITAGE OF THE HILLS, THE JUBILEE GIRL, ETC.




GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS ---------- NEW YORK




Copyright, 1922

By CHELSEA HOUSE


The She Boss



(Printed In the United States of America)

All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign
languages, including the Scandinavian.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER

      I.  BEAR VALLEY'S DRONE
     II.  OUT OF THE WOODS
    III.  SAN FRANCISCO
     IV.  TWITTER OR TWEET
      V.  A RIVAL
     VI.  THE FIRE
    VII.  HIRAM, THE BUTTERFLY
   VIII.  LUCY'S AMBITIONS
     IX.  HIRAM WAKES UP
      X.  JERKLINE JO
     XI.  THE RETURN OF JERKLINE JO
    XII.  SKINNERS FROM FRISCO
   XIII.  THE START FOR JULIA
    XIV.  A WIRE TO JULIA
     XV.  MR. TWEET NEGOTIATES A LOAN
    XVI.  TEHACHAPI HANK
   XVII.  IN LETTERS OF BLACK
  XVIII.  GREATER RAGTOWN
    XIX.  WHAT MADE THE WILD CAT
     XX.  DRUMMOND'S PASSENGER
    XXI.  LUCY SEES A PROSPECT
   XXII.  JERKLINE JO'S SURPRISE
  XXIII.  DRUMMOND WEAVES A DREAM
   XXIV.  WHAT HAPPENED AT THE LAKE
    XXV.  JO LOSES HER SUPPORT
   XXVI.  AT THE HAIRPIN CURVE
  XXVII.  UNDER THE DRIPPING TREES
 XXVIII.  FOUR-UP FOR HELP
   XXIX.  THE GENTLE WILD CAT RETURNS
    XXX.  HIRAM TAKES THE TRAIL
   XXXI.  A TALE OF THE DESERT'S DEAD
  XXXII.  LUCY PLANS A COUNTER-ATTACK
 XXXIII.  POCKETED
  XXXIV.  WHILE SPRING APPROACHED
   XXXV.  THE WAY OF LIFE




The She Boss


CHAPTER I

BEAR VALLEY'S DRONE

Spring was manifest in the vast big-timber country of Mendocino County.
"Uncle" Sebastian Burris felt the moist warmth of it oozing from the
slowly drying road as he trudged along.  The smell of it emanated from
the white, pale-yellow, and pink fungi that flourished on the soaked
and ancient logs along the way.  He heard the voice of it in the soft
murmuring of the South Fork of the Eel, which went twinkling down Bear
Valley through firs and redwoods straight as telegraph poles; in the
caress of the soft south wind soughing in the tree-tops.  Chipmunks and
gray squirrels darted across his path.

A quarter of a mile from Wharton Bixler's store he turned off on a
narrow road which led into the deeper forest.  He passed through groves
of redwoods which towered three hundred feet above him, and whose girth
was over sixty feet.  A half mile more the old man trudged on sturdily,
muttering occasionally to himself.  Then he struck a cross trail which
paralleled Ripley Creek, and this he followed into the sunshine of an
open spot.

Across this, through thickets of whitethorn, manzanita, alder, and bay
he limped along, following deer trails.  The deeper forest was left
behind in the lowlands.  A grass-grown bark road, which he eventually
found, followed the creek, ascending sharply through shade and
sunshine, crossing and recrossing the creek on wooden bridges,
twisting, always climbing.

On one of the bridges Uncle Sebastian Burris halted.  A great snarl of
bleached driftwood had collected just above the bridge, and through it
the clear water roared in a dozen tiny cataracts.  Beyond the drift
Uncle Sebastian had caught a glimpse of some living, moving object.  He
wiped his watery blue eyes with a red handkerchief, looked once more,
then crossed the bridge and wound through a thicket of huckleberry
bushes till abreast the drift.

A little later he was peering down a steep bank into the
boulder-studded bottom of Ripley Creek, where lay a fine young specimen
of the genus homo idly tossing pebbles into the crystal water.  A smile
half sardonic grew in the features of Uncle Sebastian as he stood
looking down at him.

The youth, unconscious of the presence of another, kept on idly tossing
the pebbles, recumbent on one elbow.  His long sinewy legs were incased
in slick jean trousers of stovepipe lines and stiffness.  He wore no
coat.  A faded blue shirt covered his barrel of a body, and his slouch
hat was off, exposing long, light, wiry hair and a freckled neck.  His
lean jaws were covered by a two weeks' growth of beard.  About him
drooped hazels and alders.  From one end to the other Ripley Creek was
beautiful; there was no lovelier spot in all of California.

"Hello, Hiram!" Sebastian Burris called at last.

The youth started perceptibly and sat up.  He turned his head over his
left shoulder.  Big, bulging blue eyes laughed back at Sebastian.  The
good-naturedly twisted mouth that grinned at him was suggestive of a
sluggish drawl.  The long legs twined themselves, and Hiram Hooker
flopped over on his stomach, facing his friend.

"Why, hello, Uncle Sebastian!" he cried in a tone which bore true
welcome.  "What're you doin' 'way up here?  Come on down an' look at
the young trout!"

Without remark, Uncle Sebastian, grasping roots and low-hanging
branches, clambered stiffly down the bank.  He sat down by the side of
Hiram Hooker and glanced at three old, dirty backless magazines that
lay on the pebbles and smiled.

"Ain't seen ye down to th' store at stage time in I dunno when, Hiram,"
he remarked, surveying the handsome young Hercules with admiration.

Hiram skimmed a flat piece of slate across a riffle.

"I never get any mail, Uncle Sebastian," he drawled.

"They's a heap o' us don't go to Bixler's fer th' mail, Hiram."

"Heaven knows there's nothin' else to take me there," and there was
just a shade of bitterness in the twist of Hiram's good-natured mouth.

In place of tossing pebbles, Uncle Sebastian chose to pick up a redwood
splinter on which to whittle.  He took out a slick-handled jackknife,
blew a clot of pocket lint from the springs, opened a whetted pruning
blade, and began shaving the brittle wood.  His watery blue eyes were
far-off and thoughtful.

"Jest come from there," he resumed.  "We was talkin' about ye down
there, Hiram.  Put me in mind to come up an' see ye.  Hiram, ye ain't
any too popular in Bear Valley--d'ye know it?"

"You know I do," promptly replied Hiram.

"D'ye know what they're sayin' agin' ye?" Uncle Sebastian continued
after a long pause.

"Don't know as I'm carin'."

"Yes, ye are, Hiram," said Uncle Sebastian positively.  "Don't tell me
that.  Ye c'n tell yerself ye don't keer, Hiram, but ye're lyin' to
yerself.  It ain't in human nature not to keer what folks thinks about
a fella.  Gosh! where'd we be if it wasn't so?"

Hiram flipped a pebble.  "I reckon you're right, Uncle Sebastian, and I
reckon I know you're aimin' at somethin'.  You came 'way up here to
spring somethin' on me, didn't you?  Well, le's have it."

"Ye're right, Hiram--I did.  In the first place, then, they're sayin'
ye're the laziest fella in Bear Valley."

Hiram laughed mirthlessly.  "There's nothin' new in that, Uncle
Sebastian.  They've said the same since paw died.  I reckon I am,
maybe."

"Hiram," patiently persisted the old man, "I didn't walk 'way up here
to listen to such talk.  I tell ye, ye're playin' insincere, Hiram.
Down in yer heart ye know as well as anythin' it makes ye hot to be
talked about an' called th' laziest man in Bear Valley.  I'd druther
see ye hoppin' mad ner takin' it that a way.

"Now, Hiram, listen to me: I've known ye sence ye was knee-high to a
duck, ain't I?  Yer paw an' me was thicker ner molasses.  Yer paw would
'a' made a brilliant man, Hiram, if he'd 'a' had th' chanct.  You've
inherited yer paw's brains.

"When ye was a kid ye was a little devil, I'll admit.  Still, givin'
myself credit fer a set o' brains a leetle above th' average o' Bear
Valley, I made allowances.  Ye was mean because yer head was full o'
ideas; an' in Bear Valley they's so blamed little to use them ideas on
that ye jest naturally had to turn to meanness.  Ye wasn't really bad;
ye was jest alive.  All yer life ye been hankerin' fer sumpin that Bear
Valley couldn't give, but ye didn't even know what 'twas ye was
hankerin' fer.  How could ye?  A man's gotta taste olives before he c'n
tell if he likes 'em, ain't he?  Yer paw taught ye to read."  Uncle
Sebastian glanced once more, half pityingly, half resentfully, at the
backless magazines.  "Readin's put notions into yer head an' set ye to
hankerin'.

"Then as ye grew up th' Valley folks begun to shun ye, didn't they?" he
continued.  "They called ye queer.  Then when yer paw died they dropped
ye altogether.  It hurt ye, an' ye jest drew aloof an' went to shakes.

"D'ye know, Hiram, sometimes I find myself not blamin' ye like I
oughta.  They called ye no good before ye really was so, an'
practically driv ye to it.  Then ye was too proud to brace up an' give
'em th' satisfaction o' thinkin' their treatment o' ye had made ye turn
over a new leaf.  If they'd gone on treatin' ye decent ye'd likely come
out all right o' yer own hook.  Hiram, pride's put a heap o' men in th'
penitentiary.  Pride's stubborn, Hiram.  But layin' aside th' root o'
th' trouble, an' lookin' at th' matter through _their_ eyes, it's
really a shame th' way yer paw's place has gone to ruin--th' way you've
gone th' same route.  I'd druther see ye plumb bad ern so all-fired
no-good all round.  Ye had jobs a number o' times drivin' eight an' ten
on jerkline, freightin' tanbark from Longport.  Ye're a good jerkline
skinner, Hiram--no better in the country--but ye won't stick no more'n
a month or two outa each year.

"But I'm makin' allowances fer ye--I always have--I'm th' only one that
ever has.  I been watchin' an' waitin' fer ye to right yerself an' get
at sumpin; but this mornin', down to th' store, it come over me that
ye'll never do it in Bear Valley.

"Consequently, Hiram," Uncle Sebastian resumed, "ye've gotta move."

Hiram glanced at him with wide-opened eyes.  "Move!  Where to?"

"Out into th' world, Hiram, to strike yer gait.  Ye gotta hit th' hard
places an' git experience.  Ye gotta taste olives to see if ye c'n
stummick 'em.  Ye'll get an awful batterin'-up, I reckon, but ye'll
likely learn if they's anything in ye.  At first ye'll probably go to
th' bad an' get a heap worse ern ye was in Bear Valley.  That's neither
here ner there.  Th' point is, if they's a gait in ye ye'll eventually
strike it.  If not--well, then, what's th' difference?  I'm goin' to
pay up fer ye down to th' store an' give ye enough to land ye in
Frisco.  Then th' good Lord an' what He put into that head o' yers must
look after ye.  I'm gonta foreclose on ye, Hiram."

Hiram was not looking at Uncle Sebastian, but the old man saw his
slight start and the red creep down his columnar neck as the last
sentence came out.  One great toe protruded from the upper of one of
Hiram's shoes.  Uncle Sebastian saw it twitching.

"You're foreclosin' on me?"  The words came slowly and with a hollow
gulp.

Uncle Sebastian's lips went straight and hard.  "Unless ye'll deed th'
place to me, Hiram."

Another pause, while the low wind whined in the treetops and Ripley
Creek went gurgling and sucking through the latticed trunks in the pile
of drift.

"What did you tell me when I gave the mortgage, Uncle Sebastian?"

The reproach in Hiram's voice did not move the arbiter.  "I know what I
told ye, Hiram.  I told ye, ye needn't worry--that I wouldn't
foreclose--that I wasn't speculatin' when I lent th' money on th'
place.  Jest th' same, Hiram, I'm foreclosin' on ye."

Uncle Sebastian eyed the young man keenly.  The first shock past, Hiram
seemed now to be turning the matter over with just deliberation.

"I reckon I know what you're up to, Uncle Sebastian," he said at last.
"We've talked the matter over too many times for me to misconstrue your
motives.  You're thinkin' that I'll amount to somethin' if I get away
from here."

"I reckon ye've said it, Hiram."  Uncle Sebastian voiced this with
great relief.

"And you're foreclosin' on me to force me to go."

"Eggzackly, Hiram.  I'm proud that ye interpret my motive."

Hiram was silent another long minute.  Then, with a hollow laugh: "I
reckon you'll be tolerably disappointed, Uncle Sebastian.  There was a
time when I'd 'a' looked forward to leavin' Mendocino.  I've had
hankerin's, and I've got 'em yet--but I'm scared.  I've never been outa
the country but once.  What c'n I do away from here?  What d'ye expect
of me, anyway?"

"Ye c'n certainly do as much out o' here as ye're doin' here, Hiram."

"I don't know about that.  It don't take much to live here.  I've got
about all I want, I reckon.  If I had more books to read I'd be pretty
near content.  There was a time, as I said, when it was different; but
now I don't reckon I care.  But what particular thing d'ye expect me to
excel in, Uncle Sebastian?"

"Excel's a tol'able big word, Hiram.  I can't tell ye any more.  Ye've
wanted to be a poet, an' ye've wanted to be an officer in th' army, an'
this an' that an' th' other--ye've wanted to be pretty near everythin'
ye read about last.  When ye git in touch with these things, Hiram, ye
may be able to choose--though they's a heap o' 'em ain't that's in
constant touch.  I know ye've got imagination.  I know it's wasted here
in th' backwoods; an' I know ye gotta git."

Uncle Sebastian had risen to emphasize this ultimatum.  Now, standing
and looking down, he finished:

"Whether ye'll bless me or curse me remains to be seen."

Hiram made no reply--he did not even look up.

"So be down to Wharton Bixler's by stage time to-morrow, Hiram, an' be
ready to take th' stage to Brown's Corner.  I'll go with ye that far,
an' ye c'n deed me th' prop'ty before a notary, so's I won't be obliged
to foreclose.  Then I'll come back an' pay yer bill at Bixler's, an'
ye'll have one hundred dollars to take ye down to Frisco.  Will ye be
at th' store at half past nine?"

A wait, then a short nod.

Uncle Sebastian half turned, paused, cleared his throat, and for the
first time lost his high-handed control of the situation.

"Hiram," he said in a lower tone, "I reckon I'm a fool, but I hope ye
ain't holdin' anything agin' me.  So help me, boy, I believe I'm doin'
ye a turn.  Do--d'ye believe it or not?"

"Wait'll to-morrow, Uncle Sebastian," came Hiram's pleading voice.
"Le'me think it over all to-night.  You've plumb knocked the props from
under me."

Without another word, Uncle Sebastian climbed up the bank and strode
off through the huckleberries.




CHAPTER II

OUT OF THE WOODS

For over an hour Hiram Hooker lay perfectly still at the creekside.
His wide-open eyes stared dreamily into the water.  His mind was
stunned by the present situation.  Feverishly and against his will his
thoughts went hurrying back over the years which had led up to this
momentous climax.

A woman moved frequently across the picture--a bent, tired, work-warped
woman--his mother.  The pitiable leanness of the life of Hiram's mother
had been appalling.  One word stood for the tenor of her days from sun
to sun--nothing.  She had never seen a piano or a typewriter, or even a
washing machine.  Silent, unmurmuring, she had given her life for
nothing and gone.

Swiftly came in the picture the likeness of Hiram's father--tall,
bewhiskered, strong as an ox, soft-voiced, and easy-going.  Nothing but
kindness had emanated from the father to his wife and child.  Foster
Hooker, too, had slaved his life away for nothing.  The rocky land had
claimed him and held him down.  They had had enough to eat and to keep
them warm--beyond that, nothing.  Now he lay with Hiram's mother
between the big bull pines on Wild-cat Hill.

There was in Hiram's thoughts no bitterness against his parents.  They
had been always kind and had given their best to him.  The rocky land
had held them chained.  It offered sustenance, and of the big
progressing world beyond they had lived afraid.  In the early days they
had buried themselves in the big woods to make their fortune.  But the
fortune was not there, and old age crept on.  Old age told them that
the world outside had passed beyond them, and they were afraid.

After all, had they given Hiram nothing?  In his bitter moments he had
thought so, but to-day his thoughts were mellowed.  He was on the eve
of leaving everything that held memories of them.  Had they not given
him of themselves a love for the grandeur of these woods which touched
no other soul, save Uncle Sebastian's, perhaps, in all the valley?
Hiram saw more in a redwood tree than the natives did; saw the beauty
of contrast in the open spots in the forest, where the others saw only
grazing ground for cattle; saw wonders in the rioting streams without a
thought of miners' inches.  His father had taught him the love of
books, but there had been so few to love.  He had taught him to think.
Hiram was weird, queer, a "leetle cracked" to the others of Bear
Valley.  Uncle Sebastian alone had understood him--had sympathized with
him and helped him.

Now, though, it was over.  He was leaving forever.  One hundred
dollars!  He had never possessed so much in his twenty-six starved
years!  An exultation seized him which beat throbbingly in his temples
and fired his soul with recklessness.  He was bound out into the Great
Unknown, where the promises of his dreams would be fulfilled.  He would
do great things, live great adventures, then come back to scoff at them!

He sprang to his feet, collected the backless magazines, and climbed
the bank.  With long strides he hurried along the bark road which wound
round the contour of the hills.  An hour later he was trotting down a
manzanita slope to his cabin, nestled in the cup of the hills,
surrounded by the whispering firs.

Just within he paused and looked about as if seeing the sordidness of
his home for the first time.  All the way up the hill the exultation of
impending departure had thrilled him.  It thrilled him still, and a new
feeling of contempt of what he saw came over him.

A panther skin hung on the rough, unpainted wall above the black and
cheerless fireplace, three sets of antlers surrounding it.  Near the
fireplace lay an unsightly pile of wood and chips.  The doors of the
cracked and rusty stove were gaping wide.  The remains of his breakfast
were on the clothless, homemade table.  His rifle, the only thing well
kept, stood in a corner.

He passed through into the other room, separated from this by a thin
board partition.  There, in oval walnut frames, hung the pictures of
the two who lay between the big bull pines on Wild-cat Hill.  A slight
sense of depression seized him.  The bed unmade, brought a sparkle of
anger to his eyes.  He was disgusted with himself, but it did not last.
The thought of the adventures that lay beyond and beckoned came
uppermost once more.  "The girl" beckoned, too.

Yes, there was a girl.  Hiram had seen her only in his dreams.  She was
not like Bear Valley girls.  She was large and sturdy and strong, and
her hair was of such dark brown as to seem almost black, her eyes dark
and large and lustrous.  She was a queen among women, this girl of his
dreams.  About her hung some great mystery, and adventure followed in
her footsteps.  Out there somewhere beyond Bear Valley she stood
beckoning him to come!

He went to bed early, to toss for hours and at last to drop into
fretful, torturing dreams.  The scream of a panther awoke him once.

He was up before sunrise, cooking his bacon and coffee and frying
slices of cold biscuit in the bacon grease.

The east was pink when he left the cabin, carrying the rifle, which he
meant to give to Uncle Sebastian.  Everything else he left behind.  He
took a short cut over Wild-cat Hill.  On its crest, between the two
bull pines, he stopped before two graces.

The red sun was peering through the saddle of Signal Hill.  Cold mists
rose from the forest.  In the air was the breath of the morning.
Weirdly the early wind moaned through the needles of the tall bull
pines.  Up from the cañon came the roaring of Ripley Creek as it raced
to the sea.

A lump came in Hiram's throat that he could not down.  At his feet lay
those who had lived and starved for him through the countless denials
of this wilderness.  Below him lay the cabin which he had known as home
for twenty-six long years.  About him stretched the grandeur of this
untarnished land.  Scalding tears burst from his eyes.  Some monstrous
ogre had arisen to crush him.  They were driving him from his home,
from the land of his birth, from the spots he loved!  No bitterer
period ever came in Hiram's life than when he stood that misty morning
and watched the sun rise on the turning point of his career.  Blindly
he stumbled down Wild-cat Hill and took up the long road to Bixler's
store.  They were driving him, like Hagar, from all that he held dear,
and there was hatred in his heart.




CHAPTER III

SAN FRANCISCO

The train that carried Hiram Hooker to San Francisco was late.  Thirty
miles from the bay it began making up for lost time.  Through the
falling dusk it roared toward the metropolis.  Slowly the landscape
faded.  Vineyards and chicken ranches and orchards and rolling hills
studded with live oaks gave place to the electric-lighted tentacles of
the city.  The lights blinked by at Hiram.  They helped depress him,
for they were a part of the modernity that he feared.  Suburbs grew to
a continuous stretch of lighted streets and houses.  Always those
lights blinked on every side.  There was witchery in all of it--in the
smell of the city close at hand, in the cold salt air from the bay, in
the _chunk-a-lunk_, _chunk-a-lunk_ of the speeding locomotive.

Hiram sat forward on the seat, eager, shrinking, exultant, always
straining while he shrank.  He tried to plan, but could not.  Night
closed in, and all that he saw now were the blinking lights that raced
astern.  Off in the black sky to the southward a rosy light suffused
the night--San Francisco.

"Saus-a-lito!  Everybody change!  Don't forget yer baggage!"

Hiram was swept out with the crowd, swept through the chute to the
ferryboat, swept aboard.  He followed the crowd forward and stood in
the bow.  Black as ink the Bay of San Francisco stretched before him.
Like fireflies the lights of vessels scurried through the blackness.
Beyond the black water blinked the countless eyes of San Francisco,
above these the rosy glow which had beckoned since the fall of dusk.

The boat had started before Hiram was aware.  Smoothly it slipped along
toward the beacons on the other shore.  Hiram breathed the keen salt
breeze in gulps and looked steadily and curiously at the world that
waited for him.  Somewhere there, perhaps, the girl of his dreams was
beckoning, and begging him not to be afraid.  The boat nosed into her
slip and the crowd swept him ashore, swept him through the Ferry
Building, and, as it went its thousand ways, left him stranded, staring
unbelievingly up Market Street.

Ten minutes he stood there.  Thousands pressed by him.  The laughter
and grumblings of life buzzed in his uncomprehending ears.  No one
noticed him.  The continuous _clang-clang-clang_ of the street cars
grew to a rhythmic roar.  Strange odors filled his nostrils.  What held
him most was the lights--the myriad lights that blinked away in
perspective up Market Street, clusters of them, pillars of them, wheels
of them, stars and squares of them.  They all blended into a shower of
diamonds and held him spellbound.  Then the clang of the street cars,
the clatter of hoofs on cobbles, the crunch of wheels, the raucous
toots of automobile horns and the purring of the engines, the ceaseless
laughing and murmuring of the crowds, the unfamiliar odors all blended
with the lights, and Hiram Hooker was breathing life, and knew that it
was warm, knew that he loved it, and was unafraid!

At last he sighed and began warily crossing the street from the Ferry
Building to Market Street.  He had read of country boys in the city.
He knew enough not to stand in the street and stare.  He wisely kept
with a crowd while crossing, and made their experience in braving the
dangers of traffic protect him.  He reached the other curb in safety
and started up the long, broad street.

Hiram Hooker will never forget that night.  Not once after leaving the
water front did he know his location, and it would have mattered little
if he had.  He walked on and on untiringly through an entrancing dream.
He was alone in a great museum--the other human beings were not fellow
spectators, but specimens on exhibition.

The beauty of the women fascinated him.  Never in his wildest
imaginings had he fancied such forms and faces.  The most beautiful
girl in Bear Valley bore the face of a gargoyle compared with the soft,
creamy faces he saw that night.  The flashing, long-lashed eyes, the
red lips, the coils on coils of fluffy hair, the swishing silk,
unfamiliar furs, sparkling jewels, and the slender French heels were
stupefying.

He was growing hungry.  He had not eaten a bite since early morning,
and now it was eleven o'clock at night.  It appalled him to think of
entering a restaurant and being confronted by one of those
white-skinned, slim-formed divinities he saw flitting from table to
table.  He did not know what to order nor how to order it.  Even the
smallest places looked imposing with their myriad lights and fixtures
of gilt and white and glittering glass.  But he knew he must screw his
courage to it.

There seemed to be a restaurant nearly every other door in the locality
he was now passing through.  Not only that, but many electric letters
blazing down the street notified him that he would have no trouble in
finding rooms; rooms by the day or week; rooms and board; rooms 15
cents and up; lodging; rooms with or without board; beds 10 cents and
up.  He was on Kearny Street, he knew, but he did not know where Kearny
Street was in relation to the rest of the city.

He strolled along, staring through the windows at the appetizing
displays and searching for a restaurant where none of those
creamy-skinned beings that caused him so much uneasiness were employed.
At last he found one where, it seemed, only smooth-faced men in short
black coats and low-cut vests were serving.  His abused stomach goaded
him to slink through the doorway and seek a table.

Just within the door he paused.  The place seemed crowded.  He was
about to slink out again when a woman's voice said in his ear: "This
side, please--all full here."

He turned quickly, with a gulp, to see a slim, black-clad girl, with
one of those appalling piles of fluffy hair topping her head, whisking
past behind him.  Now he noticed that the restaurant was divided in
half by a screen which ran the length of the building, and that one
side--the side he had seen through the window--was for men, and the
other for women.  The tables on the men's side were filled.  The girl
stood beckoning from a table on the women's side.  Other waitresses he
had not seen before were working here.  Hiram could not back out now.
His legs trembled as he obeyed the girl's beckoning finger.

He reached the table and stumbled noisily into a seat.  The girl, now
holding out a menu card, was looking at him curiously, he felt.  The
blood rushed to his face; he dared not look at her.  Fumblingly he took
the card and straightway dropped it on the floor.

Together they bent over to regain it.  Their bodies touched.  Hiram
grew sick.  She recovered the card and was standing erect when he
crawfished up from the floor.  He was burning up with shame.  Again he
took the card, but his glazed eyes could not read a word.

Suddenly he knew that she was speaking.

"I think you'd like a ribber, medium," she was saying, "with French
fries and a dish of peas."

Hiram's head nodded without command.  He knew she was leaving the
table, and something forced his eyes to her.  She was turning, but her
eyes were looking back into his.  In those eyes, big and brown beneath
dark, arched brows and long lashes, there was a look that thrilled him
to his soul.  She was more beautiful than any woman he had seen through
all the splendor of the night, and she had flashed to him a spark of
kindness in a maelstrom of misery!  Was this the girl who had been
beckoning him on?

She was coming back.  She paused beside him and placed a napkin,
silver, bread and butter, and a glass of water before him.  He tried to
look up, but could not.  He felt her close to him as she arranged the
things before him.

She was speaking again, low, soothingly.

"Awful crowd to-night.  We don't usually put single gentlemen on this
side, but I guess you won't mind.  Your ribber'll be here in a minute."

She was gone again.  He saw her brown hair bobbing toward the kitchen.
He watched the swing doors, eager for her return.

They burst open at last and she came forward and placed a big platter
before him, on which steamed an enormous rib steak, beside this a dish
of French-fried potatoes and a dish of peas.

She glided away once more and did not again come near his table while
he ate.  He kept his eyes on her throughout the meal, and continued to
lower them when he thought her about to look toward him.  His "ribber"
was good, and he ate the last scrap.  Then he paid his bill and hurried
out.

Through the window he looked back for her.  She was nowhere in sight.

In a miserable hallway on the second floor of a dingy brick building,
he obeyed the legend over a button in the wall, which read:
"Landlord--push the button."  The result was that a squint-eyed man
came from a door marked "office" and yawningly asked him his business.
Hiram wished a twenty-five-cent room, he said.  He was taken to one,
which was not a room at all, but a stall--that is, the thin board
partitions did not connect with the ceiling by three feet.  The bed was
a single one, and the sheets had brought the proprietor many a
twenty-five-cent piece since coming from the laundry.  The additional
furnishings of the "room" were six nails driven in the board wall to
hold one's clothes.  From all over the floor came lusty snores and the
mutterings of world-worn men.

With the city smells still in his nostrils, the buzz of city life still
in his ears, and the countless lights twinkling in a frame about the
white face of a brown-haired, red-lipped girl, he fell asleep from
sheer fatigue.  But with unaccountable perversity his dreaming mind
dwelt not upon the beautiful vision he had come to love in fifteen
seconds, but on the whispering firs and twinkling streams of Mendocino,
and on a plodding ten-horse jerkline team hauling tanbark over the
mountains to the coast.




CHAPTER IV

TWITTER OR TWEET

Hiram Hooker washed in the community lavatory in the hall next morning.
Then he sought the squint-eyed landlord and paid a week's room rent in
advance, thereby saving fifty cents.

He wished to strike out at once after breakfast to begin justifying
Uncle Sebastian's faith in him, but so far he had not laid a plan.  He
noticed lettering on a door in the hall which dignified what lay beyond
as a "lounging room."  The door stood ajar, and he saw that the room
was empty.  He decided to go in and think.  A thousand and one wonders
awaited his curious eyes, but they must wait.  His hundred dollars had
dwindled perceptibly; it was time to give his future a practical
thought or two.

In the "lounging room" were a long plain board writing-table, ten
yellow kitchen chairs.  Hiram took a seat by a window overlooking
Kearny Street.

He could not plan, he found, for his ideas of seeking employment were
of the vaguest; he did not know where to look for it, nor what duties
he should state that he could perform.  Dreaming of it up there in
Mendocino County, climbing up in the world from the bottom rung had
seemed so easy.

He began feeling a little lonesome.  He had resolved to brave the
fascinating eyes of the girl of the restaurant again, and perhaps speak
to her if occasion offered, when the door opened and three men came
into the lounging room.

Two of them scraped chairs to the table and from a drawer took a dirty
pack of cards and a homemade cribbage board, with headless matches for
markers.  The third took from his pocket a folded newspaper and sat
down at the window opposite Hiram.  He at once began reading, and
seemed not to be a companion of the other two.  Hiram took note that he
perused the want-ad sheets.

Hiram studied the two at cards.  He resolved that he did not like their
unkempt looks, so turned his attention to the man with the paper.

In dress this man was in a class with the other two, though perhaps a
little better groomed.  But a careful observer would have taken note of
certain finer characteristics in the face.  It was the face of a man in
the thirties, robust and good-natured, with bushy brows, slate-blue
eyes, and a nose that would have been termed Grecian if it had not been
for a semiconical twist to the left.  He was of stalky build, carefully
shaved that morning, and wore a dingy turndown collar.  His shoes,
though scuffed with wear, were polished.

In the midst of this scrutiny the man suddenly lowered the paper and
leveled his eyes at Hiram.  The look almost said "What do you want?" in
a disinterested though not antagonistic way.  Hiram was caught
unawares.  He felt the question and had answered it, to cover his
embarrassment, before he knew the words were coming.

"D'ye find any jobs in the paper?"

The two at cards looked quickly at Hiram and shrugged, and the game
went on in silence, as before.

"What d'ye follow?" asked the man with the twisted nose in a sort of
rollicking voice by no means unpleasant.

"D'ye mean what c'n I do?"

The man with the paper nodded.

Hiram scraped his chair a foot closer.  "Why, I don't exactly know.
I'm willin' to do anything--that is, try."

The slate-blue eyes quizzically studied Hiram a little longer, then
settled on the paper once more.

A few moments they scanned the column.  Then:

"Maybe some o' these'll look attractive ol'-timer.  'Wanted three
bushelmen; one coat-maker; first-class pants operator; shoe shiner; two
farm carpenters, Arizona, four dollars a day, fare refunded; two
carpenters, city, five dollars a day; one hundred muckers, New Mexico,
two-fifty day; one trammer, three-fifty day; one hundred laborers, New
Mexico, three dollars day; porter in bakery, city, must be sober; boy,
sixteen years old, make himself generally useful in pickle plant; two
jerkline drivers--must be good, southern California; cooks, waiters,
teamsters, muckers galore.  Call and see us.  Morgan & Stroud,
Four-hundred-and-fifteen Clay Street.'"

He lowered the paper and once more fixed the slate-blue eyes on Hiram.
"There you are, ol'-timer--pick yer road to wealth and prominence."

His smile brought Hiram's chair closer.

"How d'ye get any o' these jobs?" he asked.

"Part with two dollars to Morgan & Stroud for the address o' the
advertiser, then beat the other fella to it," was the reply.

"But they wanted a hundred muckers, you read."

"Oh, that's different.  They ship you out for two dollars to where the
job is.  The contractor deducts your fare from your first month's pay
and refunds it to the railroad company, or sticks it in his pocket if
he's wise.  Le's see--where they shippin'?"  He glanced at the column
again.  "N' Mexico, eh?  Yes, they'll ship you down there for two
dollars, and you c'n go to work and grow up with the country.  C'n you
drive a team?"

"Sure," said Hiram.  "I c'n drive eight or ten, or even sixteen
jerkline, too.  You read something about jerkline skinners."

"Then I'd go as a jerkline skinner at--what is it?--fifty-five and
found.  Found means board, you know."

"And you're sure they'll send me down to southern California for two
dollars and gi' me a job drivin' mules?"

"They'll be tickled to death to do it.  Where you from?"

Hiram heaved a sigh.  "Mendocino County," he replied.

"Hittin' the trail for the first time, eh?"

The questioner evidently knew it, so Hiram did not reply.

"M'm-m!  Fine big country--Mendocino.  You oughta stayed there.  That
country'll go to work and come out with a loud report some day."

"You've been there?" asked Hiram eagerly.

"Been everywhere."

"What do you follow?"  Hiram used the new expression almost
unconsciously.

"I'm a promoter and capitalist."

"A promoter and capitalist," Hiram repeated vaguely.

"Yep.  At present, though, I ain't workin' at the capitalist end.  But
I'm always a promoter."

Hiram was growing uncomfortable.  He had been warming toward this
genial stranger; now he felt he was being ridiculed.  He kept silent
and looked out the window.

The other nonchalantly resumed his paper as if the conversation were
over.

But Hiram did not wish it to end here.  Despite the stranger's
fantastic statement, there was that in his bearing which told Hiram he
meant what he said, and that, furthermore, it was with him a matter of
indifference whether any one believed him or not.  He wished the two
tramps would leave.  He felt that then he could talk to the other man
with less reserve.

As he sat there silently thinking, this wish was granted.  A third
unkempt individual thrust his head in at the door and remarked, "Hey,
youse!"

The cribbage players looked up.

In explanation the man in the door held up a quarter between a
calloused forefinger and thumb.

A broad grin broke on the face of one of the players as he scraped back
his chair and rose.  "Cheese, Thumbscrew, where'd youse glom it?" he
gasped ecstatically.

"Never mind w'ere I glommed it, Scully," was the retort.  "De point is,
are youse guys in on helpin' me lick up a growler?"

The other tramp had risen, and spoke for both as he strode toward the
door.  "Lead us to it, Thumbscrew," he swaggered portentously; "lead us
to it, ol'-timer!"  And the door slammed behind the three.

Hiram glanced back at the man behind the newspaper.  He had not so much
as slanted a look toward the door.

Hiram's chance had come.  After a silent minute he essayed:

"But I didn't come to the city to leave it right away and go to drivin'
mules.  I came here to get a start."

The other politely lowered his paper.  "What're you doin'--breakin'
loose from home to make yer fortune?" he asked.

Hiram nodded and smiled.

The man surveyed him for the first time from head to foot.  "Been a
farmer up in Mendocino?" he queried.

"Sorta," Hiram admitted.  Then in a low voice: "To tell the truth, this
is my first time in a city.  I got in last night.  I've never been out
o' Mendocino County but once before."

A few wrinkles of puzzlement came between the other's brows.  "How old
are you?"

"Twenty-six," was Hiram's meek confession.

The stranger studied, a whimsical smile twisting his lips, a far-away
look in the slate-blue eyes.  With a little jerk he emerged from
reverie and asked:

"And what d'ye expect to take up here in Frisco?"

Hiram scraped his chair still closer.  "I don't know," he acknowledged.
"To tell the truth, I'm pretty green.  I don't know anybody here and
don't know where to begin."

"Don't say green," corrected the other.  "That's obsolete.  Say raw, or
that you're a hick, or a come-on.  Well, what d'ye want to follow?"

"I thought if I could get into some big man's office and work up, I
might reach----"

The other man raised his hand protestingly and his face assumed a sick
expression.

"Forget it!  Forget it!" he cried.  "Say, that's the biggest mistake a
fella like you could make.  Your feet are too big for an office.  Say,
take this from me: An office man is always an office man.  He knows the
figgers--nothing else.  The fella out on the works is the lad that
knows the fundamentals of the job.  Take this railroad-construction
business, for instance:  When the contractor wants a new general
superintendent he don't make him out of an office man.  He goes out on
the job and gets him.  You get offices outa your head, and get out and
learn something."  He was thoughtful a minute, then finished with the
question: "How long are you on cash?"

"I haven't got much," Hiram confessed--"sixty some dollars."

"M'm-m," the other said musingly.  Then, after another thoughtful
pause: "Say, I suppose you're a little shy about bracin' these
employment men, ain't you?"

Hiram nodded.

"Then I'll tell you what I'll do: You go to work and dig up my fee, and
I'll go down to southern California with you on the jerkline job.  I
been wantin' to get outa Frisco for a week, but couldn't raise the
price.  Anywhere'll suit me, where there's a chance o' makin' a little
stake.  That's what you wanta do--go to work and make a stake.  Then
look about for something you c'n float for yourself.  There's nothin'
in working for somebody else.  Work for yourself if it's only running a
peanut stand.  Southern California'll do.  What d'ye say?"

"D'ye mean you're broke?"

"Broke!  I'm ruined!"

"How did you lose your money?" Hiram asked innocently.

"You're askin' for the story o' my life.  What d'ye say, now?  Le's go
to work and get breakfast, then enter Morgan & Stroud's in our usual
graceful manner and tell 'em we've decided to accept their kind offer
and let 'em ship us south.  You'll probably learn a few things on that
trip."

"Are you a jerkline skinner?"

"I dunno.  Maybe I am.  I never tried.  But if that's what you wanta
hit--me, too.  Say, what's your name?"

"Hiram Hooker."

"That's a peach, all right.  They sure labeled you for the part.  Mine
ain't much better though.  They call me Twitter-or-Tweet."

"What!"

"Proves I'm a bird, don't it?  My name is Orr Tweet.  Can you beat it?
So they call me Twitter-or-Tweet, or just Twitter--or sometimes
Playmate.  I'm gregarious.  I gotta have a partner all the time.  I'll
play with any o' the little boys so long as they're nice to me."

He handed Hiram a card.  It read:

  ORR TWEET

  REPRESENTING THE CUCAMONGA
  DEVELOPMENT COMPANY
  Cerro Gordo, Mexico

  THE HOMESEEKERS' PROMISED LAND
  OF MILK AND HONEY


"That Cucamonga Development Company and the milk-and-honey business is
passé," explained Mr. Tweet, "but I've got no other card.  They pinched
the owners, and I flew the coop before they could lay it onto me.
Crooked deal."

"What was it?" Hiram asked vaguely.

"Banana plantation," Tweet replied lightly.  "At least they called it
that--I never saw it.  I was just promotin' the deal.  Well, what d'ye
say?" he persisted.  "I'm broke and I need a little cash.  But I'm a
money getter!  You tide me over this little depression and I'll
remember you.  We may strike somethin' that'll look good anywhere
between here and there.  If so, we'll drop off and look into it."

Hiram did not know what to say.  He had no experience in reading human
nature, and Mr. Tweet would have appeared as an enigma to many more
astute than Hiram.

"What do you want me to do?" he hedged.

"Hold me up, if your coin lasts, till I hit the ball--that's all.
You'll never regret it."  Tweet sat pulling his twisted nose from side
to side, as if trying to straighten it.

"But I don't understand.  You seem to be--that is, you call yourself a
capitalist, and you're only--I mean it seems funny----"

"I get you.  I talk like a millionaire and travel with tramps."  Tweet
sighed.  "Well, my faculty for breedin' confidence in others is one o'
the big secrets o' my success.  Success, I say--get that?  If this
faculty won't work on you, then I lose this time.  I'll say no more.
Think it over."

He yawned, rose, and started for the door.

"Are--are you goin' down on the street?" Hiram asked timidly.

"Yes, I thought I'd stroll about a bit."

"I--I guess I'll go with you, if you don't mind."

"Sure not--come on."

Hiram rose quickly and followed him out.  Even though he were to
distrust this man, in the end, the thought of losing him now was
appalling.

Down on the street he thought of breakfast and paused before the
restaurant.

"Have you had breakfast, Mr. Tweet?" he asked.

Tweet stopped and looked at him soberly.  "Are you invitin' me to
dine?" he said quizzically.

"Well, kinda that way," admitted Hiram with a foolish grin.  "I haven't
eaten myself, and----"

"I haven't eaten myself either, nor anybody else since yesterday
mornin'.  I accept."

And promptly Mr. Tweet pushed ahead through the swinging doors.




CHAPTER V

A RIVAL

The restaurant was all but deserted at the late breakfast hour when
Hiram Hooker and Mr. Tweet entered.  Hiram timidly wished that the
men's side were filled, so that he would be obliged to eat on the
ladies' side again.  A waiter was beckoning them to the men's side,
however, and Hiram meekly led the way, though casting a quick,
expectant glance down the long row of tables beyond the screen.

Waitresses were dallying about, but he did not see the girl with the
cords of fluffy hair.  He was halfway through breakfast before it
occurred to him that, as she was at work at eleven the night before, he
scarce could expect her at nine in the morning.  He was glad she was
not there to tantalize him, and at the same time deeply disappointed.

Hiram's new acquaintance changed perceptibly as the food began to warm
him.  Mildly loquacious before, he now became voluble.

"I wanta tell you this," he remarked finally, "you're in luck to strike
me when I'm crippled for cash.  A week from now, perhaps, you'd never
met me at all.  And if you had, there'd 'a' been nothin' to connect us.
But right now I'm up against it and forced to sleep in a
twenty-five-cent lodgin' house.  Therefore we met and found out each of
us had somethin' the other wanted.  You're lucky, Hooker--that's all
there is to it.  You'd 'a' drifted about for years and never got the
chance to hook up with Twitter-or-Tweet.  And here you are, right from
the backwoods, makin' yourself solid the first crack outa the box with
the original money-getter.  Stay by me till I get a toehold, and I'll
make you."

Hiram was at a loss how to take him.  He had not agreed to tide him
over, had not even made up his mind that Tweet was not a rank faker;
yet Tweet seemed to be taking it for granted that his case was won, and
that they were to go from the breakfast table to Morgan & Stroud's to
enter the road to competence.

As if answering his thoughts, Tweet said:

"I'm a mystery to you, ain't I?  I don't use very good grammar, but I
talk sense.  I'm talkin' about makin' piles o' money, and I'm gettin'
my breakfast off o' you, ain't I?  If I really was the heavy hitter I'm
advertisin' myself to be I wouldn't condescend to take you on, would I?
That's what you been thinkin', ain't it?

"Take those hobos up in the lodgin' house, for instance.  Curiosity's
eatin' their hearts out in regard to me.  They know I ain't a tramp,
yet they see me float smoothly along among 'em and never strike a
discord.  I don't seem to mix with 'em, neither do I seem to keep aloof
from 'em.  I'm there and I ain't there--see?  If they only knew it,
I've tramped miles to their feet.  Yet I never was a regular tramp.

"On the other hand, when I'm hob-nobbin' with the upper class I keep
them guessin'.  I talk kinda crude, yet what I say seems to be worth
listenin' to.  I go into a flash hotel or cafe and never stumble over
anything, or knock the carafe off the table, or order corned-beef hash
when the menu card looks like an advanced lesson in _parlez vous_.
They take me to the circus to amuse me, and I come back at 'em with
grand opera.

"So that's the way it goes, and you'll savvy more about it when you see
more o' me.  At present I'm goin' to take you away from Frisco and, if
somethin' turns up, give you a start.  I'm doin't this principally
because I need your little roll to tide me over till I get a workin'
stake.  I'm frank about it.  But I may learn to like you.  You appear
to be sorta bright."

Tweet pushed back his chair.  "Now we'll go down to Morgan & Stroud's
and get out where we c'n go to work and do somethin', and have a chance
to look about and think."

Protestations died on Hiram's lips, and he dutifully rose and followed.

There was a cigar case on the cashier's counter, and Tweet leaned over
it, looking down at the contents, while Hiram laid his check beside the
cash register and fumbled for his pocketbook.  He produced a dollar and
laid it on the check, then looked about for some one to receive them.
The space behind the counter was empty, but from a little inclosed
portion of the window came the slow, labored clicking of typewriter
keys.

"Tap the dollar on the show case," suggested Tweet.

Hiram tapped the glass.

Instantly, in the window room, the clicking keys were hushed.  Hiram
heard the squeak of a swivel chair.  He heard the swish and caught the
gleam of a white skirt.  The next moment she was standing before him.

His breathing checked itself, and his knees began that sickening
tattoo.  He was instantly so miserable that he longed to die.  Yet he
faced her big eyes, brown and good-natured and smiling with
recognition, and dumbly pushed the check and the dollar across the
counter.

"Why, hello!" she said lightly.

"Hello," came a quavering echo.

The drawer of the cash register shot out with a metallic clang.
Hiram's dollar jingled in among its kind.  The girl's slim fingers were
suspending a quarter to be dropped into his palm, suggesting to Hiram's
abnormal mind the fear of contamination.  He feebly put out his hand,
and she dropped the coin.

"Thank you," she acknowledged in a light, professional tone, raising
her voice on the "you."

She was turning away, when Tweet looked up from the cigars.

"Since when, Lucy?" came his rollicking voice.  She turned back,
smiling.  "Oh, since just this morning," she replied.  "The boss fired
the cashier just before I went off watch last night.  He said he was
going to call up the employment agency and get another the first thing
this morning.

"'What's the matter with giving some one here a chance?' I says.
'That's the way with you fellows,' I says.  'A girl can work her
fingers off for you for years, then when the chance comes for something
better, why, you telephone an employment agency and give it to a
perfect stranger.  You give me a pain!' I says.

"'But you ain't a cashier--you're a waitress,' he says.

"'I'm not speaking about myself in particular,' I says.  'I'm speaking
about all of us who are working for you.  Then,' I says, 'how do you
know I can't make change?  When there's an opening for better pay and
easier work,' I says, 'why don't you come to us and see if any of us
think we can hold it down?  You know us and can trust us, and instead
of giving us a look-in, you go and hire an outsider.'"

"Good stuff!" commented Tweet.  "And he fell for it, did he?"

She flipped out her palms in a little gesture.  "I'm here, ain't I?
Waited table from seven to three last night, and came behind the
counter here at five-thirty this morning.  The boss'll relieve me at
twelve o'clock.  Guess I'll sleep some to-night!"

"Fine business!  Makin' good, eh?"

"I'm not fired yet, am I?"  Her white teeth flashed.

"But c'n you keep the books?"

She sniffed.  "I certainly can.  I haven't been a waitress all my life.
These books are nothing."

Here the gigantic Hiram caught his lower lip sagging and resolutely
lifted it to dignity.

"Well, I like your style," Tweet was telling her.  "Tell 'em about it,
every time--that's the way to get a toehold.  But you're not much of a
stenog, Lucy--was that you peckin' away in there?"

A shade of pink swept her face.

"I used to operate a machine a little with one finger of each hand,"
she explained, "but I'm all out of practice.  I don't have to use a
typewriter on this job though.  It's an old one the boss took for a
bill."

"Just practicin' up again, eh?"

"Ye-yes," she hesitated.  Again her skin grew faintly pink.

"Good business!  Go to it!  Every little bit helps.  Well,
congratulations, Lucy.  So long!  C'm on, Hiram."

"Thanks."  Lucy laughed, and went into her little room.

Hiram sighed boyishly, upset the toothpick holder at his elbow, and
fled in Mr. Tweet's wake.

"Pretty nifty little kid," Tweet remarked, as Hiram joined him.

"You know her--wh-what's her name?"

Tweet turned and looked at Hiram's red face in mild surprise.

"Wh-what's wrong with you?" he queried.

"Nothin'"--sheepishly.

"Well, I'll be dog-goned if I don't believe you're gun shy on the
female question!" was Tweet's conviction.  "These frisky Frisco pullets
goin' to your head, Hooker.  A little paint and a little powder and a
frowsy topknot seems to sorta touched some new funny bone in you, eh?
Heavens, I remember how I fell for it years ago!"

Hiram closed his lips tight.  He hated Tweet.

Tweet slapped him on the back and laughed.

"Forget it, Hiram," he advised familiarly.  "It ain't like me to roast
anybody when I see it hurts.  Why, le's see now--I don't know the kid's
name.  I've heard the men call her Lucy--that's all.  I been eatin'
there right along--that is, up till yesterday mornin'.  She seems to be
popular with the fellas.  Not a bad little kid, though, I take it.  Got
some savvy, at any rate.  Ain't content with her lowly lot--and that's
my kind.  Oughtn't to make customers have to call her away from that
typewriter, though--I don't like that.  Well," he switched abruptly,
"what you been thinkin' about our little deal?"

"Nothing," Hiram retorted resentfully.

They had been slowly walking down the street.  Tweet stopped short and
looked at him.

"That means what?  That you don't care to consider it further?"

It had meant just that when Hiram said it.  There was now in Tweet's
question a tone of finality.  Hiram felt that his reply would end the
matter.  Swiftly his mind grasped for a judicious rejoinder and settled
on "No."  He could not bring himself to part with this semblance of
friendship just yet.

"All right, then," Tweet returned.  "You're just not through
considerin', eh?  Well, I'll tell you: We'll break away and give you a
chance to think.  There's a man down California Street I wanta see
before I leave and I'll stroll down that way.  You think it over, and
meet me at eleven-thirty up in that disfiguration old Squinty calls a
loungin' room.  So long."

He turned abruptly and strode away.

Hiram watched his erect figure and firm step till the crowd hid him,
then followed more slowly in the same direction.  His feet were
carrying him toward the restaurant, and he was guiltily permitting
them.  He saw a shining drab automobile drawn up at the curb before the
restaurant door.  He walked slower and slower as he neared the door,
paused, and looked within.

Lucy was leaning on the counter negligently collecting scattered
toothpicks, and conversing laughingly with a carefully dressed
middle-aged man with a handsome face and curly brown hair.  His hair
and Lucy's fluffy topknot were almost touching.  Hiram saw him grasp
playfully at Lucy's hand, saw her jerk it away with a flirtatious laugh.

Then Hiram bolted, half blind with pain.




CHAPTER VI

THE FIRE

Hiram did not take note of much till he was three blocks from the
restaurant.  There was a dull pain somewhere within him, but when his
thinking apparatus began shaking off its stunned condition he found it
difficult to analyze this pain.

The girl had done practically nothing.  In fact, but for her laughter,
her attitude toward the well-dressed man would have showed righteous
displeasure.  The thought that this might be a common occurrence did
not enter his head.  He was distressed now; he found, only with a keen
feeling of utter alienation, he was one lone backwoodsman against San
Francisco, scorning him, ready to trample him under foot.

A sign over the window of a store cleared this mystery.  Hiram stopped
and stared up at it.  In a flash he knew what was the matter with him,
and that he hated the stranger for his clothes--that he hated everybody
because this man wore good clothes.  He squeezed his pocketbook and
read and reread the painted words in their painted circles:

"O'coat, $40, no more; Coat, $20, no more; Pants, $5, no more; Hat, $3,
no more."

His mind was adding twenty, five, and three.  The total was
twenty-eight.  He could get along without an overcoat, though in San
Francisco, even in summer, an overcoat is comfortable at night.  Should
he or should he not?  His rusty old clothes were torturing him.
Twenty-eight dollars!  And perhaps only four or five more for extras--a
tie, collars, suspenders, and--oh, yes! shoes.  He had forgotten the
shoes.  His were brogans.  He must have shoes, too.  Perhaps five for
shoes.  He had barely sixty-seven dollars.  Should he?  Was it foolish,
or----

Reflected in the show window he saw a drab automobile flash behind him.
At the wheel he saw, erect, forceful, jaunty, and well-dressed, with a
black cigar gripped in his teeth, the man who had snatched at Lucy's
hand.  Clinching his pocketbook, Hiram entered the store.

A half hour later he came out, poorer by some thirty-eight dollars, but
rich in the self-esteem which the bright, stiff garments gave him.

He left his bundle in his stall at the lodging house, criticized
himself before the cracked mirror in the hall, and went down on the
street.  He bought three five-cent cigars and lighted one.  He gripped
it in his teeth and let it protrude from the left-hand corner of his
mouth.  Then he started for the restaurant.

Long before he reached it panic was upon him.  He had absolutely no
pretext on which to enter.  It was then only ten-thirty, and he had
breakfasted at nine.  To enter boldly and begin a conversation with
Lucy--which he had all along boastfully promised himself he would
do--he now knew to be the last thing on earth he would dare.

Besides, though the garments he wore were new and bright and stiff,
those two brief glimpses of his rival's clothes now tardily showed him
that there was a difference.  His coat, for instance, seemed a bit
angular--there seemed to be corners he had not noticed in the store.
It did not snuggle down to his neck and shoulders just right.  Hiram
thought that perhaps the linen collar was a trifle too large.

Thus criticizing, and walking slower and slower, he neared the
restaurant.  Now it was impossible to take another step without coming
abreast of it.  He stopped and looked in a jeweler's window next door.

He stood there fifteen minutes.  Time and again he nerved himself up to
entering the restaurant, only to feel cold sweat break out on his
forehead as he lifted his foot.  He would return to the lodging house,
change his clothes, and see her when he ate at noon.  He would never
let her see him in those now hated new clothes.  He had squandered
thirty-eight dollars for her, and he had only twenty-nine left.

Down the street from the heart of the city came a sudden clangor.
Vehicles were rushed close to the curbs.  Up a side street a new jangle
of bells broke out.  Never had Hiram seen a city fire, but at once he
knew that such was happening.

A hook-and-ladder company rattled past with clamor and gongs and
clatter of hoofbeats.  People poured from the doors of buildings to
watch.  Men rushed to the curb and looked after the firemen; the women
stood near the buildings, under the awnings, shading their eyes and
standing on tiptoes.  Quickly the sidewalk filled.  A chemical engine
passed, clouds of black smoke rolling in its wake.  Across the street a
pillar of black smoke burst from a third-story window.

"It's across the street!  Across the street!" shouted the crowd.

A hose cart rumbled up.  The men on the curb grew frantic, yelling and
pointing to the smoke.  The hose cart was stopped.

A little later the chief's automobile came.  Then the apparatus that
had passed down the street came back.  Flames and smoke were bursting
from three windows now.  The street and the sidewalk were filled with
the crowd.

Hiram had not moved a muscle.  People elbowed him on both sides, but he
paid no attention.  The rapid operations of the fire fighters held him
spell-bound.

"Oo-oo-oo!  Look there!" suddenly came a shrill familiar voice at his
side.

A sputter of sparks had shot from the roof of the building, and a man
had emerged from a trap-door, it seemed, and darted from sight.  But
the fire and every new phase of it had lost all holding power over
Hiram Hooker.  Pressed to his elbow, wedged in by the crowd, stood Lucy.

"Oh, I love a fire!" she was ecstatically informing some one on her
other side--a waitress.

Hiram stood there sick with her proximity.  She had not recognized
him--she was engrossed with the clouds of black smoke, the intermittent
red gleam of blaze, and the crackling streams of water.  Her tongue was
wagging rapidly, and she seemed not to care to whom she spoke or
whether that fortunate person were listening.

Suddenly, through the scurrying firemen in the street, a big red
automobile came slowly.  It was filled with men and women.  Its horn
was honking perpetually.  Besides the fire apparatus, no other vehicles
were allowed in the street, yet no one seemed to interfere with this
machine.

"Oh, it's the Samax Company!" exclaimed Lucy, dancing up and down.
"They're going to take a fire picture.  Look, Minnie!  There's Mr.
Kenoke--the director!  I never thought of it--right here at my very
door, too!  If I only could see him, Minnie.  What a chance for the
fire scene in 'The Crowning Defeat!'  Oh, why didn't I think of it,
Minnie?  Mr. Kenoke!  Mr. Kenoke!  Oh, dear, he wouldn't hear me in a
thousand years!"

She was waving over the heads of the crowd at some one in the red
automobile, it seemed.  There seemed even less likelihood now of her
taking note of Hiram.  He watched her furtively and wondered.

"Oh, I must see him!" she went on excitedly.  "Say, mister"--she
suddenly turned a flushed face to Hiram--"won't you----  Why, hello!"
she broke off.  "I didn't know it was you.  Oh, you will, I know!
You're big--you can do it!  Won't you try to get to that heavy-set man
in the machine for me?  Please--won't you?"

She was looking eagerly up at him.  Hiram rose to the situation like a
man.  For her he felt he would have cheerfully entered a beehive should
she command him.  Was not this the adventure girl of whom he had
dreamed?

"What'll I do?"

"Oh, will you?  Good!  Listen: Tell him to have Mr. Blair carry Miss
Worthington out the door.  And listen: Miss Worthington has
fainted--see?  Mr. Blair faints then, and staggers and falls down with
her.  Then Mr. Speed rushes up and takes a letter from Mr. Blair's
pocket and runs out of the picture.  And listen: Mr. Blair and Miss
Worthington still lie there.  Tell him there's no makeup.  And tell him
Miss Lucy Dalles wants him to do that, and that he won't regret it.
Tell him I said it was a peach--see?  But listen: Don't say anything
about me being in a restaurant, though.  Oh, can you?  Will you?"

Hiram was stunned.  Had the girl gone crazy?

"Go on, please, before the fire's out!  I can't explain now--wait.
I'll tell you later.  He'll know, though.  Go on, now--try!"

Without the faintest notion of what it was all about--with only the
thrilling thought that he was serving her--Hiram's big figure began
pushing through the crowd, dazedly repeating her queer message and the
names.

He was tall, strong, and angular.  Shoving this way and that, he fought
his way to the curb.  Here he encountered a rope stretched lengthwise
of the street.  The crowd was now confined to the sidewalk.  Hiram
crawled under the rope.  A policeman shouted at him and started toward
him.  Hiram ran, tripped over a slippery hose, caught himself, and
plunged on through the knots of struggling, dripping firemen.

The automobile had stopped.  The occupants were clambering to the wet
pavement.  One man was hurriedly setting up a peculiar-shaped camera
directly opposite the entrance of the burning building.  Another, a
heavy-set man, was bobbing about, shouting orders to men and women, who
listened, then ran toward the door.

Everybody was crazy, it seemed, but this had nothing to do with Hiram
in carrying out his mission.  He ran up to this heavy-set man and cried:

"Are you Mr. Kenoke?"

"Sure!  Get out the way!  What d'ye want?  Now, Miss Worthington, run
for the ladder.  Hurry up, girlie!  Come on, Blair!  Quick!  Quick!
What d'ye want--you?"

Hiram gulped and searched his brains.  "Miss Lucy Dalles says to tell
you to have Mr. Blair carry Miss Worthington out of the door.  She's
fainted, she said, and then he faints and falls.  They lay there, and
another fella--I forget that name--takes a letter from Mr. Blair's
pocket and runs away.  Mr. What's-his-name and Miss Worthington still
lie there.  Mr.--er--let's see--there's no makeup.  And it's a peach,
and you won't regret it."

"Humph!  All right; I get you.  I'll take a chance.  Lucy Dalles, you
say?   Thanks.  Get that, Collins?  'Bout ten feet, I guess.  After
this.  Now, out of the way, please.  All ready, there!  Let her go!
Now, up with that ladder, deary!  Get in there!  Get in the picture
Worthington!"

Hiram stepped back.  The man with the camera began turning a crank on
one side, and a low whirring noise blended softly with the roar of the
rushing water.  Hiram saw dripping men and women dancing about like
maniacs before the smoking door.

He did not wait for more.  He had done his duty, and he hurried back
for his reward.

"Did you do it?  Did you see him?"

Lucy Dalles, with parted lips, was straining toward him as he cleaved
his way back to her.

Hiram nodded.

"Oh, what did he say?"

"He said: 'All right.  I'll risk it.'  He said a lot more, but I guess
it wasn't to me."

"Well, you're all right," she said, with a beaming smile.  "D'ye hear,
Minnie?  Mr. Kenoke's going to take it!"

Minnie, a freckle-faced girl, was busily chewing gum and watching the
spectacle.  She indifferently replied, "Yea," and craned her neck away
to focus some new development in the fire fight.

Lucy at once ignored her.

"Say, that was great, all right!  I'm much obliged, I'm sure.  That'll
mean something to me."  She was looking straight at Hiram.  Now she
hesitated, then, a bit flustered, concluded, "That was all right."

Hiram grinned and bobbed his head.

She looked at him in confusion a little longer, then turned to Minnie.

"Goodness!  I must get back in," she said hurriedly.

Still Minnie gave no heed, and Lucy faced Hiram once more.

"I said I'd tell you about it, didn't I?  Well, I will--that is, if you
care?"

Hiram bobbed his head again.

She looked through the jeweler's window at a small brass clock.

"Gracious!  Can that clock be right?  It's after eleven!  Say, listen:
I'm going off watch at twelve.  If you'll be here I'll tell you then."

"Yes, ma'am--I'll be here."

"All right.  Good-by.  Much obliged, I'm sure."

She squeezed back of Minnie, and scampered through the restaurant door.

Hiram stood watching the streams of water--that is, he looked that way.




CHAPTER VII

HIRAM, THE BUTTERFLY

"Mother, I've come home to die!" gasped Playmate Tweet.

He was seated in one of the yellow chairs near a window of the lounging
room.  He had dropped his newspaper and was staring at Hiram Hooker as
he strode through the door.

Hiram seated himself on the edge of a chair and grinned uncomfortably.

The ordeal of appearing before Tweet in his new clothes, at first
poignantly dreaded, had been absent from his thoughts for the past
hour.  Standing there before the jeweler's store after Lucy Dalles had
left him, tingling blissfully in every vein, the mundane thought that
Tweet was probably awaiting him in the lodging house had obtruded
itself and hurried him up the street.  As he opened the lounging-room
door he thought once more of his clothes.

Tweet rubbed his eyes and looked again.  "Christopher Columbus!" he
added in an undertone.  He blinked his eyes three times, then threw
himself back and laughed uproariously.

For a half minute he shook in his chair, then got up, wiped his twisted
nose with his handkerchief, and came over to his half resentful charge.

"Well, Hiram," he said with a chuckle, "how much did they set us back?"

"Set us back?"

"I mean, how poor are we now?"

"How poor are _we_?"

"Sure--Tweet, Hooker & Co. pays the bills."

"I guess I c'n do what I want to with my own money, can't I?"

"Sure--sure!  Don't get your shirt off.  I don't mean to insinuate that
you're not capable o' judiciously handlin' the firm's money.  I just
want you to read me the balance sheet."

"Well, then, I spent thirty-eight dollars, and I've got twenty-nine
dollars left."

"Stand up."

Hiram did so.

"Turn round."

Hiram wheeled slowly.

Tweet studied him from every angle, and as Hiram turned he noted the
twinkles which came and went in his slate-blue eyes.  Without another
word Tweet left him standing there, went back and sat down, and hid his
face behind his paper.

Hiram waited a minute, then slowly sank to the edge of his chair.
After a little he asked pleadingly:

"Ain't they all right?"

Tweet's paper trembled.  A bit of this, then Tweet lowered it and
presented a countenance which seemed never to have known a smile.

"Hiram," he remarked, "I don't wanta hurt your feelin's, but the part
o' true friendship calls for me to use the surgeon's knife.  Hiram, I
wouldn't wear that outfit to a funeral.  D'ye get me?"

Hiram's blue eyes blazed.  "Yes, I get you," he began coldly, then
curbed a threatening outburst.  "I know they're not the best in the
land," he concluded sensibly, "but I feel better in 'em."

"There's somethin' in that," Tweet propounded sagely.  "There's a whole
lot in gettin' that feel.  Good clothes kinda brace a fella up and give
him the nerve to buck on in the big game.  Hiram, if your new outfit
gives you the _feel_, it's the goods.  When you get next a little it'll
cost you more money to get that feel outa clothes.  After all, now,
when that tin-roof look wears off of 'em you won't appear so
whittled-out in that suit.  But now, layin' all jokes aside, are they
just the thing for drivin' old Jack and Ned on the railroad grade?
And didn't this sudden lavishness kinda set the company back on its
haunches?"

Hiram looked out the window.  "Did you see the fire?" he asked absently.

"Yes--walked round the block to get outa the crowd.  But----"

"I just had to kinda spruce up a bit, Mr. Tweet.  I felt so
kinda--well, kinda countrified and--and lost, you might say."

"What's the fire got to do with that?  And call me Playmate, too."

"Nothin', I suppose."

"Right across from the restaurant wasn't it?"

"Yes."

"M'm-m--I'd 'a' made a good lawyer, wouldn't I, Hiram?"

"I don't know--why?"

"Why, talkin' about sprucin' up, as you call it, you drift to a fire
that occurred across the street from the place where there's a
frowsy-topped waitress that's got you goin'.  Well, le's foget it.  Do
we go to southern California together, or not?  Our pile's dwindlin' on
account o' this butterfly life you're leadin'."

"I--I'd like to, but----  Well, I left home to get a start in the city,
and I think I oughta----  Really, I wanta go, but----"  Hiram gave it
up, and his lean face flushed.

"Go on--I didn't interrupt you."

"Well, I--that's all.  I want to go to work here."

Tweet laughed with a little snort.  "Now looky here," he said, "I think
I savvy you pretty well.  If I was to go to work and tell you outright
that you couldn't win Lucy, you'd get bull-headed and try to show me.
But le'me tell you this: You ain't goin' to win her till you get next
to yourself.  Now, Lucy's a pretty popular dame with the fellas about
the restaurant.  I've seen her joy-ridin' with fellas I know are there
with the coin, and savvy more in a minute than you ever knew.  Now,
wait a minute!--don't get excited.  All this ain't your fault.  It's
the fault o' your past environment.  You're a hick, and you can't help
it.  You get out and learn somethin' and gather up a few beans.  Then
come back and, if you still want the kid, go get her.

"Now, you see this Lucy this afternoon and tell her you're bound out
into the Great Unknown to make your fortune, but that you're comin'
back to see her.  Put emphasis on who you're comin' back to see.  Then
flee from temptation.  Come now--le's swallow this awful pill like a
man."

Hiram thought a long time, looking out the window.  In the midst of
this Tweet resumed his paper.

The sensible thing to do was for Hiram to sacrifice love to the
friendship that promised him a start, in order to gain love back more
conclusively in the end.  Yes, he loved her--he loved her madly!

Boiling the present situation right down to facts, he had little
confidence in Tweet's boasted powers.  He could not reconcile Tweet's
present impecunious condition with his hints of past affluence.  But he
liked him instinctively, which, after all, is more human and
satisfactory than liking a person after analyzing him and weighing his
good qualities against his shortcomings.  So it was the thought of
Tweet's friendship which finally prompted him to say: "I guess I'll go
with you."

"Good!"  Tweet dropped his paper.  "This afternoon?"

"No--to-morrow."

"Not on your life!  This afternoon."

"Well, I'll tell you in an hour or so.  Now--now it's about noon.  You
wait here a little, while I go down in the street.  Then I'll come
back, and we'll go eat."

Tweet looked at him long and steadily.  "Got a date with Lucy, eh?" he
said at last.

"Ye-yes--I saw her at the fire this morning.  She said she wanted to
see me when she went off watch at noon--I'll be right back--probably."

Tweet frowned, then laughed.  "Go ahead, Hooker," he relented testily;
"go ahead.  Got a date with her, eh?  I thought maybe you'd just go
down there and gape at her through the window.  Go to it--but don't
forget!"

Hiram hurried out.

Again his feet seemed palsied as he neared the restaurant.  Was he to
suffer such pangs of stage fright always when about to meet her?

He had not long to dwell on the query.  Before he knew it he was face
to face with her.  She had been looking in the jeweler's window while
she waited for him, and had turned as he came abreast.

She was smiling.  "You're a minute late," she scolded, pointing to the
jeweler's brass clock.

"Yes, ma'am--I was kept."

"Oh, don't look so serious.  A minute's nothing."

"No, ma'am--not much."

Silence claimed them for a time.

"Well, what'll we do?" she finally asked a little petulantly, and
turned her back on him to look into the window.

"I dunno," he began; then a sudden wild idea struck him.  He had seen
along the curbs automobiles bearing signs which read "For Hire--Four
Dollars an Hour."  It was worth it, if only to break this humiliating
situation.  "We might take a little spin in a machine," he finished
with a tottery tone of indifference.

"Oh, I'd like that," she said instantly.  "But I gotta dress.  We'll
get a car and ride 'round to where I room."

They walked to the corner, where was a taxi stand.  Hiram engaged a car
by the hour, and they entered.  She directed the driver to her rooming
house, and they were off.

The car presently drew up to the curb, and the driver swung the door
open for his passengers.  Into a dark, musty little parlor the girl led
Hiram of the butterfly life.

"Sit down," she invited; "and excuse me a minute."

She went back into the hall, and Hiram heard the tattoo of her feet on
the stairs.

It was a grand parlor, Hiram thought.  There was a piano, a phonograph,
a whatnot filled with specimens of quartz, and four cloth-covered
cushion rockers.  With rattlesnake fairness the one Hiram chose
squeaked a warning before it tried to land him on the back of his neck.

Hiram sat there round-eyed and dreaming, while outside the hired car
purred on, indifferent to the flight of time.

Twenty minutes later Hiram's dream was broken by the clatter of Lucy's
high heels on the stairs.  Lucy entered, dressed in silk and furs and
wearing a large picture hat.  The savings of many months were on Lucy's
back, and Hiram felt further removed from her than ever.

"Where'll we go?" he asked miserably as he clumsily helped her into the
car.

"Golden Gate Park, Mr. Hooker," she said.

The driver, having heard, touched his cap, and they rolled away.

"How'd you know my name?"  The burden of keeping this question had been
overriding Hiram's bashfulness since she had spoken it.

Lucy laughed.  "You didn't think I'd go so far as to invite you home
with me if I didn't know you, did you?  At least kinda know you?"

"I hadn't thought about that at all, ma'am.  But when you said 'Mr.
Hooker' it gave me a jolt."

"I'll bet it did.  Well, didn't you stand in front of the jewelry shop
for over a quarter of an hour before the fire this morning?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"And you didn't see your friend come out of the restaurant while you
were there?"

"Who, Tweet?  No, ma'am--I didn't."

"Well, he did.  He'd been in talking with me.  I didn't know his name,
though.  Is that it?  Tweet?  Heavens above!  Say, he's a funny guy.
Well, he'd been in talking about you.  He said you were out in front of
the jeweler's shop and wondered if he could get out without you seeing
him."

Hiram only stared and waited.

"He told me your name was Hiram Hooker, and that you had just come from
Mendocino County.  That's how I knew."

For quite a time she was silent.  Then she said:

"He appears to be sort of butting in, it seems to me."

Hiram waited again.

"He came in and says: 'Say, Lucy, your lifeline and mine are getting
tangled.  You're crossing my path and frustrating my plans.'  You know
how he talks!

"'How d'ye get that way?' I says.  'Spring it.'

"'Why, your many charms are leading my business partner from the path
of duty,' he says.

"'Go on,' I told him, 'and talk sense, if you've got anything to say.'

"Then he told me that you two were partners, and were going down to
southern California together to 'get a toehold,' he said; and that you
were keeping the thing back by--by--by wanting to hang around Frisco.
He said you two had a good thing and that you were spoiling it, and
that you were nearly broke and getting more so every minute.

"I kind of like him.  He's funny, but I'll bet he's right.  And he said
for me to give you the cold shoul--well, what he meant was for me to
advise you to hurry up and get out with him.

"But now listen: If I'd intended to do that I wouldn't have told you
that he told me to, would I?  Of course not.  I wanted to see you about
something else.  Two things: First, I promised to tell you about the
moving picture you helped me with this morning.  Then the other thing
is Mendocino."  She leaned forward and lowered her voice.  "Listen, I'm
from Mendocino County," she finished.  "I've been away three years.
I'm nearly dying to talk to some one from up there!"




CHAPTER VIII

LUCY'S AMBITIONS

Learning that Lucy Dalles was from Mendocino County was startling, but
surprise over this took second place in Hiram Hooker's thoughts.  He
was stricken with consternation to think that all the time he had been
before the jeweler's window, trying to nerve himself up to enter the
restaurant, she had known he was there.

"After your friend left the restaurant," she was saying, "I thought I'd
go out and tell you about me being from Mendocino.  Just as I left the
door the hook-and-ladder came by.  Then I stood by you watching the
fire, you know, till the Samax people drove up.  Then I forgot
everything but getting the picture for the fire scene in 'The Crowning
Defeat.'  I asked you to see Mr. Kenoke for me, and you did--and it was
dandy of you, too.  Now I'll tell you about my scenarios; then I want
to talk about nothing but Mendocino County.

"Well, I write scenarios for moving-picture production," she went on.
"That's one reason why I wanted the cashier's job--so I could have the
use of the boss' old typewriter.  I've been paying a public
stenographer fifty cents a thousand words to copy my work, and it cuts
into the profits when you get so little for a scenario.

"I've been writing them a year now.  I've sold ten.  That's not very
many, is it?--when you know; that I have written over fifty.  I've sold
most of mine to this Samax Company, through the mail; and one day I
went to their Western studio, here in the city, and told them who I was
and got acquainted with Mr. Kenoke.  He's their best producer, I think.

"As it happened, I am now working on a play that calls for a big fire
scene.  I was worried about it, because they send so many of my
scenarios back with the comment that they are too difficult to produce.
It's a dandy plot, and I hated to give it up just because it would
require a burning building.  They would hardly buy a building and burn
it down just to please me, you know.

"But when they hear of a fire they get right to it, if they can, and
take rescue scenes, and so forth, then have their contract writers work
up a scenario in which the scenes can be used.  But that's hack work.
Mine is different, you see.  My scenario called for a fire, and
couldn't be produced without it.  Quite different from having a fire
call for a scenario.

"Well, now you know.  I couldn't explain then, you see.  There wasn't
time, and, besides, I was too excited.  I doubted if you would have
understood, either--you just from the country.

"Now don't think I'm making fun of you.  But it's the truth, isn't it?
And it was certainly great of you to go the way you did, not having the
least idea of what you were up against."

"It wasn't much," Hiram said in his unassuming way.

"Yes, it was," the girl said with a lack of the enthusiasm which had
marked her former grateful utterances.  Her eyes were far away, and it
was apparent that another matter held precedence in her mind.  "You
just got into Frisco last night, your partner said."

"Yes, ma'am."

"I could see that when you came in the restaurant.  Your new suit looks
fairly nice."  She scanned him frankly.

Hiram squirmed.  "Tweet said I looked whittled out in it," he said
truthfully.

"You don't any such thing!  You don't mind my being so personal, do
you?  I've taken quite an interest in you since Mr. Tweet talked about
you--especially as you are from Mendocino.  You looked so forlorn and
scared last night when you came in the restaurant.  I could see that
you didn't know what to order or how to order it, and that you were
half starved.  I remembered my first day in the city.  Honestly, I was
scared blue!  But tell me--what part of the country are you from?"

"I'm from Bear Valley," Hiram told her.

"Bear Valley!  Why, our old place is just on the other side of the
range.  I've been in Bear Valley lots of times.  Our place is in Temple
Valley."

"I know Temple Valley," Hiram put in quickly.

"Of course you do!  Why did you come down here?"

"I was gettin' tired of the backwoods--been there all my life," said
Hiram lamely.

Lucy's eyes grew dreamy.  "I thought the same," she said pensively at
last.  "I was born there in Temple Valley.  I was content, too, till I
was about twenty; then I got to mixing with the summer boarders that
came to the Mills place for the trout season.  They'd have something on
every night, and I got acquainted and was always invited.  I got to
wanting to go to the city, and I hated Temple Valley.

"Then my folks died.  I didn't get along the best in the world with
Emma--that's by [Transcribers' note: my?] brother's wife.  So I pulled
out the day after my twentieth birthday and came to Frisco--and I've
been here ever since.  But there was another reason why I left."

She sighed and leaned back.

"You've heard of Mrs. Cummings, the writer, haven't you?   She was up
at Mills' place one summer, and I got acquainted with her.  I told her
I'd always had the writing bug, and she encouraged me.  I had no
education but what I'd got in the Temple district school, but I'd read
a lot.

"So I wanted to write, and finally I left and came to Frisco, and I had
an awful time.  Finally I got a job in a cheap restaurant and had to
wait table, and when I got the cashier's job last night I got out of
the rut for the first time in three years.  I quit two or three times,
thinking I could make a living writing scenarios, but I always had to
go back to the beaneries.

"I'm going to hold down the restaurant job till things come my way.
I've given up the idea that I'm a genius.  My clothes cost a lot.
Things will break for me some day.  Maybe I'll get in the pictures.  I
want to go to Los Angeles and try, when I can save a little jack.  I
left the woods to win out, and I'm going to do it by fair means or
foul.  I'm ambitious.  I'm determined to be rich some day."

Hiram drank in her chatter for two hours more, and when they returned
to her rooming house he paid the driver of the car thirteen dollars and
fifty cents, and now had only fifteen-fifty to his name.  He was
horrified at the prospects, but blissfully conscious that he had given
Lucy Dalles an afternoon of pleasure.

"I want to show you my room," she said, as the car departed.  "Come in.
Don't make any noise going upstairs."

She led the way in, and he followed her softly.  She opened a door on
the second floor and stood back for him to look.

"I furnished my own room," she said proudly.  "It's all mine, and paid
for--pretty nearly."

Hiram stood aghast in the doorway.  Never, except in the show windows,
had his eye rested on such splendor.

There was a rug on the floor, soft and thick, which Lucy told him was a
genuine Smyrna.  There was a leopard skin, with stuffed head and red,
gaping jaws.  There were two handsome overstuffed leather chairs, and
the bedroom set was Circassian walnut, so Lucy said.

She closed the door and hurried him below.

"You see, I've realized part of my ambition," she said, sinking into
the squeaky rocker.  "I'm not so clever or so cultured and all that,
but I came from the backwoods to be somebody and have something, and
I'll make good one way or another.  What you saw is just a beginner.  I
might have bought a typewriter instead, but--well, I just didn't."'

"They're mighty nice," commented Hiram, as she paused.

"Yes, they made a fool out of me when I hit Frisco," she continued
absently, "but my day's coming.  I'm getting a toehold, as your Mr.
Tweet says.  I've rubbed off some of the Mendocino moss."  She glanced
a little vainly at her slim, well-garbed figure.  "I'm after the money
now--and I'll get it!

"But tell me about your partner," she continued.  "Who is he, anyway?"

"I can't tell you."

"M'm-m!"  She pursed her lips and frowned thoughtfully.  "And he just
wants you to go out with him, hit or miss?"

"That seems to be it, ma'am.  And I don't think I'll go--now."

"Now?  What do you mean, now?"

A wave of red ran over Hiram's face, and he began stammering.

The hint of a smile flickered across Lucy's lips as she hurried on
without his answer.  Hiram was a big man, ruggedly handsome.  It
pleased Lucy's vanity to have him gawk at her as he did.

"I think I can find out something about this gentleman," she said.  "He
came in the restaurant a few days ago, and I noticed two business men I
know quite well talking about him.  I'll find out something about this
Tweet for you, and let you know.  You don't want to let anybody play
you for a sucker."

"Oh, I can take care of myself when it comes to that."

"_Yes_, you can!"  She laughed.  "You'll lose some of that confidence
before you've been here many days.  Now don't be offended.  Shall I get
this dope on him, if I can?"

"I'd thank you kindly, ma'am."

"Well, I will, then.  Now let's forget it and talk about Mendocino.  Go
on--you talk so little."




CHAPTER IX

HIRAM WAKES UP

Hiram walked with an elastic step from Lucy Dalles' rooming house.  It
was hard to believe that all that was happening to him was true.  In a
sort of haze that floated before him as he walked along hung Lucy's
face.  He wished to go on forever thus.  He found no fault in her--he
refused to.  Some imp whispered to him that his fifteen dollars and
fifty cents would last forever.  He did not actually believe this, but
he refused to worry over the matter.  Fate was kind.  He was living a
dream--and who needs money in Dreamland?

It was like the slap of a cold towel when Tweet's face suddenly
displaced Lucy's in the haze.  Up there in the lounging room Tweet had
been waiting for him four hours!  Tweet was doubtless hungry--he,
Hiram, had been to a feast of love!

He felt like sneaking away to another lodging house till Tweet had
disappeared.  But he did not.  Instead he sneaked up the dusty stairs
and through the door of the lounging room.

Tweet was there, half hidden behind his paper.  Hiram sidled into a
seat, swallowed twice, and said "Hello."

Tweet at once lowered the paper and looked at him at if he did not
quite recall his face.

"Why, hello there!" he returned carelessly.  "Back, eh?  Here's
somethin' may int'rest you."

He got up, folding the paper, and carried it over to Hiram, pointing to
an article headed:

"New Ditch Digger Makes Good."

Hiram stared at the heading in dire confusion.  He had been half
prepared for a rating; Tweet's complete disregard of his remissness was
distressing.

"Mr. Tweet, I've got to apologize," he began.

"Bad practice," Tweet interrupted.  "The better way is to never do
anythin' that calls for an apology.  Can't say that I live up to it,
but I do my darnedest--and angels can do no more.  After the first half
hour I knew you wouldn't show up, so I went down and had lunch.  More'n
you've had, I'll bet.  Just glance over that article and see what you
think of it."

"I thought you were broke."

"Oh, they can't keep a good man down.  The friend I went to see
insisted that I take a dollar he had that wasn't workin'.  Don't
suppose I'll be with you for dinner, either, as I've got an engagement
at about that hour.  But read that article."

Hiram obeyed.

It told of a ditch digger that had recently been enlarged from the
inventor's model, and which, at the first trial, was proving a decided
success in moving earth more rapidly than any previously invented.
With only his model to prove his claims, the inventor had managed to
sell all the stock; and from the very beginning the operations would be
carried out by a closed corporation.  The question before the directors
was whether to have machines manufactured and hire them out, or to
construct a plant and manufacture them for the trade.

To Hiram it was dull and incomprehensible, and after finishing it he
looked up at Tweet for an explanation.

"I got a sixth int'rest in her, Hooker," Tweet carelessly informed him.
"My pay for sellin' the stock for 'em."

"Really!  Is it worth anything to you?"

"I'm holdin' it' at eight thousand five hundred.  It'll be worth double
that in a year or two."

"Eight thousand five hundred!" Hiram stared unbelievingly at Tweet.
"Why don't you sell it, then?"

"Didn't I say it would be worth double that amount in a year or two?"

"Yes, but you're broke and----"

"And I'll stay broke on a deal like that."  Tweet's indignation caused
him to grab his off-center nose and impatiently correct its obstinate
trend, but to no avail.  "But le's forget it and get back to that
bugbear of our young lives.  _When_ are we _going_ to southern
California?"

Hiram sat framing a reply, which was rather a difficult process.

"Le's wait till to-morrow, anyway," he said at last.

"Had quite a little chat with Lucy to-day, eh?"

"Yes, I did.  When you told----"  Hiram bit his tongue.  "The truth is,
she's from Mendocino County, too, and we--we--that is, we found it out."

Not the faintest sign of suspicion or surprise showed in Tweet's face.
"Well, suit yourself," he said nonchalantly.  "It's a little late, or
I'd go this afternoon.  But to-morrow I go.  My friend'll dig up the
price, but I hate to hit him up any more.  Think it over a little
longer, Hooker--I'm goin' down for a little stroll.  But
remember--before noon to-morrow I've gotta have a definite answer.
I've found that Morgan & Stroud send their bunches out every day at one
o'clock."

Tweet folded his precious paper, crammed it his pocket, and left the
room.

A few minutes afterward Hiram followed.  He ate lunch and dinner in
one, then strolled about the city, dreaming of Lucy and fretfully
counting the hours till he might expect to feast his material eyes on
her again.  At nine o'clock he returned to the lodging house, made sure
that Tweet was not in the lounging room, and went to bed.

Next morning, close to nine o'clock, he was shifting from one foot to
the other before the cashier's counter in the restaurant.  From the
little window inclosure came the clicking of typewriter keys, a little
more spirited than before.  Hiram had strategically chosen the slack
business hour of the morning.  He had eaten breakfast in a cheaper
restaurant, two blocks down the street.  He had not seen Tweet.  He had
been walking about the streets since six o'clock.

The keys kept clicking.  Hiram cleared his throat several times, and at
last, as before, tapped on the show case with a coin.  The clicking
stopped, a skirt swished, and the gates of heaven opened, it seemed to
Hiram.

"Well, look who's here!  Good morning."

"Ha-ha-ha!  Good morning, ma'am."

"Then let's begin this good morning by dropping the 'ma'am.'  They all
say it up in Mendocino, I know.  It's considered the _ne plus ultra_ of
good breeding up there.  You see I'm trying to steer you straight, and
I've got to be frank.  I didn't have anybody kind enough to pick the
moss off me."

"I'll stop sayin' it, if you say so."

"Sure, you want to.  Now, I've had another visit from Mr. Tweet.  He
roasted me for not carrying out his orders.  He's just the least bit
too fresh, and I intimated as much.  But he told me just about how much
money you had, and I decided you'd better take his advice and go with
him."

"But I've decided not to go at all now," said Hiram.  "I'm goin' to
begin lookin' for a job here in the city to-day."

"Aw, you can't get a job here that'll make you any money.  Tweet told
me something about where you're going down there in southern
California.  It's on the desert.  A new railroad's building.  Things
will be lively.  A friend of mine was in here at the time.  He's got a
lot of automobile trucks, and makes piles of money.  Maybe you noticed
him.  Good-looking fellow in a brown suit.  Drives a big drab car?"

"Ye-yes, I've seen him," admitted Hiram resentfully.

"Well, he was in here and talked with Tweet, and he said he thought
he'd look into the freighting proposition down there.  With his trucks,
you know.  There's a long haul over the desert and the mountains, it
seems, and he says it ought to be good.  Said maybe he'd take me down
some time, if anything turned up."

"You wouldn't go!"

"Wouldn't I?  Huh!  You bet your life I would!  I only hope he'll stick
to what he says.  Maybe I'd get to see you down there.  Tweet said he'd
heard that the place they freight to is a live one.  Ragtown, he said
they called it.  That's the kind of a place to make money in.  I'd go,
if I were you.  Go down and make a stake, and then come back to Frisco.
Money talks here."

"With you?" Said Hiram, slowly drinking in dread suspicion.

"You betcha my life!" Lucy said lightly.

She broke off suddenly and turned toward the door with a smile of
welcome on her lips.  In came Hiram Hooker's hated rival, Al Drummond.

"Hello, Lucy!" he called breezily.  Then he leaned over the counter,
glanced hurriedly about the empty restaurant, and kissed the girl on
the lips.

She slapped at him playfully.  "You got a nerve, Al!" she exclaimed.

Hiram Hooker heard no more, for blindly he was stumbling out, crushed,
heartbroken.  Hiram Hooker suddenly had decided to go to southern
California with Mr. Orr Tweet, and the sooner they could get away the
better he would like it.  He realized now that Lucy Dalles was not the
adventure girl who had beckoned in his dreams.  She was a cheap,
scheming adventuress, and he hated the very thought of her now--and was
plunged into the depths of despair and humiliation.

In the lounging room he found Tweet.

"Come on," he said huskily, "le's go to the employment office.  I'm
ready."

Orr Tweet arose, casting a curious look at Hiram's haggard face, but
said nothing as he followed him out.

Fifteen minutes later they entered a large employment bureau on Clay
Street, where were gathered perhaps a hundred workingmen reading the
bulletins or lounging on benches.

Every now and then a brisk, leonine-headed man walked about among them,
making announcements as a train caller does in a big union depot.

"Shippin' to Oregon--two o'clock to-morrow afternoon--I want two
hundred muckers--forty cents an hour--board one dollar a day.  I want
twenty skinners, same job, forty a month and found.  Sign up, boys!
Hit the trail and make yer stake.  Two dollars is the bill!

"I want one hundred men to work in onions and potatoes.
Three-twenty-five a day and board.  Think of it, boys!
Three-twenty-five a day and _board_!  Like gettin' money from home!
Get your blankets and line up for the chance of a lifetime.

"Then listen, boys!  I want six rough carpenters--the rougher the
better--mine work.  Eight dollars a day, eight hours--_dollar an hour_!
Fee two dollars.  Think of that, huskies!  Can ye swing a hammer or
push a saw?  You're on if you can--sign up!  Ship ye out this evenin'.
A snap!  A cinch!

"I want a sub-grade foreman at seven dollars--eight hours!

"I want skinners, muckers, hard-rock men for Washington.  I want
lumberjacks for Washington--long job--good pay!  I want hard-rock men
for Alaska--the harder the better.  And I want----"

Here Orr Tweet grasped the enthusiast's sleeve.  "How about those
jerkline skinners for southern California?" he asked.  "Saw it in the
paper."

"I'll see, old-timer--I'll look that up for you right away.  Just step
inside, please--you and your pal.  Let you know all about it in two
minutes.  Line up for a good job, boys!  Get out and make a stake!
Just a minute, boss man.  Step right inside."

Inside a railing, where many clerks were at work, the applicants were
turned over to a sallow young man, who, being informed of what they
wanted, consulted certain memoranda.  Then he swiveled toward the two
and gave them the particulars.

"Gold Belt Cut-off," he said.  "Buildin' across the desert in southern
California.  Good camps--good pay--good grub--good water----"

"Cut all that," dryly interrupted Orr Tweet.

"All right, sir," replied the clerk cheerfully.  "Main contractors,
Demarest, Spruce & Tillou.  Want fifty muckers and fifty skinners--two
jerkline skinners--must be A-1.  Fifty-five a month and found.  Fee two
dollars.  Ship you out one o'clock to-morrow.  On?"

Tweet nudged Hiram and nodded, and Hiram tendered four silver dollars.

"Just a minute," said the clerk--though accepting the money.  "This
office can't afford to get in bad with big contractors like Demarest,
Spruce & Tillou.  They've specified A-1 jerkline skinners, to skin
eight, ten, and twelve over the desert and mountains.  Are you there?"

"We are there," replied Orr Tweet.

The clerk looked doubtful.  "Well, guess we'll have to take your word
for it.  Chances are you'll break away when you get to where you're
makin' it, anyway.  This is kind of a special job, though.  Demarest
himself wrote a personal letter about the two jerkline skinners.
They're not for him, it seems--just to be shipped down with the other
skinners and muckers and hard-rock men we're sendin' him.  The jerkline
skinners are for 'Jerkline Jo.'  Ever heard that name?  If you're
jerkline skinners that have followed railroad work you ought to've
heard o' Jerkline Jo.  Usta be monakered 'Gypo Jo.'"

"We're not railroaders," said Mr. Tweet glibly.  "We're from Mendocino
County--the big woods you know.  But we can skin 'em for Jerkline Jo or
any other man."

"I'll take a chance," said the clerk briskly.  "If you'd just wanted to
get your railroad trip out o' Frisco you'd not thought to pick out the
jerkline job, when only two were wanted.  Jerkline Jo is a woman,
though."

"Yeah?" returned Mr. Tweet, then said to the heartbroken Hiram: "You
can't escape 'em, it seems, Hooker--you big mountain of a lady killer!
This is gonta be good.  Send us to Jerkline Jo, old hoss!  She'll bless
you with her last breath.  Chances are you'll meet a regular woman,
now, Hiram--not a doll with three years' wages on her back!  A big
outdoor picture like you fallin' for a bunch o' female French pastry
like that!"

The employment agency clerk shrugged and took their names.




CHAPTER X

JERKLINE JO

About six months previous to Hiram Hooker's momentous debut into the
world outside of the big trees of Mendocino County, a girl stood in her
dormitory room at Kendrick Hall and read a telegram with tear-dimmed
eyes.

This girl was Miss Josepha Modock.  She was twenty-two, and Providence
had been kind to her--nay, lavish.  She was straight and sturdy and
strong.  Her hair was of a dark chestnut hue, and its beauty and
luxuriant growth made it at once the envy and admiration of her fellow
students of the Wisconsin boarding school.  Her eyes were large and
dark and luminous, her nose just far enough short of perfect, her lips
full and distracting.

Josepha Modock had been two years at Kendrick Hall.  She was older than
most of the girls who were her classmates, for the desire and
opportunity to acquire an education had come to her at a late day in
her teens.  She was ambitious, however, and was making fast progress
with her college preparatory course.  Then came the telegram which she
now held, and over which she wept tears of grief.

Her name was not really Josepha Modock.  Modock was the name of her
foster father, and he and her foster mother, the latter dead now for
ten years, had given the girl the name of Josepha, because, when they
had found her a mere baby weeping and lost on the great desert of
California, they had discovered a "J" embroidered on her underwear.

At that time Peter Modock--"Pickhandle" Modock--had been what is known
in railroad-construction circles as a gypo man, or shanty man.  A gypo
man is an impecunious construction contractor whose light, haphazard
outfit of teams and tools makes it necessary for him to subcontract in
the lightest dirt work from a slightly better equipped subcontractor,
who in turn has taken a subcontract from the main contractors in a big
piece of railroad building.  In the vernacular of the grade, a gypo
man's daughter, if she follows the outfit, is known as a gypo queen.

Josepha Modock, then, had grown up in the camp of Pickhandle Modock,
and in time had been known as a gypo queen, or shanty queen, and the
prettiest one in the business at that.

It was when the Salt Lake Road was being built across the Mohave Desert
that the baby girl had been found.  Pickhandle Modock had taken a
little piece of work from Grace Brothers, and was on his way across the
sandy wastes to pitch camp and begin operations.  His outfit was to be
one of the first to arrive, and as yet no definite line of travel had
been established to the work.  A terrific sandstorm came up, and the
outfit became lost on the desert, where men and teams wandered about
without water for many perilous hours, some time in the midst of which
the human atom afterward called Josepha was found.

She had been sole mistress of a tiny camp tucked away in a
half-sheltered little arroyo, over which spiked yucca palms stood guard
and helped to break the wind and check the drifting sands.  There were
provisioned pack bags there, and the blowing sand had not entirely
covered the small hoof prints of several burros.  A corral of corky
yucca trunks held the child a prisoner, and more trunks had been laid
on the walls to form a roof, which kept off coyotes.  In here they
found her sobbing, suffering for water, abandoned by her elders, while
slowly but surely the sand was sifting in to bury her alive.

All trails leading to or from the spot had been wiped out.  The child
was cautiously given water and food, and the suffering contractor's
party camped there, hoping for the return of the man or men who had
left the baby to such dangers in the merciless desert.  But no one came
to claim her that day nor during the ensuing night; so next morning
Pickhandle's outfit set out to search desperately to better their own
alarming conditions, and took the child along.  Modock left behind a
note explaining their action and informing whoever was responsible how
he might eventually be connected with, whereupon the child would be
returned.

That day the sandstorm subsided, and the outfit stumbled upon the road
to their destination.  They found water before noon, and camped there
to recuperate.  Here also, when they took their leave, they left word
of their appropriation of the baby girl.  Later, when they had reached
their camp site and settled down, Modock, having received no
communication relative to the child, returned on horseback and sought
for the spot where she had been found.  At last it was discovered, and
it was quite apparent that during the ten days' interval no one had
been there.  The pack bags with the supplies, and the few miners' tools
that lay about, were all but buried in the sands.  Modock's note was
still there.

Deciding that the baby's guardians or parents had perished in the
storm, Pickhandle Modock took the articles for the purpose of
identification, if some one ever should claim the child, and returned
with them to his camp, greatly to the joy of motherly Anna Modock, his
wife.  Anna Modock had no children, and now she loved the desert waif
as if the child had been her own.

Slowly Pickhandle Modock prospered in the years that followed, for he
was a thrifty, hard-working man.  The child, whom they had named
Josepha, grew to girlhood, and reached young womanhood as a sprite of
the camps--a gypo queen.  The Modocks were uneducated people, but knew
it, and strove to make amends by educating the girl to the best of
their ability.  When the contractor had prospered to the point where he
needed and could afford a bookkeeper, he employed a gray-haired
derelict of the grade, half of whose duties were to educate Josepha.

The old man loved the child and did his best by her, guiding her
successfully through the elementary branches and succeeding in
implanting in her mind what is known as a common-school education.  She
learned rapidly, but showed no particular interest in her studies.
With the work of the grade she was enraptured.  At ten she was driving
a slip team, loading and dumping without the help of any one.  Later
she drove wheeler teams, then snap teams, and even the six-horse plow
teams.  She became a wonderful horsewoman, and, when in the West,
entered contests at rodeos in trick riding, riding buckers and
so-called outlaws, and won many prizes.  Horses and mules loved her.
Her voice or her hand spoke to them in a language that they seemed to
know.  She could break a colt to steady work in half the time required
by any man she had ever met.  It was said that the only thing a horse
or mule would not do for her was to talk, whereupon Josepha trained a
colt to "talk," just to prove that her understanding of animals was
virtually unlimited.

So Joshepha Modock grew to young womanhood, admired, loved, and spoiled
by the thousands of nomad laborers who knew her.  At eighteen she could
truthfully boast of a hundred proposals of marriage, and some of them
had been worth an ambitious girl's consideration.  Gypo Jo they called
her, and she was known all over the West, where her foster father's
operations were confined, and stories of her beauty and horsewomanship
had gone East and North and South, for railroad-construction laborers
are a nomadic brood and repeat their tales and traditions from coast to
coast.

Then Pickhandle Modock, whose wife had died some years before, made the
move which finally brought his mounting prospects to the verge of ruin.
Just when he was on the point of being recognized as a contractor of
consequence, and owned a big, fine outfit of stock and tents and
implements, he decided to change his activities to those of a freighter.

Numerous railroad projects were being launched in the West, and most of
the lines were bound to extend through countries difficult to access.
Contractors preferred to have their freight hauled to them by regular
freighters, so that every team of their own could be put on the task of
railroad building.  Or so Pickhandle Modock reasoned.

Accordingly he sold his construction outfit, and with the proceeds
bought heavy freight wagons and heavy young teams, and launched forth
in his new career.  For a year or more he followed railroad camps with
his heavy freight outfit; then he suddenly decided that he was getting
too old for camp life and to be eternally moving about.  So when a new
gold mine was opened up in the mountains that overlook southern
California's desert, he moved into the little frontier town of Palada,
forty miles from the new mines, and got the freighting contract from
this railroad point up into the mountains.

He bought out the town's largest store, and set up a blacksmith and
wagoner's shop to keep his great wagons in repair and his hard-working
teams shod.  Here for a year or more Josepha attended high school
during the winter months, and drove eight and ten-horse teams with a
jerkline to the mines in summer, and acquired her new title of Jerkline
Jo because of her skill in training and handling the big teams.  Here,
too, she required [Transcriber's note: acquired?] her thirst for an
education, and, torn between her new ambition and her love for the big
outdoors and her devoted mules and horses, she at last set off for
Wisconsin for her preparatory course at Kendrick Hall.

Pickhandle Modock, however, had reckoned without the automobile truck,
which now was fast displacing heavy freight teams.  While as yet the
road into the mountains was not in the best shape for trucks, at least
during winter months, still the noisy transporters of freight, of the
lower tonnage capacity, were taking a great deal of business from him.
Then the road on the other side of the mountains, connecting with the
big coast-side cities, was paved; and this ended Pickhandle Modock's
career as a jerkline freighter.  The town of Palada, too, degenerated
from an active little supply point to a stagnating desert village, with
no visible means of support, and Pickhandle Modock found himself with a
big stock of goods on hand with no one to buy, and with sixty or more
heavy freight horses eating their heads off in their corrals.

His circumstances went from bad to worse, but he had carefully kept all
this from his adopted daughter, in the preparatory school in the Middle
West.  Consequently the blithe and lovable Jerkline Jo knew nothing of
the state of affairs when the telegram announcing her father's death
reached her that fateful morning.

It stunned her at first.  She could scarcely believe that lovable,
hard-working, grizzled old Pickhandle Modock, the only father she had
ever known had gone out of her life forever.  The justice of the peace
at Palada, who had handled Pickhandle's legal affairs, had sent the
telegram, which advised her to return at once, as she was named as the
sole heir to her foster father's estate.  The telegram--a night letter
and a long one--hinted of things of which she had not even dreamed, an
prepared her for financial disappointments.

She at once realized that her school days at Kendrick Hall were ended,
just when the future looked so bright.  She would have entered college
next year, and this, too, she must now forego, just when her ambition
was at its height.

But she had been through many discouragements as a gypo queen, and she
did not flinch.  She had known poverty--even actual want--had fought
mud and sandstorms and cold and heat and rain that hampered work for
weeks and months.  In her was the indomitable spirit of the pioneer.
She bravely and silently packed her treasured belongings, bade a
dry-eyed good-by to her tearful instructors and classmates, and set her
face toward the Western desert to learn the worst, and meet it as
hard-fighting old Pickhandle Modock would have wished her to meet
it--as a girl called Jerkline Jo should meet life's threatening defeats.




CHAPTER XI

THE RETURN OF JERKLINE JO

When the long overland train contemptuously groaned to a reluctant stop
in Palada the infrequent occurrence told the town that Jerkline Jo had
returned for her foster father's funeral and the readjustment of his
badly involved affairs.  Old friends, old pals, old lovers crowded
about her on the depot platform, wringing her strong hand in sympathy
and offering help.  The village hack was running no more now, so
friends carried her baggage for her to the house on the hill, where lay
the body of Pickhandle Modock.

Friends stayed with her that night.  The funeral was solemnized next
day.  In all the world, now, Jerkline Jo had not the semblance of a
relative, so far as she knew.  She even did not know her name, and of
Pickhandle Modock's family she had met not a single soul.  But she had
youth, courage, and ambition, and she went bravely at the many tasks
before her.

With the old justice of the peace she took up her father's affairs, and
it soon became evident that to attempt to continue the store under
existing conditions would be the part of folly.  The business was
deeply in debt to jobbers in the cities on the coast side of the
mountains, and such stock as they would accept must go back to them to
cancel their claims.  The store building was mortgaged; the residence
property was mortgaged.  The teams and wagons and the blacksmith shop
seemed to be all that she could save from the wreckage, and these
appeared to be more of an encumbrance than otherwise.

Still, she decided, against the advice of all well-meaning friends, to
try to hold on to them and to be able to own them, clear of any claims
against them.  She knew the freighting business and construction
teaming, and virtually nothing else; so with the idea that all of
Pickhandle Modock's proud building must not have been for naught, she
fought for final control of the freight outfit, and would not listen to
those who claimed that the days of freighting with teams were over
forever.

In a month everything was settled--all creditors satisfied.  She had
arranged to pay the store's debts with the acceptable stock on hand,
having made great concessions.  She had promised the store building and
the residence property to the mortgagees, effective after the will had
been probated.  To her delight, she found that the teams, blacksmith's
and wagoner's equipment, and the wagons would be hers intact.  True,
the teams were a great expense, and there was almost nothing left with
which to buy hay and grain for them.  But she was making inquiry here
and there in an effort to put them to work again.  Eventually she was
successful in getting them on mountain pasture at a dollar and a half a
head per month.  There were sixty-one animals in all, and the pasturage
fees amounted to quite a monthly sum, but it was far inferior to the
monthly feed bills she had been paying.

For several months she hung on desperately, hoping against hope, with
everything going out and nothing coming in, then one bright and
long-to-be-remembered day came news of the new railroad which was to
cross the desert a hundred miles from Palada.

Jerkline Jo made inquiry and found out the work was to begin at once,
and that the project was a large one, involving difficult construction
feats.  By train she rode to the nearest railroad point, met the
engineers of the preliminary survey, found an old friend in the party,
and with him rode horseback on an old mining road over the range that
stood between the railroad and that part of the desert which the new
route would cross.

Close study of the engineers' maps and her general knowledge of
construction conditions told her much.  She decided on the logical
place where the inevitable "rag town" would spring up.  This, she
reasoned, would be as close as possible to the biggest camp of the main
contractors, Demarest, Spruce & Tillou.

There was water to be had at several widely separated places along the
new right of way, but she knew that the water supply closest to the big
camp would draw the tent city about it.

She knew, too, where the big camp would be, for the simple reason that
the heaviest piece of work is eventually left to the main contractors;
so she was able to figure to a dot just where Demarest, Spruce &
Tillou's Camp Number One would locate.  She had not the remotest idea,
then, however, how this knowledge was to benefit her later.

To the tent town and to the camps of the many subcontractors who would
come, thousands of tons of freight must be hauled.  The railroad point
nearest to the spot where the main contractor would camp was the town
of Julia, from which the two had ridden horseback, and the mountain
range lay between Julia and the right of way of the proposed, route.  A
forty-five mile trip through heavy desert sands, over the steep grades
of an abandoned mountain road, and through heavy sands again would
inevitable, and until the new steel rails had crept to a point opposite
Julia, teams or automobile truck must supply the laborers and teams
with the necessities of life.

Jo knew little about automobile trucks, but she did not fear them.
They would give her keen competition, no doubt, at least during summer
months but a study of the mountain soil convinced her that in winter
there would be another story to tell.  Anyway, she and her beautiful
freight animals must take their chance against these modern machines.
It would be a race between the tortoise and the hare; and every one
knows that the hare has gained no little reputation from the outcome of
that legendary contest.

From Julia, Jerkline Jo hurried by train to San Francisco, to the
Western office of the big contracting firm of Demarest, Spruce &
Tillou, whose headquarters were in Minneapolis.  She knew Mr. Demarest
personally, and was fortunate in finding him in San Francisco upon her
arrival there.

"Well, well, well!" the big man cried jovially, as the girl was ushered
into his private office.  "Gypo Jo!  Heavens to Betsy!  Girl, I haven't
seen you in five years.  Put 'er there for old times' sake!"

"It's Jerkline Jo nowadays, Mr. Demarest," and she laughed.

Philip Demarest was a large, portly man, with a ruddy, red face,
blue-veined and kindly.  He had come up from the grade, and was
eminently proud of his successful climb.

For thirty minutes he refused positively to talk business.  He
preferred to sit and dwell on bygone days with the one-time queen of
Pickhandle Modock's gypo camp, to listen to the account of her father's
rise and fall and his subsequent untimely death, and of the girl's
ambitions and life in the Middle Western school.  They told many a
story, these old-timers of the nomadic camps, and had many a laugh over
quaint remembrances.  Then they got down to business.

Demarest listened carefully to Jo's ideas, and as she concluded he
drummed thoughtfully on his desk.

"I think myself, Jo," he said presently, "that in winter you can grab
off the money from any old automobile concern.  But through the summer
months they're gonta give you a nice little run for your money.  And if
they get freight there with less delay than you fail to avoid, and can
do it for the same figure, they're gonta rampse you--that's all.

"Certain parties are lookin' into the matter already," he went on.
"There's one fella here in Frisco that's got a fleet o' trucks--fella
named Albert Drummond.  Shrewd customer, too.  He was tryin' to make a
dicker with us.  But we'll make no deals.  We're not goin' to freight
any ourselves if we can get out of it.  But we'll sign no contracts in
such a matter.  Lowest bidder gets our business so long as he don't
fail to keep us supplied with all we need.  If you can underbid these
truck men, you'll get the business; and from what I know about you, I
have no doubt but that you'll deliver the goods."

"Gasoline is terribly high right now," Jo pointed out.

"So's hay, for that matter," said Demarest bluntly.

"I've heard, too, of a possible scarcity of gas," Jo told him.

"Yes, but the scarcity of hay is almost as threatenin', my girl; and
those big horses certainly can eat the stuff.  But tell me--what do you
figure you can lay freight down for at the spot where you say we're
bound to locate our biggest camp?"

"Two and a half cents a pound," was her prompt reply.

"It's an awful price, when you think it over," he said reflectively.
"Just imagine, Jo; two and a half cents a pound bein' added onto the
price of a sack o' flour--with flour at the unheard-of price it's
already reached.  And hay and grain!  Jo, it's simply staggering."

"I admit that," she said.  "But I suppose you took all that into
account when you made your bid on the job."

"You bet your sweet life we did, girl!  And I'll tell you what--we
figured freight at three and a half cents a pound."

"You're fortunate.  I'll get that, too, if I beat the trucks."

"Figurin' on gougin' us out of our profits already, eh?"

"Not at all, Mr. Demarest.  Two and a half cents is my minimum.  I'll
freight for that only if forced to by the trucks.  I doubt if I can
make money at that figure.  Only a trial over an extended period of
time will tell.  It all depends on the nature of the soil--on the
condition that the roads develop after a period of heavy traffic over
them, and the devastation of the winter rains.  There'll be snow in
those mountains, too.  It's a gamble--a big gamble--but all that I can
see against me is the fact that trucks don't eat hay when they're not
at work."

"And how d'ye know where our Camp One is going to be located, girl?" he
asked kindly.  "I don't know myself yet."

"Of course you don't know positively," she replied.  "But I'll bet you
ten to one that you'll never sublet that piece of heavy-rock work
through the buttes.  I don't know a subcontractor--and I've not been
out of touch with the grade so very long--who could tackle that
stupendous task.  So, if you can't sublet it--and I'm betting you
can't--it will be up to you folks to do it yourselves.  So that tells
me where your largest camp will be, and at the nearest water to your
largest camp the rag town will spring up.  Isn't that all logical?"

"Sound as a dollar," he told her.  "You weren't raised by Pickhandle
Modock for nothing, were you?"

She rose from her chair.  "Tell your subs to send me a wire at Julia
when they're ready for any freight, at two and a half cents for a
starter," she said.  "I'll get it to 'em.  But if no one meets my
price, look for a raise to three cents for the second trip.  Of course,
if I don't hear from them, I'll know some one has beaten me out.  Then
I'll see what can be done.  Your camp, of course, won't be in till
last, I suppose.  I'll go back to Palada now, take the stock off
pasture, and begin hardening them up.  Then I'll start for Julia, and
will be there before your outfit moves in."




CHAPTER XII

SKINNERS FROM FRISCO

Back at Palada, Jerkline Jo began hunting up the expert skinners who
had pulled the long sash-cord lines for her foster father, and who had
drifted to parts unknown since the completion of the paved road that
had virtually put Pickhandle Modock out of the running.  The world has
not an oversupply of expert jerkline skinners, and the plucky girl's
chances for success depended in great part on obtaining good men to
handle her teams.  She was able to trace some of the men, and her offer
to pay their expenses to Palada brought replies favorable to the
project in each case.  For jerkline jobs are scarce these days, and a
jerkline skinner would rather follow his calling than do any other sort
of work.

The blacksmith, horseshoer, and wagoner, Carter Potts, was still in
Palada, and wished for nothing better than to serve the girl.  They had
decided to reopen the shop at Julia, and for his devotion Jo promised
him a generous per cent of any profits which might accrue from work
aside from the care of the immense wagons and shoeing the teams.  This
in addition to his monthly salary of a hundred dollars and board.

From Oregon now came "Blink" Keddie, who had driven teams for
Pickhandle Modock since long before the old railroader had settled at
Palada.  Tom Gulick came from Utah, where he had been working on a
cattle ranch.  Heine Schultz and Jim McAllen came from remote regions
in the northern lumber woods.  But of Ed Hopkins, the prince of mule
skinners, and Harry Powell the girl could get no trace.

With the dependable force that she had mustered, however, she took the
stock from pasture, broke even on a job to a desert town to the west in
order to put the teams in shape, and then made ready for the
hundred-and-fifty-mile trip to Julia.  She had written Mr. Demarest and
asked him to advertise for two good jerkline skinners to be shipped
with the first draft of laborers he would get from San Francisco.  She
had small hopes of obtaining good skinners by this method, but no other
course presented itself.

Two days before the start for Julia came a wire from the San Francisco
office of Demarest, Spruce & Tillou.  It read:

  Employment office notifies two jerkline skinners
  applied re advertisement in paper and have been
  forwarded Palada.  Arrive day after to-morrow.


Jo showed the telegram to Heine Schultz when she went to the corrals
this morning.

"I'll bet you get a couple o' peaches, Jo," he laughed.  "Why, any
tramp's likely to go to an employment office and say he's anything they
want him to be, just to get on the job.  And maybe, even, he'll ditch
the train before he reaches the job.  Just wanted the trip, you know."

Jo's broad, smooth brow puckered.  "I do hope that will not prove the
case," she said.  "Jerkline skinners are so hard to get, particularly
in this country.  Every man who has ever driven a horse or mule seems
to imagine he can drive jerkline, but you know and I know that it takes
knack and years of practice.  But I'm hoping that because these two
applied for this particular job they're all right.  If they merely
wished to get free transportation out of San Francisco, it was not
necessary for them to apply as jerkies.  They could as easily have
arranged to be shipped as plain skinners, or rock men, or muckers."

"I'll bet you draw a prize, all right," Heine chuckled disconcertingly.

Jerkline Jo postponed the start a day, and awaited the coming of the
applicants.

As the local passenger train from Los Angeles whistled for Palada, Mr.
Orr Tweet roused himself from his seat in the smoker and slapped the
muscle-corded thigh of the disconsolate Hiram Hooker.

"She blows, Hiram, old boy!" cried Mr. Tweet.  "Fame and fortune await
us just ahead.  She slows!  She creeps!  Palada opens her arms to us!
Perk up, Hiram!  The girl wasn't your kind, my boy.  You'd have stepped
all over her little feet, and she'd got a divorce and alimony on the
grounds o' cruelty."

Hiram Hooker sighed and stretched his columnar arms.  For a moment or
two the new prospects that loomed kept his mind busy, then his thoughts
reverted to Lucy Dalles, and gloom claimed him once more.

"Don't talk like that, Playmate," he said.  "You don't understand.  I
loved the girl."

"Prune juice!  She'd 'a' made a regular sucker outa you.  Good thing I
got you away.  A big mountain o' blood and bone like you fallin' for a
dash o' cake frosting like that little hasher.  Hiram, you've got a
man's body and a man's brains, and I like you better the more I see of
you.  If you're goin' to weep over a woman, weep over a regular woman,
boy--a man's woman.  There!  Look out the window.  See that straight,
strong, black-headed desert girl in chaps and a Stetson?  Look at the
brown of her!  Look at her stride!  Queen o' the earth, hey?  That's
the kind of a woman for a man with the body of an elephant and the
imagination of a poet, like you've got.  There's a girl worth sighin'
for, only she wears leather chaps!  Well, out we go.  Palada for a
toehold on the ladder o' fame and fortune!"

The train had squeaked to a stop, and the effervescent Mr. Tweet and
his huge companion descended the steps to the sunny platform.  The
businesslike Mr. Tweet buttonholed the first villager he met, and
informed him:

"We're lookin' for a party called Jerkline Jo--a lady with a far-flung
reputation.  Can you steer us to her rendezvous, my friend?"

The man stared at him a moment, then jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

"There's Jo over there," he said.  "She's lookin' for ye, I reckon.
That pretty girl in the chaps."

"Her!" gasped Mr. Tweet.  "Lordy!  And I was just eulogizin' her
through the window o' the coach.  I saw her first--Hiram--I saw her
first!"

Next second Mr. Tweet was before Jerkline Jo, lifting his hat and
bowing politely.  Behind him, Hiram Hooker stood awkwardly looking at
the girl he had traveled six hundred miles to work for.

"Madam," said his companion, "if you are Jerkline Jo, permit me to
introduce myself and my friend.  I am Mr. Tweet--Playmate
Tweet--Twitter-or-Tweet Orr Tweet.  My friend and companion in arms is
Hiram Hooker, from the virgin forests of Wild-cat Hill.  I hope we find
you well, and a look into your face tells me that I never hoped for a
surer thing in my life.  Madam, when you know me better, you will learn
that I am not fresh, merely bubbling over with the joy of existence."

For a little Jerkline Jo gazed at him, then burst into ringing
laughter.  "Well, if you can drive jerkline," she said, "there's no
doubt but that you will be a pleasant addition to our little family.
I'm happy to meet you, Mr.----"

"Playmate Tweet--Twitter-or-Tweet Orr Tweet."

"_What_?"

"Orr Tweet--Twitter-or-Tweet Orr Tweet," patiently repeated Mr. Tweet.

"Are you trying to be funny?"  The dark eyes narrowed dangerously.

"I am funny," corrected Mr. Tweet.  "I can't help it.  Allow me to
explain: My last name, unfortunately, is Tweet.  Tweet is the
well-known conversational effort of a bird, and also 'Twitter,' if we
are to believe the bird lovers.  Therefore, I am ruthlessly called
Twitter at times by my friends, and more often Twitter-or-Tweet.  Orr
is my first name.  Orr Tweet.  Suppose, for instance, my name happened
to be Jim Brown, and I had been given the nickname of Blister.  Then I
would be called Blister Jim Brown, or Blister Brown.  But my name is
Orr Tweet, and my nickname is Twitter-or-Tweet.  Therefore, I am
Twitter-or-Tweet Orr Tweet, or Twitter-or-Tweet Tweet.  You've heard
the story of the lady who asked the ticket agent for 'Two to Duluth,'
haven't you?  He thought she was flirting with him, and came back with
'Tweedle-de-dee;' whereupon she slapped him.  So far I have escaped
such consequences when telling people my name.  But if, when asked, I
reply 'Orr Tweet,' they say 'What or Tweet?'  Then if I reply
'Twitter-or-Tweet _Orr_ Tweet,' they look at me as if they thought I
was trying to kid 'em.  So I begin my explanation by giving them my
nickname, or monaker, 'Playmate,' and follow it with my second monaker,
'Twitter-or-Tweet,' as I am frequently called, or Twitter-or-Tweet Orr
Tweet, or Twitter-or-Tweet Tweet.  It's very simple."

Jerkline Jo laughed again at the end of this seemingly nonsensical
harangue, and fixed her dark eyes on Hiram Hooker.  The giant stood
staring at her, and not a thought of Lucy Dalles was in his mind now.
His blue eyes caught her dark ones, and his glance was lowered in
confusion.  Womanlike, Jerkline Jo took him in at a glance, and
something within her responded to the appeal that his handsome manhood
made to femininity.

"What a godlike physique!" she thought.

Then impulsively she stepped forward and extended her hand.

"I'm glad you've come, Mr. Hooker," she said.  "And I do hope you are
really a jerkline skinner."

"And how 'bout me?" complained Mr. Tweet.

"I beg your pardon," said the girl, biting her lip.  "What a stupid
thing for me to say!  But really--well, Mr. Hooker does look more like
an outdoors man than you do, Mr. Tweet.  I didn't mean to discriminate
between you in my offer of welcome, though.  Mr. Hooker, _are_ you a
jerkline skinner?"

For the first time Hiram's soft voice began to drawl.  "Yes, ma'am," he
told her earnestly.  "I've driven jerkline since I was knee-high to a
duck--eight and ten and twelve, and even sixteen, ma'am.  I reckon I
can make 'em pull, no matter how far out you hook 'em on."

"Where have you worked?"

"At home, ma'am--in the big timber o' Mendocino County--haulin' tanbark
and ties and shakes and posts over the mountains to the lumber steamers
on the coast."

"Do you love horses and mules?" she queried eagerly.

"I love everything that breathes, I reckon, ma'am," he told her softly.
"I kill nothin' that lives, except rattlesnakes, unless I need the
meat.  Then sometimes I don't kill."

Jerkline Jo's dark eyes glowed.  She turned to Mr. Tweet.

"And you?" she asked.

"Madam," he replied, "I came down here under false pretenses, but now
I'll make a clean breast o' my treachery.  I was broke; I had to get
out o' Frisco and get a toehold somewhere.  But after seein' you, I
can't try to put one over on you.  Couldn't if I wanted to try, I
guess.  I am not a jerkline skinner, but I love animals.  I am one of
those confident persons who will try anything once--even twice.  The
things I have done, and was told I could not do, are legion.  If you
will give me a trial for my inseparable friend's sake, I have no doubt
at all but that in the course of a short time your mules will refuse to
lift a foot unless I am behind 'em with my persuasive voice.  In other
words, Miss Jo, I am yours to command."

She smiled, a finger to her lips.  "Well, come over to the corrals,
both of you," she said, "and we'll see what we can do.  I simply must
have Mr. Hooker.  So if you two are inseparable, why----"  She paused.

"I understand," Tweet put in.  "All women are that way, once they're
subjected to Hooker's spell.  I simply can't get it myself, but it's a
fact."

Jerkline Jo blushed furiously.  She who had withstood the ordeal of a
hundred proposals, she who had been raised where men were continually
twitting her about some man who was yearning to bestow his affections
upon her, was blushing at Tweet's harmless suggestions.




CHAPTER XIII

THE START FOR JULIA

Jerkline Jo walked ahead of Hiram Hooker and Tweet to the stables and
corrals, where her three-score horses and mules and her big wagons were
awaiting the start.

"We're all ready to go," she told the pair.  "I was only waiting for
you.  We'll start at once, whether you are jerkline skinners or not, of
course; but if you're not, I'm afraid we'll go without you."

Mr. Tweet glanced at Hiram and whispered: "I'm 'fraid this is where we
separate, Hooker.  Still, I don't know.  Maybe I'm a jerkline skinner,
after all.  I'll never know till I try."

In front of the stable Tweet came to an abrupt halt and studiously
regarded one of the huge freight wagons.

"Just a moment," he began quaintly.  "Was that wagon built to go, or is
it just an advertisement to show what the wagonmaker could do?"

Jo's wagons weighed nearly six thousand pounds.  Each separate wheel
had cost her foster father seventy-five dollars, prewar price.  The
investment that a single complete wagon represented was in the
neighborhood of six hundred dollars; and as there were seven of them,
besides the lighter trailers, the total outlay was no mean sum.  The
spokes of the great wheels were as large as Mr. Tweet's thighs; the
hubs were larger than his waist; the tires were ten inches in width;
the entire running-gear looked as if a small forest of sturdy hardwood
had been felled for its construction.

"It is built to go," the girl assured him.

"Stutterin' Demosthenes!  I didn't think there were enough horses in
the world to move the thing!  Madam, I have swiftly reached the
conclusion that I am not a jerkline skinner.  Are you, Hooker?"

Hiram smiled and spoke to Jerkline Jo.

"That's a fine wagon, ma'am," he said.  "I never saw any as good as
that."

"We've six more just like it," she told him, "and some lighter
trailers.  The man who made them is dead.  I doubt if the world will
ever again see such wagons when these are gone.  Now, I want you to
hook up, Mr. Hooker, and show me what you can do."

"Hook up, Hooker!" laughed Tweet, always ready to embrace the slightest
opportunity for a joke.

The girl led the way into the stable, and Heine Schultz, temporary
wrangler, showed Hiram ten immense black horses, not one of them under
sixteen hundred pounds.

"Get 'em out," ordered Jo.

Hiram went to work immediately, with a briskness that caused Heine to
wink at Jo, he threw on the heavy harness and led forth the big-footed
teams.  He did not ask which were the leaders or the wheelers, for this
was indicated by the nature of their respective harness and bridles.
Heine noted this and winked again.  Hiram was told, when he asked, the
names of the ten, and pointers and swing teams were indicated.  In a
period of time utterly bewildering to Mr. Tweet the man from Wild-cat
Hill had his ten black beauties strung out in twos before one of the
wagons, and was speaking to Jerkline Jo.

"I see you ride in the wagons," he observed.  "I always rode the nigh
wheeler hoss, ma'am."

"You may do so if you choose.  We've saddles."

"Your way suits me," Hiram returned.  "It's easier work, I reckon."

The girl climbed into the wagon with Hiram.  Heine Schultz did
likewise.  Mr. Tweet, being a gregarious person, did not like to be
left alone, so followed the others' example.

"Which way, ma'am?" asked the new skinner.

Jo pointed.  "Up that street, and turn the corner to your left," she
directed.

The wagon was about half loaded with the blacksmith's outfit.  To add
to this the horse wrangler set the heavy brakes.

Hiram grasped the jerkline, but allowed it to hang slack in his hands.
Now came his soft, caressing drawl, low and musical:

"Pete!  Abe!  Feel of it!  Molly!  Steve!  Ben!  Prince!  Up ahead,
there--Jane!  Buck!"

As a team the great animals started the heavy wagon, and moved off with
a jingle of chains and bells and the creak of harness.

Heine released the brake and looked at Jo, and this time he merely
nodded.

A block up the street Hiram gave a single pull on his jerkline, and
called: "Haw, Jane!"  An instant later--"Gee, Steve!  Gee, Molly!
_Gee_, Molly!  Steady!  Good enough!"

With the leaders and the swings pulling to the left and turning into
the cross street, and the pointers heaving slightly to the right, the
long string made the turn, and the wagon rolled around the corner in
the middle of the street.

This street that they had entered was one of the oldest in
Palada--built by Mexicans in the old Spanish style.  There were no
sidewalks--there was not room for them.

"Turn to your right at the next corner," commanded Jerkline Jo.

Hiram Hooker nodded.

As the leaders neared the corner Hiram cried: "Haw, Jane!  Haw, Buck!"
and tugged once on his jerkline.  Obeying the command, the leaders,
followed by the eight, brought the wagon close to the left-hand side of
the street.  Two quick jerks on the line, and the sharp cries, "Gee,
Buck!  Gee, Jane!" turned the well-trained leaders to the right and
headed them toward the entrance to the cross street.  "Haw, Steve!
Haw, Molly!  Over the chain, Molly!  Haw, boys, haw!"

At Hiram's command, the off pointer, Molly, had stepped daintily over
the heavy chain that ran between her and her mate, and now both of them
were pulling the heavy tongue at right angles to the left, the wheelers
helping.  As neatly as most men might have made the corner with a
single buggy, the string of ten and the heavy wagon swung into the
intersecting street, as narrow as the other, and not a hub touched.

Jerkline Jo's dark eyes were sparkling.  "You've got a job, Hiram," she
said.  "A jerkline driver who can make that corner without scraping a
hub is a real jerkline driver."

"Thank you," replied Hiram, with a merry grin, thrilling at her use of
his given name.  "And I'll say that the man that trained this team was
a jerkline driver, too."

"A man didn't train them," Jerkline Jo informed him proudly.  "I
trained them."

"Just the same," returned Hiram, "I stick by what I said."

"Now you take the line, Mr. Tweet," instructed Jerkline Jo.

"I don't care for it," said Tweet.  "I'm a promoter and capitalist.
I'll go to work and get a job here in this burg, Miss Jo, and pay you
for my transportation down when I've earned the price.  But I have a
sneaking feeling that Molly wouldn't care for the cadence of my voice;
and Pete he eyed me kinda suspiciously when Hiram led 'im out.
No--there's a limit.  I've reached it."

"Drive back to the stable, Hiram," Jo ordered.  "We'll start for Julia
at once."

She turned to Tweet.  "I'm sorry," she said.  "Why did you ship down
here as a jerkline skinner, Mr. Tweet?  You came over a rival railroad,
of course, and your transportation will cost me full fare."

"Madam," he replied guiltily, "I was broke, and just had to get outa
Frisco.  And I couldn't leave Hiram.  Why, that boy would 'a' been a
suicide, if it hadn't been for me.  He was in love, and wouldn't work,
and in another day he'd been broke--a hick from Wild-cat Hill alone and
friendless and in love in big, cruel San Francisco.  If it wasn't for
me, you'd never got 'im."

"That's right," spoke up Hiram.  "He made me come."

"Madam," added Tweet, "I hope you'll forgive me.  I'll pay you all I
owe you with interest.  I'm the original go-getter from Gogettersburg,
on the Grabemoff River.  I'm down and out right now, but any day I'm
liable to turn into a skyrocket.  Madam, you trust me.  I've promised
Hooker to lead him to fame and fortune, and to do that I gotta stick
with 'im, ain't I?  Well, then, can't you find somethin' for me to do
for you, so's I c'n ride with you to this new railroad?   That country
sounds good to me.  I'll maybe go to work and get a toehold over there.
You'll never regret befriendin' me, Miss Jo."

The girl stood, thoughtful, her feet planted against the jolting of the
wagon.

"Could you help about the cooking?" she asked.

"Madam, I could--and would."

"I like to be accommodating," she told him.  "I know how it is.  I was
raised in the camps, and know all about being broke and knocking about
the country.  I'll take you along, and I'll take a chance on your
paying me for the transportation."

"You'll never regret it, Miss Jo.  Pile whatever you want done on me.
I'm a good roustabout, willin' and cheerful, and always a kind, happy
little playmate.  Thank you."

An hour later ten heavy wagons, some of them trailing because of the
lack of skinners, rumbled through Palada, with an eight or ten-horse
team pulling, the remainder of the horses and mules and Jerkline Jo's
black saddle mare following like devoted dogs.  Palada was out in a
body to wave good-by and good luck to Jerkline Jo.  She drove the last
team, ten magnificent whites, spotless as circus horses, with thirty
tiny bells jingling over their proud necks.  Ahead of her in the train
Hiram Hooker drove his blacks.  As long as she could see anybody at
Palada, Jerkline Jo stood in the front of her wagon, facing rearward,
and waved her hat.  There were tears in her dark eyes as she turned to
her team at last, and the desert opened its arms to their coming.

Slowly the teams forged ahead into the infinite sandy waste, where
whispering yuccas and thorny cactus grew, and jack rabbits went looping
away among bronze greasewood bushes.  A cloud of dust hung over the
wagon trail.  Ahead stretched seeming nothingness for mile after weary
mile.

Jerkline Jo hoped to make twenty miles a day, loaded as the wagons were
with only the blacksmith outfit.  She might have made perhaps
twenty-four miles under such conditions, had it not been for the
counteracting softness of the teams.  Loaded, they would make from ten
to twelve miles daily, which seems intolerably slow in these days of
speed and nerve-wracking restlessness.  But with six of the teams
working steadily the outfit would transport upward of thirty tons
twelve miles a day, which represents an enormous amount of provisions
for man and beast.

Twitter-or-Tweet Orr Tweet rode with Hiram.  The train had been
traveling perhaps two hours, and it was after eleven o'clock, when
there came a "Who-hoo!" from Jerkline Jo.  Hiram and Tweet looked back.

She beckoned with her hand.  Both Hiram and Tweet placed fingers on
their breasts inquisitively; then she cupped her hands about her mouth
and called:

"_Hi_-ram!"

"'_Hi_-ram,' huh?" grunted Tweet.  "For one hungering second I thought
maybe she wanted me."  He grasped his twisted nose and straightened it.
"'Twon't stay," he observed gloomily.  "Go on and ride with her, you
big soft-voiced lady killer!  I'll stick with Pete, and maybe he'll
learn to love me.  What'll I do if they begin to get rambunctious,
Hiram?"

"Don't worry," Hiram returned.  "They won't do anything they're not
doing right now.  Just let 'em drift right along."

He swung himself to the ground and waited until the girl's wagon came
abreast, then climbed up over a brake-shoe and squeezed himself between
the slats of the tall freight rack with which her wagon was equipped.

The girl stood in the front end of the rack, and such material as the
wagon carried was piled behind her, leaving a little compartment free
of encumbrance in which she might move about.  There was no driver's
seat, and therefore quite a little room was hers.

Hiram gazed in utter bewilderment at what he saw.  A coal-oil stove was
burning, and on it pots were steaming.  There was a tiny
oilcloth-covered table, and on it and under it were pots and pans and
other utensils of the kitchen.

What surprised him more, though, was another lower table before which
stood a collapsible stool.  On it were books and papers and a portable
typewriter, with a half-typed sheet on the platen.  There were ink and
pens and other articles necessary to an officer or a study.  Against
the front end of the wagon rack stood a chest, with its lid closed, and
more cooking utensils were on top of it.

Jerkline Jo smiled at his bewilderment.

"I'm cooking our dinner, you see," she explained.  "To keep good men, I
figure that they must be well cared for.  When my father ran this
freight outfit our skinners cooked for themselves, and often were
obliged to eat cold lunches.  When they did cook, there was no time for
anything better than fried steak, or fried ham, or fried bacon and
eggs.  One grows terribly tired of fried things, and, besides, they're
not good for the digestion.

"I've resolved that on this job we're going to live like people who are
permanently situated.  That chest there is a fireless cooker.  My own
scheme.  In it now vegetables and a beef roast are cooking, and they'll
be ready by noon.  I mean to make biscuits and bread and cakes and pies
in my oil-stove oven, which is a dandy.  I can arrange to do all that
on the smoothest portions of the road.  I'll roll my biscuit dough soon
now, and when we camp there'll be fresh, hot biscuits, roast beef with
brown gravy, and steamed vegetables all ready for us.  What do you
think of my scheme, Hiram?"

Hiram knew nothing of the advantages of a fireless cooker, but he did
know that food such as she had spoken of was unheard of on a freighting
trip, and told her so.

"Besides," she added, "I have bought some large thermos bottles, and no
matter how hot the desert is we'll always have cold water to drink.
Every night it will get almost ice cold in this country, you know; and
if we bottle it early in the morning it will remain cold all day."

Hiram was looking at the typewriter.  "This is my office and study,"
said the girl.  "My foster father's recent death called me from a
preparatory school back in the Middle West, just when I was getting
along so well toward gaining an education.  I decided not to give up.
I am taking two correspondence courses, and mean to continue my studies
here in my wagon.  Also I am learning stenography and touch-typewriting.

"At first I thought I'd open an office at Julia or the rag town that
will spring up soon, and not drive a team myself.  Then it occurred to
me that I could save money by driving a team, and could continue my
studies and attend to my business affairs while on the road.  With
well-trained teams, like we have, a freight skinner has hours and hours
on the road when he has nothing to do but loll on his seat and smoke.
As I don't smoke, I mean to improve the time with study.  Don't you
think I'm a wonderful schemer, Hiram?"

Hiram nodded, and thoughts of pink-and-white little Lucy Dalles and her
ambitions were far in the background of his mind.  Jerkline Jo was a
beautiful girl--as different in her beauty from Lucy Dalles as is day
from night.  Her hair was dark and heavy, and crowned a low, broad
brow.  Her skin was now tanned a rich mahogany, but was clear and
flawless, and her bare arms were round and brown.  Her confident poise,
her sturdy shoulders, showed character and strength far above the
ordinary.  She was a man's woman, was Jerkline Jo Modock, and only a
man among men might hope to become her mate.  She wore a broad-brimmed
Stetson with a horsehair band, a blue-flannel man's shirt, worn leather
chaps for comfort, and riding boots.  A holstered six-shooter hung
close at hand, the ivory-handled butt of the big weapon ready to her
grasp.  Here was a wonderful woman, and Hiram Hooker knew it, and knew,
too, that here at last was the adventure girl who, in his dreams up
there on Wild-cat Hill in the big woods of the North had been beckoning
him to come and work for her, to fight for her--to die for her if fate
should so decree.




CHAPTER XIV

A WIRE TO JULIA

"I wanted you to tell me something about yourself, Hiram," said
Jerkline Jo.  "That's why I called you.  What a giant of a man you are!
Tell me about Wild-cat Hill and the big woods of Mendocino.  I've never
been so far north in California."

She seated herself on the stool, and Hiram sat cross-legged on the
floor of the freight rack.  Ahead the many silvery bells, hung on steel
bows over the hames of each of Jo's white beauties, jingled merrily as
the wagon rolled on into the illimitable desert.

Hiram began to talk, and gradually he grew eloquent, for at soul he was
a poet.  He told of the grandeur of the big, solemn redwoods, of the
ice-cold creeks that plunged riotously through the mysterious
fastnesses of great forests.  He told of his dead father and mother,
asleep forever between the big bull pines on Wild-cat Hill.  He told of
his cramped, starved life, of his hopes and vague ambitions and his
dreams.

She listened silently, deeply interested, her dark eyes glowing upon
him, her chin cupped by a strong brown hand.  His simplicity was new
and refreshing.  Soon she realized that no ordinary mind lay dormant
back of the well-formed forehead of this tender-hearted backwoodsman.
His talk showed that he had read a great deal and had somehow grasped
the significance of it all.  Several times her eyes filled with tears
as she listened; often she smiled understandingly at his quaint
confessions.  Presently she asked:

"Hiram, have you any ambition for an education?"

"Yes," he told her.  "I've always wanted that, I guess.  That's why I
read so much, I s'pose.  But there wasn't much chance up there.  I
learned all they could teach me at school--learned it easy.  But there
wasn't any chance to go farther."

"You've that chance now," she told him softly.

"Do you mean----"  He stopped, his lips parted as he gazed into her
eyes.

"Just that," she said.  "I'll help you.  We'll study together.  Right
here in my wagon.  Your blacks will jog along without you over many
stretches in the road from Julia to the camps.  Through the mountains,
of course, we shall have to be at the jerklines constantly.  We'll be
four days traveling between Julia and the camps, loaded, and between
two and three days returning empty.  Only one day of the trip going
will be over a mountain road.  The rest of the time you may ride with
me and fight for your education.  I'll help you."

"Miss Jo----"  There was a lump in Hiram's throat.

"Just Jo, please.  No one ever troubles to call me miss, and I don't
want them to."

"I'll do it, then, Jo," said Hiram huskily.  "I never dreamed I'd ever
have such a chance.  And I'll work, too--I'll study night and day.  But
why--why are you doin' this for me?"

Slowly the rich color mounted to the cheeks Jerkline Jo.  "I--I know
how it is," she said.  "I was raised in a gypo camp, and had no chance
until late in my teens.  Knew nothing but mules and horses until I was
eighteen or over--cared for nothing else.  And I love them still; but
I've grown ambitious to get all that I can from life.  I like you,
Hiram Hooker.  You're a big, clean-minded, simple-souled man.  I'll
help you all I can."

Hiram's experience with Lucy Dalles, and now with this splendid girl
called Jerkline Jo, might have turned the head of a more sophisticated
male.  But the big woods of the North teach a man his insignificance in
the scheme of life, teach him honesty and simplicity of heart and
sincerity.  So now Hiram Hooker's ego was not inflamed.  He had no idea
of his appeal to the other sex.  Few women could help admiring such a
handsome young giant as was Hiram, strong as a bull, symmetrical as
some sturdy plant; and his drawling, soft voice was a caress that
bespoke the kindly heart of a child and the tenderness of a woman.
Withal he had a poet's soul, and all women love poetry in a man.

"Tell me about Twitter-or-Tweet, and so forth," she begged finally.  "I
can't understand that man.  Is he a pure fake?"

"I don't know," Hiram replied.  "He was mighty good to me in a way.
He's been about a heap."

"Hiram, if you'll pardon me, we'll begin your lesson right now.  I
wouldn't say a 'heap.'  You must try to overcome such colloquialisms."

"I'll try never to say it again," Hiram promised unblushingly.

"But listen," she added.  "Don't take me to task if you hear me saying
things in the vernacular of the railroad grade.  I have to.  As Gypo
Jo, I know thousands of the old-timers, and they expect certain things
of me for old times' sake.  As Jerkline Jo, the situation will be much
the same.  I am obliged to be a mixer.  Men whose friendship I could
not afford to dispense with even if I wished to--which, I assure you, I
do not--won't stand for a high-and-mighty attitude in me.  I am of the
railroad grade, and proud of it, and I must continue to be a part of
the rough-and-ready frontier life.  Hiram, I suppose your ideas of
womanhood are very hallowed.  Will you be greatly shocked when you see
me go into a tent saloon and drink a glass of beer with the rabble of
the big camps?"

"Do you do that?"

"I simply have to, Hiram.  Ever since I was knee-high to you, until a
very few years ago, I lived with one or more tent saloons within a
stone's throw of our camp.  Morals are, after all, a local conception,
Hiram.  What is thought to be wrong in one country will be the accepted
practice just over the border line.  It's all in the viewpoint.  I not
only go into saloons with men friends of mine, but sometimes I play
poker or roulette or faro just to please them.  And listen: Never in
all my rough-and-ready life in railroad camps have I been insulted by
regular stiffs, as the laborers are called.  Certain outsiders have
misunderstood my freedom from conventionality on several occasions, but
always to their sorrow.  Understand, I don't care the snap of my finger
for beer, or to gamble; but these things will be expected of me now as
in the old days when I knew no better, and I dare not assume a superior
attitude toward people who have known me since I was found, a mere
baby, half buried by the desert sands."

She told Hiram about her childhood then, and that she knew nothing of
her parents, not even her own true name.  Hiram gave ear eagerly to her
story, and thought he understood her situation.

"I couldn't think anything wrong of you, ma'am,' he told her gently as
she finished.

"And don't call me 'ma'am,' please," she corrected with a friendly
smile.  "And that reminds me that I made us wander from the subject of
Twitter-or-Tweet.  You were telling me about him when I interrupted.
What is he?  He's not a common tramp--a stiff."

"He says he's a promoter and capitalist," Hiram repeated.

"Of course he's talking nonsense."

Hiram then told of Mr. Tweet's card, which promulgated his operations
as a salesman of banana lands, and of the stock he claimed to own in
the new ditch digger.

"I thought perhaps he was some sort of a book agent," said the girl,
laughing.

"I don't know much about people," Hiram confessed with naïve
simplicity.  "I can't judge folks very well--some folks, anyway."

"I'm afraid he's a wind bag," decided Jo.  "Well, we'll befriend him to
the grade, anyway, and I guess that then he'll be obliged to shift for
himself.  If freight were moving freely, and every day, I might manage
to use him--but that won't be the case at first.  So we'll have to bid
him good-by at the camps.  I have an idea he can take care of himself."

Jerkline Jo glanced at her leather-protected wrist watch.

"It's eight minutes of twelve, Hiram," she announced.  "I'll roll out
my biscuit dough.  Can you yell?  If so, shout ahead to Blink Keddie
and call a halt for noon."

Hiram rose to his six feet one and cupped his great hands about his
mouth.  The mellow call that he sent out had rung through miles of
Mendocino forest, and now caused every skinner in the line to turn and
look back.  A wave of Jo's hand and they understood the noon had come.

When they were in camp, and the teams had been fed and watered from the
great tank wagon, and Jerkline Jo, with the able help of
Twitter-or-Tweet, had made ready the steaming meal, there arose loud
praise of the girl's idea concerning the fireless cooker.

"By golly, Jo, this here's grub!" applauded Jim McAllen.  "Some scheme,
ol'-timer!"

"I thought it was a kind of a nutty idea when you sprung it, Jo,"
confessed Tom Gulick, "but I'm strong for the cooker now.  Long may she
wave!  Pass the gravy, Blink."

Jerkline Jo glowed with pleasure over her success.

Mr. Tweet made himself very useful by acting as waiter, and hopped
about with pots and pans, leading the steaming food on the skinners'
plates.  Jo watched him with interest, but still was unable to consider
him anything but an imaginative failure--a man who perhaps had seen
better days.

When they had finished eating, he collected the dishes, and, as water
was heating on the oil stove, had everything washed up and in its place
before the resumption of their travel.

"He's clean and neat and thoughtful," Jerkline Jo reflected.  "Perhaps
I'll be able to use him after all.  We could use an extra man as
roustabout, if business gets good.  I'll see.  He seems so fond of
Hiram, and, really, if it weren't for him, I'd never heard of Hiram."

She grew thoughtful then, and a trace of red showed under her brown
skin.  Why had she become so interested in this big countryman from the
very start, she wondered.

It was a long, tiresome trip, and days before they reached their
temporary destination Hiram Hooker was riding in Jo's wagon, deep in
history and algebra and grammar, for Jo had with her all of her
schoolbooks.

The days seemed short to both of them.  As the magnificent whites
plodded steadily on, there was added to the music of the nickeled bells
the rapid clicking of Jo at the portable typewriter, or the slower,
hesitating peck of Hiram Hooker.  They were a silent pair, for they
were deep in their studies.

Strange indeed was the picture they presented as they were moved slowly
along under the hot desert sky.  But for Hiram, at least, this was the
beginning of everything.  Some magic touch had set him on the road that
for years he had longed to travel--the road to knowledge and a better
life.  Beside him rode the adventure girl who had been beckoning him
out of the woods of doubt and ignorance, the girl who had colored his
dreams up on lonely Wild-cat Hill.

Hiram quickly became a favorite with Jo's skinners, too; for anybody or
anything that the girl approved of was sure to make an appeal to the
loyal little crew who swore by Jerkline Jo.  Besides, Hiram was
irresistible in his quaint geniality and his musical drawl.  They
called him "Wild Cat" at first, but when they considered his hugeness
and uniform good nature the name seemed a misnomer; so they amended it
and called him "The Gentle Wild Cat."  This moniker clung to Hiram
Hooker through all of his subsequent life in the desert.

The seventh day after their start, at evening, they rolled into Julia
and set the populace agog with speculation.

As the whites passed the depot the station master came out.

"Does a fella named Jerkline Jo belong to this outfit?" he asked,
walking along beside Jo's wagon.

"I'm Jerkline Jo," she told him.

"You!  Huh!  Well, there's a wire for you.  I'll run and get it."

Jo called to her ten whites to halt, and the wagon came to a rest.  A
minute later the yellow paper was in her hands.  She read:

  Twenty tons awaiting you at Mulligan Supply
  Company, Julia.  Get it over the mountains at once
  to Breece Brothers, Hunter & Stevenson, and
  Washburn-Stokes.  Drummond's trucks are coming.  You
  are in for a stiff fight.  Good luck.  DEMAREST.




CHAPTER XV

MR. TWEET NEGOTIATES A LOAN

Oblivious to the staring eyes of the little desert town of Julia,
Jerkline Jo, after pitching camp near water on the edge of the village,
began hurrying about on her business.

She was directed to the man who owned the land on which the teams and
men were now resting, and found that she could make a deal to lease the
property at a reasonable figure.  She made a freckle-faced boy happy
with a bright new dime, and sent him back to her men with instructions
for them to pitch the tents permanently and proceed to make the spot
the Julia headquarters of the outfit.

She wired her thanks to Demarest and assured him that the order would
go forward next day, if the dealers had it ready.  Next she hunted up
the Mulligan Supply Company and found that it was a new concern in
Julia, having just moved in with a large stock of goods from Los
Angeles.  It was a branch of a big Los Angeles jobbing firm, and the
new railroad across the mountains had brought it here.

The manager greeted her warmly, and told her that he had heard of her
through Mr. Demarest.  The entire order was ready for immediate
shipment, he said, so Jo hurried back to camp and had her men hook two
horses on each of six wagons, now empty, and drive to the store, where
they were backed in to the loading platform.

They ate their supper then, and afterward worked far into the night
loading case goods, baled hay, grain, new tools, and innumerable like
commodities.  When the wagons were loaded and the great tarpaulins
hauled down over everything but the hay and grain, it was necessary for
Jo to appoint a watchman for the night.  She had no more than broached
the subject when Playmate Tweet, who had helped manfully with the
loading, offered his services.

"I been just ridin' all day," he said, "and tryin' to convince Pete
that I'm a reg'lar fella.  I'll squat on the goods till mornin', come
what may."

In truth Jo did not just like to trust him.  The goods, amounting in
value far up into the thousands, were now under her complete control,
and she was accountable for every penny to the purchasers of them.  But
she had not the heart to refuse Tweet's offer, and she wanted her
skinners to rest for the remainder of the night, in view of the hard
work that lay before them.  So she accepted, and Mr. Tweet took his
post.

He was there like the boy on the burning deck when they came with the
teams early next morning, walking about briskly to keep warm through
the cold desert dawn, whistling merrily.  Jo had brought his breakfast
on a plate, and hot coffee in a bottle.

Carter Potts, the blacksmith, was left behind to set up his shop and
care for the extra mules and horses.

Quickly the teams were hooked on, and with complaining groans and heavy
wagons, each now weighing with its load upward of six and a third tons,
moved through the sleepy town toward the distant mountains.

"Hooker," said Tweet, as he sat beside his friend behind the laboring
blacks, "this is a man's life.  This is doin' somethin'!  This is
gettin' somewhere!  This is livin'!  I envy you, Hiram.  I envy you
that big body of yours and the way you can handle ten big horses as if
you were drivin' a trick donkey hitched to a clown's cart.  Wild Cat,
you're a lucky man.  And what a glorious woman, Hooker, to throw the
magic over it all!  You're the man for her, my boy--the only man I ever
met that oughta have the nerve to try to win her.  And she fell for
you, you big buffalo with the voice of a turtle-dove!  Play her
carefully, boy, and you can win.  Don't go at it like you did with
Cream Puffs, up there in Frisco.  But you'll win her, Hiram--it's in
you to do it.  Now, Hooker, can you slip me a five-spot when we get to
the camps?"

"I haven't much more than that, Playmate," Hiram averred.

"Well, you got a job, ain't you?  I haven't.  Money didn't seem to
worry you much when you were puttin' on your Follies o' Nineteen-twenty
with Lucy, up there where the white lights gleam."

"What are you going to do with it?" asked Hiram.

"This is your foolish day, ain't it?  I'll tell you what I'm _not_
goin' to do with it.  I'm not goin' to hire an automobile at four
dollars an hour and take a lassie out for a ride over the desert."

"I'll try and let you have it."

"Just how much jack you got on you yet, Hooker, old friend from Wild
Cat?"

"Seven dollars."

"That's a mint, man!  Say, try to slip me all of it, will you, Hiram?
I got a scheme.  You won't need it--you got a job.  And remember who
was the means o' gettin' it, Hiram.  Why, it's worth seven bucks for
the privilege of just lookin' once into those eyes o' Jerkline Jo."

"Can't you go to work over at the camps and earn some money?" Hiram
wanted to know.

"I _could_--yes.  But I don't earn my jack that way, Hiram.  I'm a
promoter."

"Jo told me she thought she might be able to give you something to do,
after all."

"Don't want it.  Tender her my heartfelt thanks just the same, Hiram.
All I wanted in the first place was to get down here and look things
over, then go to work and get a toehold and start the fireworks.  If
things are like I think--say, I'll be givin' you people jobs in a week
or so.  B'lieve it, Hiram?"

"No," replied Hiram bluntly.  "Buck, step up a little!  Molly!  Pete!"

Playmate Tweet sighed heavily.  "Hardest folks to convince I ever
struck," he complained.  "Listen, Hooker: last night while I was
guardin' the loads the night watchman at Julia strolled around, and we
had a little talk.  He's an old-timer in this country, and he told me
all about it from there to Ellangone.  I got some dope from him about
this country we're makin' for; and puttin' what I heard from him with
what Jerkline Jo has told me, I gets a grand scheme.  It'll put me in
on the ground floor, if things break right and then----'  Oh, boy!
Richard will be himself again!"

"Tell me about it!"

"Too deep for you, my son.  You'd never savvy the ins and outs.
Besides, when Twitter-or-Tweet Tweet gets his nose to a trail, he's one
old hound that don't bark his head off--see?  There'll be other bright
young promoters lookin' for the secret, and I've learned to keep my
mouth shut.

"Now," he went on, "when I get over there and have a little look-see, I
may decide to beat it out pronto and start the clockworks.  If I do,
I'll need your seven dollars to get me back into the land o' the
livin', where I can start the performance.  If I give you the word,
Hooker, slip me that jack.  If I don't tell you to, I'll go to work at
some o' the camps and make a stake and beat it for more promisin'
pastures.  You'll never regret it, Hooker.  It'll be bread cast on the
waters, and she'll come back chocolate cake."

"I'll think about it," Hiram promised.

"Do that!  And in the event that I say things look extra good, you'd
better slip Jerkline Jo a little sob story, and get her to let you drag
down what you got comin' on your wages--and slip that to me, too.  By
golly, Hooker, once I get a toehold, Millions is my middle name."

Hiram smiled wryly.

On through the day the teams plodded toward the mountain pass.  Hiram
rode with Jerkline Jo in their movable schoolroom, and left Tweet to
his own thoughts behind the blacks.  They camped on the desert that
night, at a ranch conveniently situated between Julia and the
mountains, where was an abundance of artesian water.  Next day at one
o'clock they left the flat, hot sweeps and ascended steadily into firs
and pines on the old mines road.

They were obliged to stop frequently and make repairs in the road and
to clear away brush that for years had been overgrowing the course of
their steep climb.

Often as they ascended laboriously they followed shelves hacked in
mountainsides, with the desert they had left thousands of feet below
them.  There were places where a solid wall of rock upreared itself on
one side of the narrow road, while on the other side a precipice
dropped straight down, and tall pines at its base looked like
toothpicks.  There were hair-pin curves which taxed the skinners'
ingenuity, where the one or the other of their pointers would cross the
chain to pull the wagons away from the banks, and often both pointers
were obliged to leave the road entirely and pull along the sides of
precipices.

However, they topped the highest point in the pass before darkness had
overtaken them completely.  They camped for the night beside a
picturesque and cold mountain lake, at an altitude of six thousand five
hundred feet.

Morning showed them the desert, sweeping away again on the other side
of the range.  There still remained twenty-five miles to be traveled,
eight of them comprising the descent through the pass.

Once down on the level again, Hiram turned his team over to the care of
Tweet, and boarded Jo's wagon for the continuation of his education.

So they crawled on persistently, and eventually, ahead of them over the
desert, white tents glowed pink in the sunlight like toadstools in a
great timberless pasture, and their first trip was nearing its end.

When they reached the first cluster of tents Jerkline Jo discovered
that they represented the largest of the subcontractors to whom her
freight had been consigned.  The next one was situated five miles
farther up the line, and the third six miles beyond that.  None of them
had been there when she made her horseback trip.  Close to the first
camp that they reached, that of the Washburn-Stokes Construction
Company's, the inevitable rag town had sprung up.

Already there were a dozen or more tents, most of them housing saloons,
dance halls, and gamblers' layouts, and here and there a board or
corrugated iron structure was under process of building.  Only the
three construction camps, as yet, had arrived on this portion of the
work; the next camp beyond this group was fifty miles to the north.

Jerkline Jo knew, however, that before many days had passed camps large
and small would be dotted along the right of way, and that all must be
supplied by some one.

She stood talking to Mr. Washburn, the head of the firm, while his
freight was being stacked before the huge commissary tent, when Mr.
Tweet approached her.

"I'd like a word with you, Miss Modock, when you're at liberty," he
said politely.

"Why, I'm just loafing with Mr. Washburn now," she said lightly, and
turned away with him.

"Will you please tell me again what you did a few days back about the
camp at Demarest, Spruce & Tillou?" he asked.  "Explain it all,
please--just why you think the tent town will eventually be located in
a different place than it is now."

"Why, it's simple," she told him.  "It's this way: Demarest, Spruce &
Tillou have the main contract here--a hundred miles, I've heard.  When
a big company like that contracts to build a hundred miles of grade,
they at once begin to sublet portions to smaller contractors.  Some
take a mile; some two miles, some five--according to the nature of the
work and the respective capacities of their outfits.  Understand?"

"Yes--I got that."

"Well, it's natural, then, that the most difficult pieces--the biggest
work--will be the most difficult to sublet.  Consequently when the main
contractors can sublet no more, they move in and get at the difficult
pieces that remain on their hands.

"Now, I've seen a good bit of this line, and I've talked with the
engineers.  Also I know the names of most of the subcontractors who
have figured on the job.  I know that none of them have adequate
equipment to tackle the big rock cut that will be necessary through
that chain of buttes, twelve miles to the south of here."

She pointed to the buttes, blue and hazy in the evening light of the
desert.

"So, my friend, it follows as the night the day that Demarest, Spruce &
Tillou will eventually move in with their heaviest-hitting outfit to
run that cut, which certainly will be left on their hands.  It follows
as the night the day, again, that the leeches who always drift in to
get the stiff's pay day away from them will settle near the biggest
camp, if there's sufficient water.

"Down near those buttes, where the big camp is bound to be, there's
plenty of water, and before many days have passed Ragtown in all its
glory will be erected right there.

"These supplies that we're hauling now are charged to the account of
Demarest, Spruce & Tillou," she further explained.  "You see, they
furnish their subs with everything they need.  Now when Demarest,
Spruce & Tillou move in there will be little or no freighting for us to
any camp but theirs.  All goods will be concentrated in their
commissary then, and the subs will buy direct from them and do their
own hauling to the various camps.  Of course, Ragtown will have to be
supplied--but Ragtown and Demarest, Spruce & Tillou's Camp Number One
will be virtually the same as regards our freight terminus."

"And how long before the main contractors will get here?" he asked,
working his twisted nose from side to side as if in the hope of
eventually persuading it to point dead ahead.

"That all depends on whether they have given up trying to sublet any
more work or not.  If they think they won't be able to load any one
else up with a job, they'll be in directly--almost any day.  But if
they still think there's a chance to get rid of the hard pieces,
they'll hold off until the matter is settled, of course."

"Thank you," said Mr. Tweet abruptly, and was turning briskly away when
she remarked:

"I've decided that perhaps I can use you after all, if----"

"Sorry," he interrupted, "but I can't accept your offer, even though I
appreciate it and thank you from the bottom of my heart.  Truth is, I
gotta get busy.  I've heard there's a stage goin' out to the north
to-night, and I gotta make it.  By the way, did Hiram speak to you
about advancin' him what pay was comin' to him?"

Jo's eyes narrowed.  "No," she said coldly, "he didn't mention such a
matter."

Twitter-or-Tweet came back to her.  "Listen," he said, "you owe him
about twenty bucks.  I want it.  I'll need it.  You slip it to Hiram,
and I'll borrow it off o' him.  You see----"

"Why, I'll do nothing of the sort!" she cried vehemently.  "Do I look
like a sucker to you, Mr. Tweet?"

"Oh, dear, dear, dear!" he cried.  "You don't understand.  I'm gonta
swing somethin' big.  I need that and what Hiram's already got to float
me along till I can hit the ball.  For Heaven's sake, put a little
confidence in me, ma'am, can't you?  I'm gonta send the Gentle Wild Cat
to you.  He'll tell you.  He trusts me."

"He trusts everybody," she remarked evenly.  "Besides," she added, "you
seem to forget, too, that you owe me for your railroad fare down here."

"Oh, that!  Why, I'll pay you that in no time now.  But wait--I'll
unload freight in Hiram's place, and send him to you."

Sure enough, Hiram came presently and asked her, as a special favor to
him, to let him have what money was owing to him.

"Hiram," she said, "you're going to lend it to Tweet, and he's going
out in the auto stage to-night."

"I know it," said Hiram.  "I got to help him.  He's been a pretty good
friend to me, Jo, and--and--I just like him.  Why, if it hadn't been
for him I'd never met you."

Jo colored and looked away.  "You big, simple-hearted boy!" she cried.
"Do you know what he is going to do?"

"No--he won't talk."

She was thoughtful a little, then took out a purse and handed him a
twenty-dollar bill.

"Kiss it good-by," she said; "but I suppose the experience will be
worth something to you."

"Thank you," said Hiram, very red of face.  "I'm sorry for what I said
about you meetin' me through Tweet, Jo.  I meant to say, o' course,
that if it hadn't been for Tweet I'd never got the job."

"Oh," said Jo, straight-lipped, "I understand."

Tweet was not with the outfit when it pitched camp close by for the
night.  He sat in the automobile stage instead, and waved a friendly
good-by to them.  "Bread on the water, Hiram, comes back chocolate
cake!" he cried.  "That is, Tweet bread does.  Ha-ha, Hiram!  You been
mighty good to me, folks.  So long for a time!"




CHAPTER XVI

TEHACHAPI HANK

Toward the middle of the following afternoon Jerkline Jo's freight
outfit, minus the diverting Mr. Tweet of the twisted nose, was wending
its way empty back toward the distant mountains, hauling the necessary
water in the tank wagon.

They were still ten miles from the mouth of the mountain pass when they
went into camp on the desert for the night.  When they started next
morning the tank wagon was taken on a way and left, for, with the lake
at the highest point of the pass, and the artesian water at the desert
ranch on the other side, they would be well supplied for the remainder
of the trip.

Before noon they were entering the pass and moving up the steep ascent
into cooler atmosphere, and light, invigorating air, scented with the
breath of pines and junipers.

Hiram Hooker was lazing on his high seat, dreaming and watching his
leaders, when from behind came the familiar call:

"Who-hoo!"

He turned his face back toward the mistress of the ten gigantic whites.

"Who repaired the road back there?" she shouted.

"I don't know," Hiram called back.  "I can't remember that we stopped
there."

"We didn't.  Some one else has done that.  Keep your eyes open, Gentle
Wild Cat."

Hiram did this, and presently began to see ruts had been filled in
repeatedly and the marks left by boulders that had been snaked to the
edge of the precipice and allowed to thunder down a cañon.

This continued all the way to the summit, where they camped for a late
nooning beside the mountain lake.

When they took up the journey again, and had reached a point half a
mile beyond the lake, came upon a lone touring car and a little camp.
Frequently now Hiram looked back, to see perplexity and worry on the
usually placid brow of Jerkline Jo.  A half mile beyond the camp they
found seven men working with ax and pick and shovel, repairing the road.

Jo set the heavy brake and called to her ten to stop.  Hearing her
command, Hiram also halted his blacks.  The rest of the skinners moved
on slowly down the mountain, looking back for Jo's signal for them to
stop.  She gave none, however, so they continued on.

"Who is repairing this road, please?" Jo called from her wagon to a
group of men.

One of them approached her a few steps.  "Fella called Drummond," he
replied.

"Isn't he the automobile-truck man from San Francisco?"

"Yeah."

"Is he here?"

"No, ma'am.  He come to Julia and got us to come over here in a machine
and go to work, and he went back to Los Angeles, I think.  Said he'd be
out in a day or two."

"Thank you," said Jo, and threw off her brake.

There was no good opportunity for Hiram to talk over this matter with
her until they had left the mountains and were in camp at the desert
ranch.  "I don't quite like it," Jo said then.  "It seems that Mr.
Drummond should have come to me in this matter, and if the road needed
repairing to the extent that he is doing it we should share the expense
between us."

"Drummond?" queried Hiram.  "I think I know that man.  I've seen him,
anyway."

"You!  Where?"

"In San Francisco.  It seems that Tweet was in a restaurant there
talking to a--a waitress about coming down here.  This Drummond he--he
knew that waitress, and came in to see her while Tweet was there.  They
got to talking it over, I guess, and Tweet told him all about the new
railroad.  The waitress told me----"

"You mean Lucy?"

Hiram's face reddened.  "That was her name," he admitted.  "I--I
suppose Tweet told you about her."

"A little.  But I interrupted."

"Well, Lucy said Drummond had been interested in what Tweet had to say,
and he said he might look into the freighting possibilities of the new
road.  He's got a string of trucks, I was told."

"What sort of a man is he, Hiram?"

"Big fellow--always seems to be having fun.  He's as big as I am, but
not so awkward, I guess.  He wears fine clothes.  But I don't know
anything about him at all.  I never spoke to him."

The outfit reached Julia in the course of time, and found that "Blacky"
Potts had set up his shop in a large circular tent, and was hammering
away briskly on his anvil.  Also he had made the camp snug and
comfortable under whispering cottonwood, and had fenced off a corral
with barbed wire.

Jo at once went to the Mulligan Supply Company to learn that a message
had come to her, in their care, from Demarest.  It stated that their
big construction outfit was then on its way from northern California,
and would cross to the new railroad from a point seventy-five miles to
the north.  In view of the long trip, they wished to travel as light as
possible.  Consequently there was another big order for Jo to freight
in ahead of them at once.  What interested Jo more, though, was the
fact that Demarest ordered it delivered at the buttes, asking that a
watchman be camped there to guard the supplies, provided they arrived
ahead of the outfit.

Immediately they went to work at the loading, and in the end six wagons
were carrying capacity.  The seventh lead wagon was an extra, which Jo
had decided to use only in case of a breakdown.  With thirty tons of
hay, grain, case goods, and barreled provisions they started back early
the following morning.  Jo's heart was light, for this was exceedingly
good business, and it was coming faster than she had dared to hope,
with so few camps established.  Still, she was puzzled over the
repairing of the mountain road.

"Fellow called Drummond has a big order to haul in trucks," the manager
of the supply company had told her.  "It's for a store that's going to
open up at Ragtown, I understand.  Guess he'll get it out tomorrow or
next day."

All went well with the wagon train during the first lap of the desert
trip.  Hiram rode with his employer, and their migratory institution of
learning was in full swing.  Then when they reached the beginning of
the mountain pass they found a shock in store for them.

The head skinner, Blink Keddie, had no more than entered the pass with
his eight bay mules when a man stepped into the road and held up a hand
for him to stop.  He was a Western-looking individual, a seamed-faced
son of the deserts, and an immense Colt revolver dragged at his hips.
He had come from a tiny tent set back from the road a way, half hidden
by junipers and close to a trickling spring.

Keddie clamped his brake and stopped his eight, eying the stranger
curiously.  Keddie, like Heine Schultz and Tom Gulick, had been on the
railroad grade with Pickhandle Modock when Jo was a little girl.  He
was devoted to her and her interests, and anything that threatened her
prosperity he was wont to look upon as his personal affair.

"Mornin'," he drawled as the following teams came to a stop, and
skinners cupped hands behind their ears to listen.

"Quite a jag you got there," observed the man in the road.

Blink was entirely sober.  "Jag" referred to the enormity of the load
of freight.

"Little matter o' sixty thousand, altogether.  I wasn't aimin' to let
'em blow right here, though, I pardner.  Was there any particular
reason ye had for stoppin' me?"

"Well, maybe there was, stranger.  How many teams ye got pullin'."

Blink counted rapidly.  "Four tens and two eights," he made reply.

"Uh-huh--but I mean how many span, pardner?"

Once more Blink struggled with arithmetic.  "That'd make twenty-eight
pair, wouldn't it?"

"Just about--just about, pardner.  And two times twenty-eight is
fifty-six, ain't it?"

Blink Keddie promptly agreed.

"Agreed, eh?  Then I'll ask ye kindly for fifty-six dollars, stranger."

Keddie thoughtfully began rolling a cigarette.  "If I had fifty-six
dollars, ol'-timer," he said, "I wouldn't converse with the likes o'
you."

The gunman grinned.  "Does take some time to save that amount skinnin'
jerkline or bein' toll master on a mountain road," he admitted.  "Are
you the boss?"

"If I was the boss," slowly returned Blink, "I wouldn't live in the
same county with you."

By this time Jerkline Jo, who had been hurrying forward along the wagon
train to find out what had occurred, arrived on the scene of their airy
persiflage.

"What's wrong here, Blink?" she wanted to know.

"This fella has been insultin' me," claimed Blink.  "He insinuated I
belonged to the idle-rich class.  I guess he's institutin' some sort of
a drive or other.  You talk to 'im, Jo."

"Well?"  The girl wheeled and faced the man, hands on hips.

The Westerner swept off his hat.  "Ye see, ma'am," he said to her,
"this here's a toll road now--from here clean acrost the mountains to
the desert on t'other side.  I'm toll master.  I'm to collect two
dollars a loaded team for the trip through the pass.  The price
includes the return trip, empty."

Jerkline Jo paled.  Up behind her crowded Tom Gulick, Hiram Hooker,
Heine Schultz, and Jim McAllen, and, if looks could have killed, the
man with the gun would have been ripe for the undertaker's care.

"Two dollars!  You mean----"

"A dollar a head, then, ma'am.  You got fifty-six animals.  That 'u'd
be fifty-six dollars, wouldn't it?"  He smiled persuasively.

Jo gasped, and turned and glanced helplessly over her little army of
loyal men.

"By whose authority are you demanding this?" She spun back to the toll
master, her dark eyes now aflame.

"Mr. Al Drummond he's the boss, ma'am.  He's from Friscotown.  He's
gotta keep up the road, so o' course he's gonta charge other folks to
travel on it.  It's jest like as if it was his private prop'ty, as I
savvy the deal, ma'am.  I got papers to show ye, if ye wanta see 'em.
Course I got nothin' to do with it--nothin' atall.  Mr. Drummond he
jest hired me to collect the fees and keep folks off that refused to
pay.  I might add, though, ma'am, that I've always been considered a
pretty good keeper-off when I'm hired for that purpose.  I'm from the
Kitchen Rancho, over toward the Tehachapi.  They call me Tehachapi
Hank.  At yer service, ma'am."

Jerkline Jo's red lips were straight.  She was indignant.  A sense of
defeat almost overwhelmed her.  Such a situation had not even remotely
occurred to her.  In a wave of despair the realization swept over her
that she had attempted something of which she knew nothing.  There had
been no one to advise her, and in the unbounded confidence of youth she
had not sought counsel.  On the railroad grade few men could have put
anything over on her.  But this was another matter.

Fifty-six dollars for the eighteen-mile trip through the pass!  It
would be ruinous.  She would be obliged to advance her rate to meet
this additional expense, and then the truckman holding the franchise
would be able to haul freight cheaper than she could.

Back of her the men were muttering useless threats among themselves.
Jo found her voice at last.  There was no need to ask to see a copy of
the franchise, because there was not the slightest doubt in her mind
that everything was aboveboard in that respect.  She simply had been
outgeneraled.  There was nothing to do but to pay--for the present, at
least--as the freight on her wagons must be delivered at any cost, now
that she had contracted to deliver it.  What she said was:

"Will you accept my check?"

"Certainly, ma'am--most certain," was the ready reply.

"I'll go back to my wagon and write one for you then," she said, trying
to keep her voice steady.  "Let the wagons go on, please.  When mine
reaches you I'll hand out the check."

Tehachapi Hank touched his broad-brimmed hat again.  "All right and
proper, ma'am," he assured her.

He was waiting by the roadside when her stanch whites marched past him,
and she reached the check out through the slats of the rack.  He
touched his hat brim again and smiled then with true Western
politeness, pocketed the slip of paper without so much as glancing at
it.

Dully she watched the broad straining backs of her beloved animals as
they planted their great fetlocked feet and heaved their burden ever
upward.  Ahead of them she could hear her skinners shouting back and
forth from wagon to wagon above the jingling of the bells, their tones
high-pitched and angry.  Why had she not consulted with Demarest and
asked him to lay before her details of every angle that might present
itself in such an undertaking as hers?

Demarest knew all the twists and turns of modern business ruthlessness.
He might have been able to foresee a situation like this and to put
weapons into her hands with which she might have combated it.

She shrugged her sturdy shoulders finally, and as noon was close at
hand gave attention to her cooking.  For the present she would drive
the matter from her thoughts.  There was work to be accomplished, which
was a part of the present delivery of freight.  When this task was
completed she would see what could be done.




CHAPTER XVII

IN LETTERS OF BLACK

There was a general outburst of indignation on the part of Jerkline
Jo's devoted retainers when the outfit went into camp at noon,
quarterway through the mountain pass.

"We'll fix 'im, Jo!" Heine Schultz exclaimed angrily.  "All we gotta do
is make out to get ahead o' his old cough wagons and not let 'em pass.
We can hold 'im back clear through the pass, if we string out.  Le's
figger it out fer the rest o' the trip, Jo.  There's not over six
places where one vehicle can pass another.  Now what we gotta do is
string out our outfit so's none o' us'll hit one o' those places when
the machines are comin'.  Say, we can hold 'em up till----"

"Heine," said Jerkline Jo quietly, "is that your idea of business."

"Course it is.  Stick it to the Al Drummond, Jo!  He's started
somethin' that he'll have a hard time finishin', that's all.  Say, we
can slip it to him till he'll be sick o' that dirty deal he handed you.
Leave it to Blink and me.  We got it all schemed out."

"Heine," Jo remarked, "we'll travel right along as we have always
traveled.  If one of Mr. Drummond's trucks comes up behind us and wants
to pass we will let it pass when it is convenient to do so."

"Not here, Jo!  My team don't put one foot outa the road to let a truck
pass."

"No, I don't expect you to do that.  But it will depend on conditions.
If you are loaded and he is empty, of course he must look out for
himself.  Again, if you are climbing and he is coming down, he must get
out of the difficulty as best he can.  But when you, loaded, reach a
place where a truck can pass you, and you know one is coming up behind
you and wishes to pass, you will stop your team in the road and let it
circle around you."

"I won't, Jo!  I----"

"Yes, you will.  You will do as I say, as you always do."  She smiled
at him sweetly and patted his shoulder.  "Loyal old Heinrich!" she
said.  "Just the same old-timer, we must observe the courtesy of the
road always.  Think it over--you'll see I'm right."

"Jo, you can't afford a jolt like that," said Jim McAllen.

"I can't," Jo told him frankly.  "Right now I don't know what to do.  I
must keep on, by some hook or crook, till I can get advice from some
one who's onto such tricks--Demarest, perhaps."

"It's a rotten deal!"

"I have an idea it's perfectly legitimate, Jim."

"They ain't gonta do anything to the road to make it worth a tenth o'
what they ask to travel on it.  You saw the little putterin' jobs they
did, Jo."

"I have an idea," replied the girl, "that when winter comes they'll be
quite busy.  And it also occurs to me that, now that they've agreed to
maintain the road if given the franchise, we can make them do it down
to the letter, or render their franchise void."

"By golly, I bet you can at that, Jo!" put in Tom Gulick.  "I've heard,
though, there's a rotten bunch of grafters runnin' this county.  They'd
probably beat you out some way, so long as Drummond was puttin' up
cigar money for them."

Up until now Hiram Hooker had said nothing.  Now came his soothing
drawl, and the others listened.

"I don't know much about automobiles and what they can do," he said.
"But I do know mountains and mountain roads, and somethin' about
mountain soil.  And I've this to say: If Jo can hang on till winter
there'll be no trucks runnin' against her.  Then if they still collect
for crossin' through the pass, all she's got to do is raise the freight
rate to meet the extra expense.  There's exactly ten places on the road
where we're goin' to hook maybe thirty horses on every wagon to get
across next winter.  And I'll bet my month's wages against a dollar of
Mr. Drummond's money that he'll be begging for teams to haul him out.
Then, of course, the price ought to be about fifty-six dollars a haul,
regardless of distance, hadn't it?"

"Good boy!" cried Keddie.  "Listen to our Gentle Wild Cat pur!  He's
right, too, I'll say.  If we can hang on till winter, Jo can collect
back all she's paid out for tolls--and I'll say a little profit on the
deal wouldn't make me weep."'

"But winter's a long way off," Jim McAllen gloomily pointed out.

After this there was thoughtful silence.

To add to the misfortunes of the second trip to the camps, Jim McAllen
broke a reach when the train neared the foot of the grade.  There were
spare reaches in the outfit, of course, but they had to unload the
wagon to substitute one, and it all took a great deal of time.  Then a
horse became sick, and Jerkline Jo positively refused to work a sick
horse.  The animal was taken out of harness and allowed to tag along
behind with his mate, who automatically became useless, too.  A ton of
supplies was taken from the wagon to which the sick horse belonged, and
distributed among the other loads.  This took more time, and night
overtook the outfit with several miles between them and the tank wagon
that awaited their coming on the desert.

Hour after hour they plodded along, not daring to camp until they had
water.  There was no moon, and as the desert road was little more than
a trail Heine Schultz let his team tag Keddie's and walked ahead with a
lantern to guide the lead skinner.  Thirsty and hungry and weary, they
reached the tank about nine o'clock.  Then came a hearty curse from the
man with the lantern, followed by:

"Lord, be merciful unto me, a skinner!  The tank's empty, Jo!"

The party descended hurriedly and crowded about him.  It was a steel
tank, and a careful search failed to show that any of its plates had
sprung a leak.  Then the light was held under the spigot, and, though
the hot desert sun had evaporated every drop of water, there was a hole
worn in the sand where it had fallen in a stream.  The spigot was open.

"How 'bout it now, Jo?" Heine queried.  "Is this what you call
legitimate business--huh?  I guess now you'll let me hold 'em back when
I can."

Without replying Jo stooped and made an examination.

"Some one has turned the water out," she said, rising wearily.  "Will
we be obliged to hire a watchman to camp by our water tank?  This is
serious, boys.  The unwritten law of the desert would condemn whoever
did this to a lariat and a yucca palm.  Still, we don't know who did
it.  It's too dark to find tracks or to learn anything about it.  It's
seventeen miles to the Washburn-Stokes outfit--the nearest water ahead.
Or it's eight miles back to the lake in the mountains.  What's best to
do?"

They turned the problem over and over, and finally decided unanimously
that to send the tank with six horses back to the lake, to be refilled,
was the wiser plan.  Hiram volunteered for the trip, and Schultz
volunteered to go with him.  At once the two set off behind six of
Hiram's lamenting animals for the long night trip, eating a hasty lunch
as they traveled.

Dawn was breaking when they returned with a full tank, and were greeted
by the braying of the mules and the expectant nickering of the horses,
who smelled the water from afar.

Jo ordered a rest until ten o'clock, to counteract the suffering that
the thirsty animals had undergone and to rest Hiram's six after the
performance of their double task.

These setbacks made them late in their arrival at the scene of coming
toil, but gradually the distant buttes grew plainer as they moved on
steadily toward them over the crunching sands, so hot and barren.

Hiram Hooker was riding with Jerkline Jo as they approached the buttes.
She was hammering away on her typewriter, while Hiram was deep in a
mathematical problem, his tongue out and gripped by his teeth.  The
clicking of the typewriter ceased suddenly, and Jo asked:

"Isn't that a tent over there near the buttes, Wild Cat?"

Hiram looked up and shielded his eyes, straining his vision over the
rolling white backs of Jo's team into the yellow vastness beyond.

"Looks like it," he said.

"We'll not have to arrange for a watchman then.  Demarest has sent a
man, I guess.  Get out my binoculars, please, and see what you can make
out."

Hiram took the strong glasses from their case, and, steadying himself
against a side of the freight rack, trained them on the distant speck
of white that represented a lonely tent.

At once the tent seemed to jump across the desert to a point a short
distance ahead of them.  Hiram's lips parted and a snort of surprise
escaped him.

Before the front of the tent, on a pole planted there, was a big sign
composed of black letters against a white background.  And this is what
Hiram Hooker read:

  The Homesteader's Promised Land of Milk and Honey

  OFFICE OF THE PALOMA RANCHO INVESTMENT COMPANY

  Orr Tweet, President.  Walk In




CHAPTER XVIII

GREATER RAGTOWN

Indeed he was an important-looking individual who greeted the freight
outfit of Jerkline Jo when it came to a weary halt at the foot of the
desert buttes.  He wore a new olive-drab suit, composed of Norfolk
jacket and bellows breeches, an imposing Columbia-shape Stetson, and
shiny new russet-leather puttees.  From one corner of hi

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