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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The She Boss, by Arthur Preston Hankins
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The She Boss
+       A Western Story
+
+Author: Arthur Preston Hankins
+
+Release Date: August 27, 2006 [EBook #19129]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SHE BOSS ***
+
+
+
+
+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 canon 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
+passe," 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 naive
+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 canon.
+
+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 his mouth,
+aligned with his twisted nose, protruded long, expensive-looking cigar.
+This was Twitter-or-Tweet Orr Tweet.
+
+Hat removed, bowing like a Japanese, he approached the astonished
+skinners and offered his hand to Jerkline Jo.
+
+"Madam," he said, "permit me to extend to you Ragtown's most cordial
+welcome.  And you, gentlemen, are included, of course.  When you have
+the time, Miss Modock, I should like the pleasure of your presence in
+the office of the Paloma Rancho Investment Company.  If I may offer a
+suggestion, too, it might be well to deposit Mr. Demarest's freight
+close to my office, so that I can look out for it until the arrival of
+the outfit.  Hooker, come with your employer if you can conveniently do
+so."
+
+So saying, Mr. Tweet recrowned himself with his new Stetson, turned,
+and strolled impressively toward his tent, disappearing between its
+lazily flapping portals.
+
+With the exception of Hiram Hooker, Jo's skinners shouted with
+laughter.  Jo and Hiram merely exchanged bewildered looks.
+
+"We'll go over now, Wild Cat," she said.  "There's lots of time to
+unload.  We can't make it out of here to-day, anyway."
+
+Side by side they walked toward the lonesome little tent with the big
+sign on a pole in front of it--a mere atom of white in the vast desert.
+
+Orr Tweet sat at an oaken desk in one corner of the tent.  In another
+corner was his bunk, a new suit case, and a new trunk, both in keeping
+with Tweet's expensive outdoor clothes.  There were several chairs.
+Tweet arose briskly and held one for the girl with all the ceremony of
+a head waiter in a restaurant of repute.
+
+"Jo," he began, "I hope you'll pardon the familiarity; there is a
+matter of sixteen or seventeen dollars due you, I believe, for my
+transportation from Frisco to Palada.  And, Hiram, I believe I owe you
+somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty dollars--the exact amount
+escapes me temporarily.  Now, both of you, the question is this: Do you
+prefer cash, or stock in the Paloma Rancho Investment Company, or land?
+The choice is yours."
+
+"Tweet," ordered Hiram, "get down off your high horse and talk sense.
+What on earth is all this, anyway?"
+
+Tweet laughed and winked and became himself again.
+
+"Hiram, old boy," he confided, "I'm on the road to fortune.  This is
+gonta be the biggest deal I ever tried to swing.  And, by golly!  I'm
+the little boy that c'n swing 'er!"
+
+"Tell us about it," pleaded Jerkline Jo.
+
+"Well, sir, Jo, I owe everything to you, and I'll prove I'm not the man
+to be slow in showin' my gratitude.  I'm a go-getter, and no mistake.
+I couldn't make you folks believe it, so I had to go to work and show
+you.  But I bear you no ill will.  You didn't know anything about me.
+
+"Well, dear little playmates, here's the dope:
+
+"That night watchman over there at Julia told me who owned all the land
+about here, and said they were in tight financial circumstances--badly
+in need o' ready money.  They're big land owners--land poor.  I drank
+that all down, and she listened good to me.  For the rest, I banked on
+the accurate judgment of a party known as Jerkline Jo.  I says to
+myself: 'Jo's been on the grade all her life and savvies conditions.
+If she says Ragtown is goin' to be located at the buttes, that part o'
+the country's the part to get toehold on.  Anyway, Playmate,' I says,
+'we'll take a chance on Jerkline Jo.'  And that's what me and Playmate
+did.
+
+"I hunted up the owners o' the land when I gets to Los Angeles, and
+makes 'em an offer on twelve thousan' acres--comprisin' the entire
+tract known as Paloma Rancho, an ancient Spanish grant.  Good for
+nothin', I'd been told, but to run cows on in winter, when the filaree
+and bunch grass are green.  Just the same, there are other parts o'
+this ole desert that are comin' out with a bang here lately.  Lookit up
+in Lucerne Valley and around Victorville!  Good pear land, once she's
+cleared o' the desert growth and a little humus-bearin' fertilizer
+added to the soil.  Produces good alfalfa, too.  Anyway, I says I'll
+take a chance, so I made 'em an offer.
+
+"They pretended like they thought the railroad was gonta do 'em a lot
+o' good in a few years; that they didn't care whether they disposed o'
+the property or not.  But that bunk's old stuff to me, so I shut 'em up
+and made 'em talk turkey.  I made 'em an offer o' ten dollars an acre
+for Paloma Rancho, payment to be made in quarterly installments of six
+thousan' dollars, each, contract to run for five years, with interest
+at seven per cent on deferred payments--first payment o' six thousan'
+dollars to be made in advance.
+
+"They refused, and I picked up my hat and started out.  They called me
+back, and for ten minutes we puttered around between ten dollars an
+acre and fifteen, and at last they fell into my arms.  We had the
+papers drawn up, and I slips 'em a certified check for six thousan'
+buckerinos."
+
+"You gave them six thousand dollars!" cried Hiram.
+
+"Sure," Tweet replied easily.  "I'd already wired to Frisco and
+disposed o' my ditch-digger holdin's for over eight thousan'; I got
+over a thousan' left, five hundred paid on an automobile that's now
+asleep back o' this office, and a toehold on Paloma Rancho, twelve
+thousan' acres o' perfectly beautiful sand.
+
+"And now that you folks have dumped a cargo o' freight here marked D.,
+S. & T., No. 1, I know we win.  We're goin' to make this one o' the
+liveliest propositions in the West.  Ragtown will move down here as
+soon as the big outfit lands at the buttes.  City lots in
+Ragtown--which later probably will be known as Tweet--will be worth
+from a hundred dollars to two hundred and fifty, accordin' to location.
+My engineers will be here soon, and we'll lay off the town site.  I've
+made application for a post office, and by the time the papers come
+from the department there'll be plenty o' signers here.  Concessions
+will be granted at reasonable figures.  Farming lands will be sold at
+from fifty dollars an acre up to a hundred and fifty, accordin' to
+location, depth to water, et cetera.  This will include stock in the
+company's water right.  Water will be developed up in the mountains, on
+a site that goes with the ranch, at an approximate expense of one
+hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars.  I am organizing my water
+company now, and will let all old friends in on the ground floor, of
+course.  Water at Butte Springs, by the way, Ragtown's present supply,
+will cost twenty-five cents a head for stock, and five cents a drink
+for human beings who are recognized citizens of Ragtown, the
+Tweet-to-be.  Old friends, however, are hereby extended the privilege
+of watering free of charge while life shall last.
+
+"So folks, we're off in a bunch.  Keep your eye on Ragtown, metropolis
+of the Homesteader's Promised Land of Milk and Honey."
+
+"But how about your next payment?" asked Jerkline Jo.  "If I'm not too
+impertinent, can you meet it?"
+
+"Right this moment," replied Tweet, "I couldn't even look like I wanted
+to meet it.  But why worry for nearly three months more?  Ragtown will
+pay it for me.  I'll meet her when she's due--never fear.  I always get
+out some way.  My middle name is Millions.  Gogettersburg is my
+birthplace.  You folks and Pete are my first failure in convincin'
+others of my shrewdness, honesty, and unbounded ability."
+
+For an hour Mr. Tweet told of his glowing plans, but he found it
+difficult to convince either Jo or Hiram that he had success within his
+grasp.  Not until the conversation worked around to the mountain-road
+franchise did Jerkline Jo realize that, in befriending Orr Tweet, she
+had enlisted an ally who would and could help her.
+
+"Why, we've got 'em by the tail, girl!" he cried.  "Just keep on payin'
+what they ask till Ragtown moves down here, which will happen as soon
+as Demarest gets settled.  Then it'll cost this Drummond to travel
+across Paloma Rancho exactly what it has cost you to come through the
+pass.  And I'll get me a roughneck with a gun, too, and see that he
+pays.  And if he eventually falls down and quits, you make him live up
+to that franchise and keep that road in perfect repair, or sue him, by
+golly!  Leave it to me, Jo.  I'll fix his timepiece.  Every spare
+dollar you get, you slip it to me to help me meet those payments.
+It'll let you in on the ground floor, by golly!  We'll make a million
+out of it, Jo--you and me and the Gentle Wild Cat.  And I'll show 'em
+how to try and take advantage of a girl like you!  Folks, the future
+looks mighty bright for all of us!"
+
+While they were conversing Blink Keddie's voice Came from outside the
+tent:
+
+"Jo!  The trucks are comin' in."
+
+The three went out and joined the head skinner, who pointed far over
+the shimmering desert at three dots moving along from the mountains
+toward the Washburn-Stokes camp.
+
+"Poor fish!" Tweet said disgustedly.  "They don't know what's in store
+for 'em.  Next trip they make, probably, Ragtown and the big camp will
+be on Paloma Rancho, and then they're blocked."
+
+Mr. Tweet ate supper with Jo and her skinners, and afterward the outfit
+spent a pleasant evening listening to the promoter's rosy plannings.
+Even the most skeptical among them gradually became convinced that, if
+he could hold on and meet his payments, he might make a go of it.
+Early next morning they started back, passed the polite Mr. Tehachapi
+Hank in the course of time, and arrived in Julia without further mishap.
+
+Now came a period of inactivity.  There were orders for goods to be
+hauled, but a great portion of what was demanded had not yet arrived by
+train from the coast side of the mountain range.
+
+Such delays were expensive.  Jerkline Jo could have made a profit
+running into four figures every month, allowing for deterioration and a
+reasonable per cent on the investment represented, could she have kept
+her teams moving steadily, with the wagons loaded to capacity every
+trip.  As yet, though, with so few camps established, this could not
+reasonably be hoped for, and she had made due allowance for such
+setbacks when deciding upon her freight rate.  She had charged
+Demarest, Spruce & Tillou three cents a pound for the last consignment.
+
+The three trucks that they had seen returned.  They were of two-ton
+capacity.  More came in from the coast, which carried five tons, and
+there was a fleet of five-ton trailers.  Jo learned that Drummond had
+made a price of two and three-quarter cents, so she promptly met it
+and, by wire, notified Demarest to that effect.
+
+She was anxious to see the five-tonners in operation.  She believed
+that machines carrying a large tonnage would meet with serious
+difficulties in the pass, and also in the desert sand, in places.  But
+they would make the trip so quickly that she began to have grave
+doubts.  They might worm their way out of many difficulties, and still
+make the camps while her teams were on the first lap of the journey.
+So far, she had seen nothing of her competitor, Al Drummond.
+
+There reached the Mulligan Supply Company a telegram from Demarest
+instituting a standing order for baled alfalfa, and instructing that
+all freight be hauled by Jo so long as she could keep ahead of the
+congestion and haul as cheaply as others.  Promptly, then, Jo loaded to
+capacity with hay, and they were off again.
+
+Four light trucks had preceded her with case goods, for Ragtown's
+store, she supposed.  But the remainder of the fleet remained idle at
+Julia, and seemed to have no business.  Jo was reasonably sure that,
+for old friendship's sake, Philip Demarest would see to it that she got
+all of his hauling, providing she could make deliveries to his
+satisfaction.  She thought that until new camps settled on the
+grade--camps of bigger contractors who would buy their supplies direct
+and not depend on Demarest, Spruce & Tillou--Mr. Drummond would have
+many idle days.  Then, of course, he might cut to the bone on the
+freight rate, and Jo feared that, with the trucks eating nothing while
+they rested, Drummond might be better able to withstand a rate war.
+
+They were held up by the genial but exacting Tehachapi Hank at the foot
+of the grade, as on their last trip.  Jo paid cash this time, and
+demanded a receipt, as ordered to do by Tweet.
+
+As the wagon train neared the highest point in the pass she noticed
+that her whites and Hiram's blacks seemed to be lagging behind.  Still,
+both teams seemed to be moving briskly enough and steadily.  But the
+other teams were far in the lead.
+
+Then Hiram's wagon entered upon a system of hairpin curves, and for
+nearly fifteen minutes none of her skinners was in sight.
+
+She continued to wonder at the unwonted speed of the skinners ahead of
+Hiram.
+
+Just as she reached the outmost point of a bow in the second hairpin
+curve, she heard a dull rumble behind her.  Looking back, she saw
+nothing unusual, for in this place the road wound about U's and S's in
+the mountainside, and one could not see far along it, either ahead or
+behind.  Deciding that a tree had fallen, she dismissed the matter from
+her thoughts, and gave her attention to manipulating the jerkline over
+an exacting piece of road.
+
+She worked out of the curves eventually, to see the other teams moving
+placidly along ahead of her, but now she and Hiram had caught up again.
+
+She spoke about it when they camped for the midday rest.  It was Hiram
+who made reply.
+
+"I was wondering at their speed, too, Jo," he said.  "The rest of 'em
+were all way ahead of me and out o' sight for twenty minutes, maybe."
+
+There followed a bantering conversation on the relative merits of the
+various teams, with minute explanation by the foremost skinners as to
+just why it was impossible for such miserable animals as the whites and
+the blacks to keep in sight of the rest.  And for the time being, this
+ended the incident.
+
+They left the delicately scented mountain country in due course and
+took up the long, weary journey over the desert.  When they were near
+enough to the buttes to make out objects at their feet it became plain
+to all that the big outfit of Demarest, Spruce & Tillou had arrived and
+pitched its camp.
+
+Shortly after they became aware of this a machine was discovered coming
+toward them from the distant tents.  Then another put in an appearance,
+following the first.  Jo now heard the cough of motors behind her, and,
+looking back, saw two trucks.
+
+The first machine coming from the camps swung from the road when it
+neared Blink Keddie and waited, panting, until the outfit had passed
+it.  Only the driver was in it, a man Jerkline Jo had never before
+seen.  He lifted his hat politely as her whites rolled past, and she
+thanked him for his patience.  Then he moved his car into the road and
+continued on toward the trucks.  Looking back, Jo saw that all three
+stopped when they came together.
+
+Now, from ahead, came the second car, and at the wheel sat
+Twitter-or-Tweet.  He signaled Keddie to stop, and the outfit came to a
+halt.
+
+"Hello, Jo, and fellas!" cried the beaming Mr. Tweet, descending from
+his car.  "The man who just passed you in the touring car is Mr.
+Richard Huber, one of our first citizens.  He's Ragtown's first
+merchant.  He's gone to direct the trucks to come to Greater Ragtown
+with their loads.  For, folks, Ragtown is moving in a body, with its
+traps on burros' and men's backs and in wagons and flivvers to the
+Tweet-to-be.  Talked Huber out o' leasing, and sold him fifteen town
+lots, by golly!  Half down, balance in three years--seven and a half
+per cent interest on deferred payments.  Man of discernment.  I'll
+proclaim to the high, green mountains!  I'm on my way to collect our
+fee for allowin' the trucks to cross Paloma Rancho.  How much you been
+held up for, Jo?"
+
+"One hundred and twelve dollars," she told him.
+
+"Just a minute.  I'll hand it to you.  Move on now, and I'll get back
+in the road and collect."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+WHAT MADE THE WILD CAT
+
+Jerkline Jo's wagon train snailed on over the desert toward the tents
+of Demarest's big camp.  The tires of Mr. Tweet's shiny new car plunked
+down into the road, and that gentleman continued on toward the trucks
+and the machine of Ragtown's first merchant, Mr. Huber.
+
+Hiram Hooker was riding with Jerkline Jo, and the two had been deep in
+their studies when the appearance of the various automobiles had
+distracted their attention.  Hiram now climbed to the top of Jo's
+immense load of baled alfalfa, and, looking back, made reports to her.
+
+"They're all together now," he said, "and having quite an argument.
+Tweet's swinging his arms about as if he wanted to fight.
+
+"Now he's getting into his car.  He and the storekeeper are turning in
+ahead of the trucks.  Here they all come, Tweet in the lead!"
+
+A little later Tweet shouted to Hiram to stop, and Hiram relayed the
+command to Jo, who called to her ten whites and brought them to a
+standstill.  A little later five angry men hurried on foot alongside
+the wagon.
+
+"Here's your hundred and twelve dollars, Jo," Tweet said exultantly,
+passing the girl a sheaf of bills, "And that settles that.  Now, Mr.
+Drummond, step over here and be introduced to Jerkline Jo Modock and my
+friend Hiram Hooker, from Wild-cat Hill.  We'll see if you folks can't
+get together and conduct your affairs amicably."
+
+Al Drummond, Hiram Hooker's one-time rival, was indeed there, dressed
+after the fashion of Mr. Tweet, and looking big and important and
+business-like.  There was a dark scowl on his brow though as he came
+forward and nodded to Jo, but did not offer his hand.
+
+"Well, I've been held up," he muttered, "and I'm going to see about it,
+but----"
+
+"See about it all you want to, my friend," put in Tweet smoothly.  "I
+have complete control of this land, and have the sole right to say who
+shall cross it and who shall not, and under what conditions.  The ranch
+is posted, and everything is in order.  This road is a new one, and you
+can't make the claim that it has been used so long that it must be
+considered in the nature of a public highway.  You've not a leg to
+stand on; so every time you turn a wheel on this property it's goin' to
+cost you just what the last trip through the pass cost Jerkline Jo.
+You started something, my friend, and you can't finish it--that's all.
+Take your medicine like a sport."
+
+"I'm going to keep up that mountain road, and I'm going to charge to
+move vehicles and teams over it," replied Drummond angrily.  "My
+operations are legitimate.  Yours are a holdup."
+
+"Suit yourself."  Tweet shrugged indifferently.  "But, as I pointed
+out, you'll pay back every cent you collect from Jo.  And, besides,
+you'll be out the expenses of your toll master."
+
+"Others besides this lady will be crossing--lots of them later on,"
+said Drummond.  "I'm not going to keep that road in condition for the
+general public free of charge."
+
+"Then the best thing you can do is make a dicker with Jo to share her
+part of the maintenance expenses, and you two divide the spoils that
+you collect from others."
+
+"I can't agree to that," Jo put in hastily.  "The road will serve very
+well as it is for our purposes, with a few repairs now and then which
+my boys can attend to themselves.  We don't have to have a road in as
+good condition as the trucks will demand.  We are entirely satisfied as
+matters stand."
+
+Tweet slapped his thigh.  "Spoken like a man!" he cried.  "Now it's
+your move, Mr. Drummond.  Fix your road all you want to and gouge
+travelers for the last cent you can, but this outfit travels through
+the mountains free, any way you can figure it out.  Better write out a
+permanent permit for Jo, and do away with this collectin' back and
+forth and only breakin' even."
+
+The truck man was so angry he scarcely could contain himself.
+
+"It's a dirty, rotten deal!" he said between gritted teeth.  "And this
+is only part of it.  This bunch of roughnecks rolled a big boulder in
+the road after they'd passed yesterday, or some time, and it took us
+three hours to get it out.  Had to hook on the trucks, and unload, and
+cut poles--and I don't know what all we didn't have to do to get the
+thing out so we could pass it.  That's dirty, low-down business, and
+anybody who would do such a thing is a dirty piker--I don't care if she
+is a woman!  If I've got to come out here and buck a wild woman with no
+principle I'll----"
+
+Al Drummond paused abruptly.  A mountain of bone and muscle had swooped
+down from the top of the load of baled hay and loomed large before him.
+
+"Mr. Drummond," said a caressing voice with what seemed a totally
+disinterested drawl, "you're a liar!"
+
+For a few seconds there was not a sound as Hiram Hooker stood before
+Drummond and eyed him placidly.  The truck man's face had gone
+chalk-white.  They were big men, both of them, and for all that
+Drummond's life had not been a rugged one, he was physically pretty
+much a man.  Jo's skinners had come running back, and, with Tweet and
+Huber, looked on expectantly, sensing that a crisis between the two big
+huskies was imminent.  Then came the voice of Jerkline Jo.
+
+"Hiram," she said, "don't be hasty."  Jerkline Jo had seen many a fight
+between big men of the outdoor life.  It was no new experience, and
+there was not a quaver in her tones.  She had been brought up where men
+settled matters with fists or guns or pick handles.  "Listen, Hiram,"
+she continued, "Mr. Drummond is telling the truth, I think, up to a
+certain point.  When you boys were way ahead of me yesterday I heard a
+rumble behind me.  Evidently a big boulder rolled down in the road
+after we had passed.  Just the same I'll thank you, Hiram, to ask Mr.
+Drummond to apologize for accusing me of being responsible."
+
+"Yes, ma'am," drawled Hiram, reverting to his old speech of the redwood
+forests.  "Ye heard, Mr. Drummond.  We didn't roll down any stone.  I'd
+apologize now if I was you.  That's best."
+
+"Listen to the Gentle Wild Cat pur," said Heine Schultz, looking
+abstractedly up at the clouds.
+
+"Well, you ain't me, you gangling hick!" said Drummond.  "I saw
+footprints up above the rock wall that the stone fell from.  It was
+pushed down.  There are six of you.  You could roll down a rock that we
+three couldn't budge.  You even could hook on teams and drag it in the
+road behind you.  Then when you came back, if it was still there, you
+could easily snake it out of your own way with these big horses."
+
+"I reckon you're right," admitted Hiram.  "But we didn't do that, so
+you oughta apologize to Jo."  There was a deceptively soothing note in
+Hiram's tones.  He seemed to be patiently pointing out the better
+course for Mr. Drummond to pursue, with no suggestion of what might be
+the penalty for guessing wrong.
+
+"Well, I'll not apologize!  I'm not a fool!  That rock was rolled down.
+It----"
+
+"You're a liar, Mr. Drummond," repeated Hiram.
+
+Then they came together with a thud of big bodies and a shower of
+hooflike fists.
+
+"Hi-yi!" yelled Blink Keddie.  "What made our Gentle Wild Cat wild?
+Come on, boys!  Back up ol' Wild Cat!  Eat 'im, Hi-_ram_!  Eat 'im
+alive!  Le's send this outfit to the cleaners!"
+
+"Blink!" called Jerkline Jo shrilly as the pugnacious skinner charged
+threateningly at Drummond's truck drivers.  He came to a stop.  "Don't
+make it general unless it becomes necessary," Jo added smoothly.
+
+Meantime the two huge belligerents were hammering stunning blows at
+each other.  About them now stood silent men in a circle, with the
+vast, hot desert stretching away on every side.
+
+It developed shortly that Drummond was an athlete.  He was quicker on
+his feet than Hiram and knew more tricks of offense and defense.
+Hiram, on the other hand, was a bull for strength and endurance, and in
+the big-woods country had maintained a reputation as a rough-and-tumble
+fighter and wrestler, though most of his encounters had been friendly
+bouts.  Furthermore, he was cool as one of his Mendocino trout streams,
+and he fought in a businesslike way and never allowed himself to lose
+his temper.
+
+He was therefore the more deadly, for his endurance was unbounded, and
+the punishment that Drummond was able to inflict seemed to have no
+effect whatever.  And when one of his big fists found its mark a groan
+went up from Huber and Tweet.  But Jerkline Jo and her rough-and-ready
+skinners, the latter all old fighters of the camps and used to unseemly
+sights, and the sickening sound of a big fist landing on giving bone,
+only watched and waited for the result.
+
+In no time at all, it seemed, the face of the truck man was raw, while
+Hiram's showed only bruises.  They clinched repeatedly, and soon it
+became apparent that Drummond was forcing these clinches.
+
+"You've got 'im goin', Gentle Wild Cat!" yelled Tom Gulick.  "Keep
+after his mush, ol'-timer!  Pretty soon he won't be able to see you;
+then clean house with 'im!"
+
+Drummond played for Hiram's wind now, but there was not an ounce of fat
+over the stomach that he hammered so repeatedly, and it seemed as if he
+were battering hard rubber.  He was fast losing his own wind, for his
+life had not been so healthy as had that of the man from the Northern
+forests.  Hiram's punishing fists were finding their target more
+frequently now, for the truck man's defense was failing him.  He was
+slowing up--breathing hard--gulping.
+
+"Guess it's time to stop it, Gentle Wild Cat," complacently observed
+Jim McAllen.
+
+Then Hiram finished it.  He crowded his big antagonist and beat him to
+his knees with blows that seemed to be skull crushing.  Drummond's nose
+and mouth were badly damaged.  Both eyes were mere slits, blazing
+between coloring puffs.  One crushing, blow straight into his face as
+he came up defiantly sent him reeling about, head down, groping blindly.
+
+"One more in the same place, Wild Cat!" called Gulick.
+
+But Hiram desisted, though continuing to trail the groping man as he
+reeled through the sand, stumbling frequently.
+
+"Lock the door, Hiram!" begged Heine Schultz.  "It's all over but
+closin' up."
+
+Hiram shook his head, and then Drummond wilted and sank in the sand.
+
+Water was quickly provided, and the pulse of Jerkline Jo leaped as she
+saw that Hiram himself was taking the most prominent part in the
+whipped man's revival.  It was fully five minutes before Drummond was
+conscious again; then Hiram helped to bear him to one of the trucks.
+
+"Thank you, Hiram," Jo said softly as he returned.
+
+He looked up into her eyes, which were moist round the rims.  He had
+fought and won for his girl of romance, and he knew now that it had
+been she who through all the years had been beckoning him to come.
+
+With a damp cloth she tenderly touched his bruised face here and there
+as the wagon train moved on again.
+
+"Don't think any the worse of me, Hiram," she pleaded.  "Perhaps I'm a
+roughneck, after all, as Drummond intimated.  But I can't faint and
+carry on at the sight of blood and the sound of battering fists as most
+women do.  I like a fight--a fair fight--a good fight--a manly fight.
+Life for me has been always a fight.  I've learned not to shrink.  Am I
+brutal--for a woman?"
+
+"No," said Hiram.  "I think I want you that way.  Nobody could look
+into your eyes, Jo, and think you weren't tender and compassionate.
+I'd want my woman to be a fighter, I guess, when it was the time and
+place to fight."
+
+Jerkline Jo's face was radiant with color, but she said softly:
+
+"And I want my man to be a fighter.  It's in my blood, it seems."
+
+They said nothing more about it then, but each knew that love had
+spoken, and the unfriendly desert seemed a delectable land.
+
+In camp that night Blink Keddie made a confession.
+
+"Jo," he said, twisting and squirming, "me and Heine and Jim and Tom
+did ease that boulder into the road.  We done it to get even for the
+empty water tank."
+
+"Why, Blink!" Jo cried, aghast.
+
+"We made it up to do it, and not even let Wild Cat in on the deal,
+'cause he seemed to think like you did.  So we rampsed our teams and
+got way ahead o' you folks, then stopped 'em when they was outa you
+folks' sight around the curves, and ran back through the trees with
+bars.  We had our rock all picked out, and it didn't take the four o'
+us no time to ease her to the edge and let 'er plunk down in the road
+behind you.  Then we run ahead through the woods and got on our wagons
+before you caught up.  Now you know--what're you goin' to do about it?"
+
+"Shall I have Wild Cat take you out, one at a time," Jo asked
+mischievously, after a thoughtful pause.
+
+Keddie shrugged.  "I ain't achin' for my portion o' that," he
+confessed, "but ol' Timberline will know he's been in a fight."
+
+"It was despicable of you boys," Jo said sternly.  "We'll not fight
+that way."
+
+"But the empty water tank, Jo!" cried Heine.  "My goat ain't through
+gettin' got about that deal yet.  You gotta fight the devil with fire,
+as they say."
+
+"I'm terribly sorry," Jo continued, her brow clouding.  "That act is
+responsible for to-day's trouble, and we haven't yet heard the last of
+that, I'm afraid.  And now _I'll_ have to apologize to Mr. Drummond and
+explain."
+
+"No, no, Jo!  Let Hi-_ram_ do it.  He knows how to apologize.  Think o'
+the water tank, Jo!"
+
+"We have no proof that Drummond or his men were responsible for the
+empty tank, boys.  I'm terribly sorry.  I must think over what's best
+to be done now.  We mustn't stoop to such methods.  Even though we are
+subjected to underhand competition, we ourselves must fight fair and
+not descend to our enemy's level."
+
+"You're aimin' to go to heaven, Jo," Gulick accused.  "Drummond started
+the dirty work.  We can show him a dozen tricks to offset emptyin' our
+tank.  Better tell him not to do anythin' more.  We'll stop his clock
+if he does."
+
+"You'll do it fairly, then, or you'll not drive teams for me," Jo
+emphatically told them.
+
+Their silence disturbed her.  They knew that she could not do without
+them.  Even as matters stood, she could have used one more jerkline
+skinner could she have found one good enough to handle her much-loved
+animals.  They were loyal to her, a stanch little army, hard to defeat
+if their crude but forceful methods of fighting could be brought into
+play.  All of them looked upon the girl as their especial charge in
+life, and whenever they fought for her they would, with only her
+well-being in mind, fight as they saw fit.  Still, she could control
+them if forewarned of their plans.  She always had controlled them--not
+by condemning and issuing orders and threatening, but by the exercise
+of her sweet womanly personality; for there was not a man of them but
+loved her and fairly worshiped at her shrine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+DRUMMOND'S PASSENGER
+
+The summer progressed, and great changes were wrought on the desert.
+To the last soul Ragtown moved from its first location into the
+hospitable arms of Mr. Tweet--but Tweet's hospitality demanded its
+price.  Outfit after outfit came crawling across the desert to pitch
+camp somewhere along the line and begin its portion of the big work in
+band.  There was a post office at Ragtown, twenty or more saloons,
+dance halls and gambling dens combined, restaurants, tent hotels,
+stores, and even a bank and a motion-picture show.  Thousands of rough,
+hard-drinking, hard-fighting men thronged the mushroom town, and it
+resembled a mining town of California's early days.  Miners and
+cattlemen, too, made the town headquarters, and there were frequent
+fights and an occasional shooting scrape.  The cost of everything was
+high.  Money flowed freely, as did bootleg jackass brandy.  It seemed
+that the prohibition enforcement officers had been unable to locate the
+infant town.  The rough, unrestrained life of the frontier was rife at
+Ragtown, and Twitter-or-Tweet Orr Tweet gleaned shekels right and left.
+
+Jerkline Jo had not seen Al Drummond to speak with him after the fight.
+He had been laid up for a week from the terrible battering that Hiram
+had given him, and when he was about again he left the country in his
+touring car.
+
+His drivers continued to transport freight to the new Ragtown and to
+certain independent contractors who had reached the work.  In truth, it
+developed that there was plenty of hauling to keep both outfits busy,
+and Jerkline Jo was making money hand over fist, as was every one who
+had services to offer or something to sell.
+
+Tehachapi Hank no longer stood like an ogre guarding the portals to the
+mountain pass.  Drummond had been beaten on that deal, and the gunman's
+removal was an admission of defeat.  Consequently, Tweet exacted no
+charge for the trucks to cross his ranch.  Things were running smoothly
+between the two freighting enterprises, and Jerkline Jo hoped against
+hope that there would be no more trouble.  But she had not liked the
+baleful look in Drummond's eye when she caught it on the street in
+Ragtown one evening.  It was plain that he considered great humiliation
+had been heaped upon him, and that he was waiting and watching for an
+opportunity for revenge.
+
+Then one day she met him face to face in Julia, and stepped to him to
+tell him about the boulder in the road.  His glance was like a knife
+thrust as he turned on his heel and stalked away before she could
+speak.  After that, of course, she made no further effort to enlighten
+him.
+
+As the weeks passed it developed that Orr Tweet was not the slowest
+salesman in California, where salesmen--especially land
+salesmen--achieve their greatest triumphs.  Not only did he sell lots
+and building sites in Ragtown, but he disposed of the surrounding
+acreage to would-be ranchers and speculators, and had been able with
+ease, he informed his old friends, to meet his second payment on the
+ranch.  He urged Jo to invest her earnings in the company, and after
+consideration she resolved to take a chance with him; for here and
+there, where wells had been sunk and pumping apparatus installed, the
+once barren land was turning green and showing evidences of rich and
+productive soil.
+
+So things stood, or refused to stand, in Ragtown and the vicinity when
+Drummond drove in one day with no less a passenger than a pretty girl,
+all pink and white, named Lucy Dalles.  Hiram Hooker came face to face
+with her in Ragtown's boisterous business street an hour after her
+arrival, for Jo's freight outfit was at rest there for the night.
+
+Lucy was as pretty in her petite, doll-like way as when she had so
+fascinated him in the city, but now he could not help comparing her
+hothouse beauty with the brown-skinned, outdoor desirability of
+Jerkline Jo.  Jo could have picked up this frail, silk-garbed creature
+and thrown her overhead; yet in pure womanliness and tenderness Lucy
+was not her equal.  Jerkline Jo was a queen--a ruler--a fearless woman
+with a purpose in life, big of body and soul and brain.  Lucy Dalles
+was merely a pretty girl, with an ambition for money and life's
+frivolous pleasures.  Hiram understood this now.
+
+She greeted him glowingly, and called him by his first name.
+
+"I told you I was coming," she cried, giggling.  "And isn't this rich?
+If only I were writing scenarios now!"
+
+"Aren't you?" asked Hiram.
+
+"No, I gave it up.  They got too exacting for me, and began buying the
+picture rights of books and magazine stories by established authors in
+preference to original scripts for the screen.  I was a piker,
+anyway--nothing in me, I guess.  So I threw up the sponge."
+
+"You're still a waitress, then?"
+
+She looked at him archly.  "Not on your sweet young life!" and she
+laughed.  "I didn't throw ambition overboard when I quit writing
+scenarios.  Writing in any form is usually a slow road to success, I've
+learned.  I never wanted to be a writer just for the sake o' the work.
+I want jack, and lots of it, and what it'll buy."
+
+Hiram felt a sudden disgust for her and her sordid aims in life.  But
+to appear polite he asked:
+
+"What are you doing, then?"
+
+"Everybody I can," she retorted.  "I worked in a beauty parlor for a
+little as a hairdresser and manicure.  I'm out for the money, Hiram.
+I'm not a pickpocket yet, but that's because I don't know how to be
+one.  But if you've got any loose change in your pockets watch out.
+I'm out for the coin.  But here comes Al.  He brought me down.  He's
+going to set me up in business."
+
+"Drummond?" he asked.  "He and I don't speak.  We had a little trouble."
+
+Again she arched her penciled brows.  "He didn't tell me," she said.
+"He'll be sore at me talkin' to you then.  See him over there by that
+saloon?  He's stopped and is scowling at us.  Well, I'll just stick
+with you to show him his place.  Take me somewhere, Hiram; I want to
+see the life."
+
+Hiram did not know what to say.  He would have preferred to terminate
+the conversation.  Lucy Dalles held no fascination for him now.  Hiram
+had met and loved a woman without parallel in his brief experience of
+life.  But he could not be impolite, so he sauntered down the street
+with the girl, trying to make conversation and hoping that Drummond
+would not be offended all over again.
+
+In all the resorts men and women were crowding before the bar, gambling
+with abandon or dancing.
+
+"Buy me a drink, Hiram," Lucy pleaded.  "I just want to go into one of
+these places.  Women do it here, I understand."
+
+Hiram shrugged and led her into the Palace Dance Hall, conducted by a
+notorious character, who followed big construction camps, called
+"Ghost" Falcott because of his chalk-white skin.
+
+It was pay day at Demarest, Spruce & Tillou's, and the Palace was
+crowded.  They found a place at the bar, however, and the girl stood
+looking over the half-drunken throng with eager eyes, now and then
+casting a glance through the door to see if Drummond was following her.
+
+Their drinks had just been served when into the dive, with a grinning
+construction stiff on each arm, marched Jerkline Jo, laughing gayly.
+
+This was no new sight.  Frequently Hiram had seen his adventure girl in
+such places, laughing and chatting with old friends of the grade.
+Always, it seemed, they respected her and took her actions for granted.
+
+"Hello, Gentle Wild Cat!" Jo called, catching sight of him.  Then she
+noticed that he was with the girl, and a quick look of puzzlement came
+in her dark eyes.
+
+Hiram made haste to call her.
+
+"I want to introduce you," he said quickly.
+
+Jo turned, still holding to the arms of the stiffs, and Hiram made the
+introduction.  Jo responded pleasantly, and the look that came in her
+eyes told Hiram that she remembered the name and knew who Lucy was.
+
+"Sorry I can't join you, Hiram," said Jo.  "These plugs have got me
+dead to rights, and I've promised to set 'em up to the house."
+
+She released the arms of the stiffs, and, cupping her hands about her
+mouth, shouted above the general din:
+
+"Drinks for the house on Jerkline Jo!  Le's go!"
+
+Some one nudged Hiram on the other side, and he turned to find Orr
+Tweet.
+
+"Did you ever see the likes o' that Jerkline Jo?" he said admiringly.
+"What a woman, Hiram!  She can get away with anything, and there ain't
+a stiff on the grade that would think any the worse of her for it.
+She's pure-hearted and clean-minded, and everybody knows it and treats
+her like the lady she is.  But say----  For Heaven's sake!  Look who's
+here!"
+
+His steel-blue eyes had taken in Lucy, who stood studying Jerkline Jo,
+the center of a crowd of rough, appreciative men who wrung her hands
+right and left.
+
+Lucy turned and flashed Tweet a bright smile.  "I remember you, o'
+course," she said, shaking hands.  "They tell me you hit the ball an
+awful bang down here in Ragtown.  I always knew you were there when you
+talked to me up in Frisco."
+
+For several minutes, while bartenders worked frantically to supply Jo's
+big order, Tweet and Lucy talked, and Hiram watched Jo.  Then Tweet
+excused himself and hurried away after some man--a prospective citizen
+of Ragtown, no doubt--and Lucy turned to Hiram.
+
+"So that's Jerkline Jo, is it?" she said half scornfully.  "What is
+she, Hiram?"
+
+"A lady," said Hiram with a dangerous note of warning in his tones.
+
+Lucy sensed it and shrugged.  "Maybe she is," she said lightly.  "I
+don't know anything about her beyond what I've heard, of course--except
+that she's a heart-breaker--a man-killer.  But what's she doing here?"
+she could not help tacking on.
+
+"I might come back and ask you what you're doing here," Hiram retorted
+coldly.
+
+Lucy shrugged.  "Oh, I don't make any pretenses of piety--now," she
+said significantly.  Then, casting a defiant glance at him, she
+produced a silver cigarette case, took a cigarette from it, and begged
+for the end of his cigar at which to light it.  "They say Jerkline Jo
+is grabbing off big jack.  How 'bout it?"  She puffed indolently,
+greatly to her companion's disgust.
+
+"She works hard and earns money," Jo's supporter defended.  "She raised
+the wages of all of us, too, as soon as business began to look up.  We
+skinners get ninety dollars a month and board now."
+
+"Ninety dollars a month!" Lucy said jeeringly.  "D'ye call that money!
+I didn't think you'd continue to be such a fish as long as this, Hiram."
+
+"Well, I'm investin' it," said Hiram.  "It may be more some day."
+
+Luck looked suddenly into Hiram's eyes, then let her lashes cover her
+own.
+
+"I guess this pious Jerkline Jo has got you goin'," she observed.
+
+"I work for her," said Hiram awkwardly.
+
+"Any man would, I guess.  Men are all suckers."
+
+Hiram said nothing to this, and presently, stating that he would be
+obliged to return to camp, asked Lucy if she was ready to go.
+
+Rather petulantly she gave in, and just outside the door they
+encountered the glowering Al Drummond.
+
+"Lucy," he said sharply, "come here!"
+
+"I'll have to go," Lucy said to Hiram.  "See you later, honey boy from
+the woods.  Good night!"
+
+Hiram saw Drummond take a step and roughly grab Lucy's arm as she
+tripped up to him.  They walked away, plainly indulging in a heated
+argument.
+
+"'Honey boy,' huh!" and Hiram snorted.  "Men are suckers--till they
+meet a regular woman!"
+
+He hurried back to camp and rolled himself in his blankets without
+further thought of the girl who had caused him to make such a fool of
+himself in San Francisco.  Had he but known it the advent of Lucy
+Dalles in Ragtown was to have a great deal to do with the future
+fortunes of both Jerkline Jo and himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+LUCY SEES A PROSPECT
+
+There was so much freighting that summer that the combined outfits of
+Jerkline Jo Modock and Al Drummond were taxed to capacity.  The new
+settlers made constant demands upon them, and, though their wants were
+puny in comparison with those of the camps, Jo accommodated them
+whenever she could.  Water had been struck at the surprisingly shallow
+depth of forty-five feet in some places, and many pumping plants were
+transported over the mountains.  Things looked as if Twitter-or-Tweet
+was about due to make his fortune, and Jo kept investing more and more
+of her surplus earnings, and he was meeting his payments promptly.
+There was talk of Ragtown eventually being made a division point.  If
+this transpired, the railroad shops would be erected there, and the
+permanent success of the town would be assured.  Already a few
+venturesome souls were building permanent structures whenever they were
+fortunate enough to get building materials hauled in.
+
+Drummond's five-ton trucks seemed to be meeting all requirements, and
+he had added to his fleet.  Jo, however, remained conservative.  She
+had seen rag towns spring up on railroad grades before--many of
+them--only to disappear forever with the laying of the steel.  Still,
+she had confidence in the farming possibilities of Paloma Rancho--but
+she bought no more equipment, principally, perhaps, because she could
+not get desirable jerkline skinners, and because extra equipment would
+mean more work for her, more time taken from her studies.  She was
+content with a good thing so far as financial success was
+concerned--her great ambition was for an education.
+
+Drummond, of course, was also making money; but he fell a prey to the
+lure of the free-and-easy life of the frontier town, and gambled and
+drank perpetually.  There were stories of big losses at faro, under
+which Drummond did not always bear up as a good sport should.
+
+As for Lucy Dalles, that ambitious young woman entered with gusto into
+the feverish life of Ragtown.  Drummond had leased a shooting-gallery
+concession from the accommodating Tweet, and had ensconced the girl
+behind the rifles--or in front of them--to run the gallery.
+
+So she confided to Hiram Hooker, when he passed along Ragtown's main
+thoroughfare one night, and for the first time saw her on exhibition in
+the gallery.  She had partitioned off one corner of the gallery and set
+up a manicure and hairdressing parlor.  Of mornings, when business in
+the gallery was dull, she made many an extra dollar by beautifying the
+women of Ragtown.
+
+"Yes, there's money in it," she said.  "Al had the gallery stunt in
+mind when he brought me down, so I quit the beauty parlor where I was
+working in Frisco and got a job in a shooting gallery and learned how
+to run one and to keep my noodle from getting in front of a gun.  My
+face is my fortune, after all, Hiram boy.  One look at my smile, and
+the hicks come right in and pick up a rifle.  I'm coinin' money, and
+I'm having the time of my young life.  Last night a miner bet me five
+dollars against a kiss he could knock over ten ducks in ten shots.  He
+did it, and I paid up like a sport.  It got the gang started at the
+game, and in the end I grabbed off thirty bucks, and only kissed twice.
+Pretty soft--what?  I guess you're horrified, Hiram?"  She glanced at
+him with coquettish defiance.
+
+"Disgusted," Hiram could truthfully have said, but he only grinned and
+thanked his stars for his escape.
+
+Lucy's dark eyes flashed daggers at the broad back of Hiram Hooker as
+he left her and swung along indifferently up the street.  With a
+woman's intuition she had known in San Francisco that the big, handsome
+countryman with the soft, drawling voice had fallen a victim to her
+charms.  Now, because of Jerkline Jo, he was utterly indifferent to
+her.  Lucy was piqued, angry at him, angrier at Jerkline Jo.  She did
+not love Hiram, but she wanted him to love her, and though she did not
+want him she wanted no other woman to own him.
+
+"I'll fix you one o' these days, you big hick!" she threatened between
+clenched teeth.
+
+Summer passed all too quickly for those who labored incessantly, and
+the winter rains set in.  They at once grew harder and more frequent,
+and then it poured as it does only in the West.  Snow fell in the
+mountains.  Then the activities of Al Drummond ceased abruptly.
+
+No wonder, for often as high as twenty teams were hooked on to the
+enormous wagons of Jerkline Jo, and every animal was obliged to pull to
+the limit of his strength to move the terrific weight, hub-deep in the
+clinging mud.  This did not tend to improve the road, of course, and
+all of Drummond's efforts to corduroy it and otherwise preserve a firm
+path for his machines were unavailing.  The tortoise had won the race!
+
+Drummond had gambled away his profits, and now it was whispered about
+that he still owed money on his trucks.  Before the last of November he
+gave up in despair, allowed his trucks to be taken by the mortgagees,
+and settled down to a life of gambling on the proceeds of his
+shooting-gallery concession.
+
+One day there trudged into Ragtown a strange figure, marked by the
+desert, bent and old, in the wake of six lamenting burros laden with
+mining supplies and tools.  He gave the name of Basil Filer, and said
+that he was seeking gold.  Ragtown promptly wrote him down as a crazy
+prospector.  His eye caught the eye of Lucy Dalles, leaning over her
+carpeted counter between her rifles, and when he had made camp he
+limped along and accosted her.
+
+"Come in and try a string, Uncle," she begged with the little pout she
+had found so effective in coercing male humanity into her lair.  "An
+old desert rat like you oughta hit the bull's-eye every shot."
+
+Filer grinned and stepped up to the counter, eying the girl from under
+heavy, fierce eyebrows that looked as if the dust of a thousand trails
+had settled in them.  Lucy lowered her dark lashes and looked demure.
+
+"B'long on the desert, girlie?" rumbled the deep voice of the old
+prospector.
+
+"Sure, Uncle."
+
+"Uh-huh.  And how old might ye be, now?"
+
+"Nearly twenty-two."
+
+"Uh-huh--pretty near twenty-two.  That's nice.  Where's yer paw and
+maw?"
+
+"They're both dead," Lucy told him, trying to appear innocent and
+unsophisticated as she lifted her glance to his face.
+
+"Maybe now yer paw was a desert prospector," he suggested.
+
+"Uh-huh."  Lucy nodded her fluffy head vigorously up and down.  This
+was another childlike action which she had found pleasing to
+men--especially the older men.  Of course she was lying like a little
+sailor; but "Uncle" seemed interested in her, and business was dull
+just then.  She would pretend to be all that he seemed to wish her to
+be as long as she could successfully follow his conversational leads.
+
+"What do they call you, girlie?" he asked next.
+
+"Lucy."
+
+"Lucy, eh?  Lucy what, now?"
+
+"Lucy Dalles."
+
+"Dalles, huh?  Dalles!"  His weird old eyes, peculiarly tinted from
+years of looking into the mirage-draped distances of the desert, were
+strangely reminiscent.
+
+"Maybe that ain't your right name, though," he kept on feelingly.
+
+"Maybe not," replied Lucy quite truthfully.  After all, she had only
+her father's and her mother's word for it.  For all she knew she might
+be the reincarnation of the Queen of Sheba.  "Let's try a shot, Uncle,"
+she added, sensing deep water ahead.
+
+Indolently he picked up a .22 rifle, and rang the bell of her most
+difficult bull's-eye target eight shots out of ten.  He paid her and
+seemed in nowise elated over her fulsome praise, designed to keep him
+shooting.
+
+He took up his long cane again.  "I'll drift up the drag a ways," he
+said, "and see what's goin' on.  Nothin' but desert owls lived here
+when I traveled through last--two years ago.  I'll be back.  Maybe I'll
+want to ast ye a few p'inted questions.  Will ye answer, eh?"
+
+"Sure," she told him lightly, whacking her gum for emphasis.  "Come and
+pour your heart out to me, Uncle--I'll listen."
+
+Lucy had taken more of the well-filled buckskin poke that the old man
+had pulled from the neck of his greasy shirt to pay her for the pastime.
+
+She leaned out and craned her neck to watch him moving up the street,
+glancing through doors and openly investigating on every side.
+
+Her intuition told her that the gray old rat had something on his mind.
+Lonely old soul that he was, she reasoned, he was bashful and at a loss
+how to conduct himself in the unfamiliar presence of a woman.  "When
+he's all gowed up he'll talk my head off," she decided.  "He's going to
+fortify himself now.  Guess I'll have to look into this."
+
+When the bent, plodding figure had disappeared through the entrance to
+Ghost Falcott's Palace Dance Hall, Lucy called across the street to a
+boy sitting on the edge of the new board sidewalk.  The boy crossed to
+her and she handed him a dime.
+
+"Find Al Drummond and tell him I want to see him at once," she directed.
+
+A little later Al Drummond presented himself.  His face showed the
+effects of a sleepless night, but he was already refortified with
+jackass brandy for the ordeals of the day, and was in nowise stupid.
+
+They leaned on the carpeted counter, heads close together, and talked
+in lowered voices.
+
+"What this old bird has got on his chest I can't tell," Lucy explained.
+"But I played up to him, and if he gets all gowed up he'll spill it.
+He's crazy as they make 'em, Al.  It may not amount to anything at all,
+but I'm for always lookin' into such little things.  You never can
+tell, Al.  Maybe this'll be good.  Anyway, he's got a leather bag
+that's heavy with jack, and he won't need that when he hits the trail
+again.  Warm up to him and get 'im started, then steer him to me."
+
+"Wise little kid," Al Drummond commented.  "Leave it to me."
+
+The male plotter experienced no difficulty in finding the grizzled
+desert rat.  He was evidently a self-starter, having brought his own,
+and, all alone at Ghost Falcott's bar, he was pouring raw jackass
+brandy down a throat that seemed urgently in need of it.  Seeing that
+he was satisfactorily working out his own destruction, Drummond shot
+craps to divert himself until the prospector should become mellowed to
+a point where it was safe to approach him.
+
+It seemed though that the old man had an enormous capacity.  An hour
+passed, and, though he drank repeatedly on his high-lonesome, he seemed
+little the worse for it.  Drummond patiently watched and waited.  He
+knew that with some newly distilled brandy does not take immediate
+effect, but that drunkenness comes on suddenly when the victim least
+expects it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+JERKLINE JO'S SURPRISE
+
+Meantime events were happening out in the street which were to have a
+distinct bearing on Lucy and Al's plot to separate Basil Filer from the
+contents of his buckskin poke.
+
+These events, however, were quite commonplace on the face of them.  The
+first was the arrival of Jerkline Jo's wagon train, loaded to the
+gunwales with case goods, general merchandise, and food for stock.
+
+The arrival of Jerkline Jo and her proud huskies always was an event of
+importance at Ragtown.  They made a picture as the heavy eight and
+ten-horse teams with the hundreds of bells a-jingle rolled the immense
+wagons down the street, while Jo's skinners, quite aware of the furor
+they were creating, called "Gee" and "Haw" and manipulated their
+jerklines unnecessarily, for the sole purpose of awing the spectators.
+One wagon was stopped at Huber's store; the rest continued on through
+to Demarest, Spruce & Tillou's Camp Number One, a half mile beyond the
+town.
+
+It was Jo's whites that had been brought to a halt before Huber's.  The
+proprietor came out and asked that the load be discharged in the rear,
+as he had just completed a new freight platform at the back entrance.
+
+"Right!" called Jo.  Then, "Annie!  Ned!  Feel of it, white folks!
+Bert!  Snip!  All together.  Let's go!"
+
+Like a well-trained company of infantry, the ten whites leaned to the
+collars, and the eight tons behind them moved off as easily as a baby
+buggy.  The hub of all eyes, the attractive girl with cries of "Gee"
+and "Haw" and picturesque manipulation of the jerkline, swung her team
+around the corner and into the alley.  Men with whom she had a standing
+agreement to unload freight for her when their services were needed
+already had come through the store, and were waiting for her on the new
+platform.  Dexterously she guided the team with the jerkline and by
+word of mouth, so that the load crept along not two inches from the
+edge of the platform and came to a stop.
+
+She left her team standing, for Hiram Hooker was to ride back on her
+black saddle pony for them as soon as the remainder of the outfit had
+reached the camp.  Whistling, with her leather chaps swishing, she
+walked through the store, smiling right and left at the clerks.
+
+"Well, Jo, how was the trip?" asked Huber as she leaned on the edge of
+the window to the proprietor's office and handed him her bills of
+lading.
+
+"Oh, much the same as usual," she replied.  "The whirlwinds gave us
+some trouble.  They're prevalent this time of year on the desert, and
+are sometimes fearfully annoying--especially so if it's been dry for a
+few days and the top of the sand isn't moist."
+
+"What do they do to you, Jo?" asked Huber interestedly.
+
+"Drive you crazy sometimes," she laughed.  "They're just like little
+cyclones, you know.  You'll be moving along serenely, when one of them
+will steal up behind you, and before you know it you're the center of a
+maelstrom of sand and dust, unable to see, your hat gone, your mouth
+and nose filled with--well, about everything that the desert boasts of.
+I was feeding hay to a pair of my horses this noon, when a whirlwind
+slipped up on me.  I threw myself flat on the ground, as one must do or
+be swept off his feet, and when it had passed there was not one scrap
+of that dry alfalfa hay where I'd thrown it.  I found my hat a mile
+distant.  My nostrils and ears and eyes and mouth were literally loaded
+with dirt and fine hay chaff.  And my hair!  Heavens!"  She put her
+hands to it.  "I usually wear it in braids, you know, but to-day I
+thought I'd be smart and perk up a bit.  Now I'll have to 'go to the
+cleaners,' as Heine says."
+
+Huber laughed.  "Say, Jo," he said, "that reminds me.  There's a girl
+here that'll give you a shampoo.  She runs a shooting gallery, and has
+a little beauty parlor on the side.  Oh, we're getting quite urban at
+Ragtown.  We'll have Turkish baths next.  Go to see her--she'll fix you
+up."
+
+"I'll just do that," said Jo, and went out on the street.
+
+Then for the first time she became aware that Lucy Dalles was the
+proprietress of Ragtown's beauty parlor, and even then she did not find
+it out until she was inside the parlor and Lucy entered by a side door
+that connected with the gallery.  It was too late to back out
+gracefully, even had Jo been inclined to do so.
+
+"Why, hello!" she said.  "I didn't know you ran this place.  Miss
+Dalles, isn't it?  We met in the Palace Dance Hall one night, didn't
+we?"
+
+Lucy smiled professionally.  She did not like this strong, rugged,
+beautiful girl who strode along the street with such a firm, conquering
+tread and left men gaping after her.  Still, she could not afford to
+show her dislike.
+
+"Oh, yes--I remember you perfectly well," she said.  "Who wouldn't
+remember the famous Jerkline Jo!  Is there something I can do for you?"
+
+"Mercy, yes!" laughed Jo.  "One look at me ought to show you that."
+She told about the whirlwind, and Lucy smiled thinly, and indicated the
+chair.
+
+Jo climbed into it, and was bundled with clean, perfumed towels that
+caused her to grow reminiscent of school days and dainty dresses and
+all the things that as Jerkline Jo she had been obliged to put aside.
+
+"Do you know," she said as Lucy began her delicate ministrations, "I've
+never before in my life been in a beauty parlor."
+
+"You are one of the few women who do not need one," said Lucy, forced
+to a sincere compliment by the undeniable, fresh beauty of her patron.
+
+"Oh, thank you!" said Jo with a laugh.  "It's not just that, though.  I
+expect, if the truth were told, I've needed the services of a beauty
+artist for years.  But I was raised in a construction camp, you know,
+until I was pretty much of a young lady, and such things were entirely
+out of my ken.  Then at Palada, where my foster father eventually
+settled and went into the freighting business and running a store, we
+were not so progressive as Ragtown even.  So when I went to boarding
+school in the Middle West I was virtually immune from many of the new
+fads.  You, then, are the first person that ever washed my hair--except
+myself, of course.  I remember even that my dear old foster mother
+always made me wash it when I was a kid--once a year perhaps," she
+ended with a laugh.  "Poor ma!  She had little enough time to fuss with
+a child's hair, cooking for big, hungry men all the time as she was,
+and driving a slip team while she was resting."
+
+Jo was merely trying to make conversation, for she could think of
+little to say that she thought might touch a responsive cord in the
+fluffy girl from the city.  Jerkline Jo was a man's woman.  She could
+talk about almost anything that other women could not bring into their
+conversation.
+
+"You've had an interesting life, haven't you?" observed Lucy,
+manipulating Jo's scalp till the skin tingled pleasantly.  "I wish I
+could have met you when I was writing moving-picture scenarios.  What a
+character you would have made for the heroine of a Western thriller!"
+
+"Oh, you've written scenarios!  How interesting!  And--and--if this
+isn't trespassing on delicate ground--sold them?"
+
+Lucy tittered.  "Yes, I sold some of them," she replied.
+
+This gave them a basis for conversation, and they progressed famously
+until the grinning face of a railroad-construction stiff appeared
+suddenly at the door.
+
+"Hey!" he called to other stiffs behind him.  "Look wot's goin' on!"
+
+"Hello, there, 'Squinty' Malley!" and Jo laughed.  "Get your face out
+of that door.  This is sacred ground, you roughneck!"
+
+"Look at Jo!" derided Squinty, an old friend of the girl's in many a
+half-remembered camp.  "Hey, youse plugs, gadder 'round here and lamp
+Jerkline Jo dollin' up!  Good night!"
+
+"Beat it now!" Jo reiterated.
+
+"Say, dis here's good!" retorted Squinty.  "I to't youse was a reg'lar
+woman, Jo!  Youse know more 'bout cuffin' ole Jack an' Ned dan youse do
+'bout fixin' yer hair.  Say, lady," he addressed Lucy, "fix 'er
+up--hey?  Doll 'er up proper, an' le's see wot de ol'-timer looks like."
+
+"You'll oblige me by getting out of the door," said Lucy indignantly.
+
+"Oh, don't scold the poor eel!" pleaded Jerkline Jo.  "He doesn't know
+any better.  So you want to see me dolled up, do you, Squint?  By
+George, you're on, old-timer!  I've got some glad rags here in this
+burg.  Go on now!  I'll be the queen of the ball to-night!"
+
+"Lucy," Jo laughed familiarly when the tramps had vanished, "fix up my
+hair the best you possibly can.  Give me the latest, will you?  I'm
+going to have some fun to-night."
+
+An hour later, when darkness had settled over Ragtown and the night's
+revel was on, there entered the Palace Dance Hall a figure that brought
+gamblers from their absorbing games, stopped the dizzying whirl of the
+dancers, and caused glasses that were halfway to eager lips to pause in
+mid-air.
+
+Jerkline Jo's almost black hair was piled on top of her head in
+bewildering fashion, and set off with flashing rhinestone ornaments,
+furnished by Lucy Dalles.  Jo wore a semievening dress of pale-blue
+silk, and Lucy had powdered her face and neck until little contrast
+could be noted between skin that had braved the desert winds and that
+which had been protected.  Jo wore fashionable slippers with great
+shell buckles and high French heels.  She cast a dazzling smile over
+the silent assemblage, then threw back her glorious head and let her
+laughter ring.
+
+That laugh revealed her identity.
+
+"Jerkline Jo!" came a chorus of yells, and men stared at her, while
+women drew together in groups, their comments expressed in lowered
+voices.
+
+As they crowded around her Lucy Dalles peered in at the door, a
+contemptuous sneer on her lips.
+
+"Have a good time, old girl!" she muttered, grinding her little white
+teeth.  "But I learned something to-day that'll set _you_ back a step
+or two.  Get me to doll you up, will you, you impossible roughneck?
+You'll pay for that!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+DRUMMOND WEAVES A DREAM
+
+Shortly after Jerkline Jo left the beauty parlor of Lucy Dalles,
+mischievously bent on giving Ragtown a harmless little shock, Al
+Drummond sidled up to the old prospector at the bar in the Palace Dance
+Hall.
+
+"Hello, old-timer," he said with a cheerful smile.  "How's prospecting
+these days?"
+
+The old desert rat fixed a filmy eye on him.  "Have a shot," he invited
+with the suggestion of a thickening tongue.
+
+"Thanks, old hoss.  Don't care if I do.  That is, if you'll have one
+with me."
+
+They drank, and Drummond promptly ordered another.  A lowering of his
+left eyelid gave the bartender his instructions, and a sprinkling of
+powder found its way into the glass that was thumped before Basil Filer.
+
+Not long after this he became agreeable to anything that Al Drummond
+might suggest.  Al took him from place to place, always standing his
+share of the exorbitant prices demanded in Ragtown, and finally
+suggested that they try their marksmanship as a diversion.
+
+"Good!" agreed Filer gutturally.  "Little girl, eh?  Pretty!"  He
+winked knowingly at Drummond.  "I wanta have talk with her.  I know who
+she is.  B'en trailin' her fer years.  Le's go, pardner.  You're goo'
+scout.  So'm I--hey?"
+
+"You bet your sweet life you're a good scout!  Come on--we'll have a
+time to-night."
+
+Drummond had previously sent a boy to Lucy with a note informing her
+that the come-on was about ripe for plucking, and telling her to put
+some one else in charge of the gallery and be in readiness.  Lucy had
+sent out and found the man who at times relieved her, and when Drummond
+and the old gold-seeker lurched up she was free to act as the
+circumstances might demand.
+
+The two men fired at the targets for a little, Filer failing to display
+the same wonderful marksmanship which he had done earlier in the
+evening.  Eventually Lucy invited the two to go back into the little
+cabin in the rear of the gallery where she carried on her trifling
+domestic activities.  Filer readily agreed to this, and presently the
+three were seated around a table in Lucy's cabin, with a coal-oil lamp
+on it, a deck of cards suggestively in evidence, and a bottle of
+precious brandy and glasses.  Lucy had brought from San Francisco her
+leopard-skin rug, the overstuffed chairs, and her other extravagances
+in house furnishings.  Their contrast with the new pine walls of the
+cabin produced an effect quite startling and bizarre.  Basil Filer saw
+none of it, however.  He became very drowsy when he was seated.  Al
+Drummond winked at Lucy.
+
+The girl shook her head, and presently, seeing that the prospector was
+almost asleep, leaned toward her fellow conspirator and whispered:
+
+"Don't hurry about getting his roll.  Try to liven him up and get him
+to talking.  I'm curious.  He's got something on his mind that may make
+that buckskin bag look like thirty cents."
+
+"Get the jack," ordered Al.  "To-morrow he won't even remember he ever
+saw us.  You're letting your story-telling instinct warp your judgment,
+Lucy.  You're looking for mysteries.  I'll get that roll right now."
+
+"No, leave it, Al, please!  You can get it later, if I'm wrong.  But I
+just feel that this old fella's got something locked up in his breast.
+Rouse him and leave him to me.  I'll make him talk.  I'm sorry you
+doped him.  You may have spoiled everything."
+
+At this instant she looked up to see the bleary old eyes fixed on her
+intently.
+
+"Feeling better, Uncle?" she asked lightly.  "I've got some
+bromo-seltzer.  I'll give you a shot; it will liven you up.  Don't want
+to go down and out so early in the evening, old sport!"
+
+"Desert girl, huh?" thickly muttered Basil Filer.  "Huh--I know
+somethin' 'bout you.  You was found on the desert, wasn't ye--when
+you's li'l' girl--baby girl?  I know.  Can't fool o' Filer.  B'en
+huntin' you f'r years."  He closed his eyes again, and his head sank
+forward on his breast.
+
+Lucy shook him awake and prepared a dose of bromo-seltzer, which he
+readily drank at her command.
+
+"How did you know about me, Uncle?" she asked.  "What you said is the
+truth.  I was found on the desert here when I was a baby girl.  But how
+did you know?  Tell me all about it.  Do you know my father's name?"
+
+"Sure!  Sure!  Name was Len-Len-Len-Leonard Prince.  You're Jean
+Prince.  Len Prince was m' ol' pardner.  I'm lookin'--lookin' for the
+claim Len Prince and me and The Chink found--and lost ag'in.  Rich!
+Yellow with gol'.  You're Jean Prince--I know.  I c'n prove it by your
+head.  Tha's what I wanta see--yer head--down under the hair.  That'll
+tell me you're Baby Jean Prince.  Then I c'n find the gold."
+
+Lucy clutched Al Drummond's arm.  "Listen to him!  Listen to him!" she
+breathed.
+
+Hiram Hooker stood aghast in the entrance of the Palace Dance Hall.
+All eyes within were focused on a couple waltzing in the center of the
+floor to low music.  The man was a Mr. Dalworth, Ragtown's new banker,
+in charge of the branch of a Los Angeles banking institution that had
+been opened in the frontier camp.  The girl, smiling and radiant and
+glistening with pale-blue silk and gems, was his adventure girl,
+Jerkline Jo.
+
+Never had Hiram seen Jo in anything but a flannel shirt, Stetson hat,
+and chaps or divided riding skirt.  Despite the fact that she was
+making money fast and that he was working for her at ninety dollars a
+month, Hiram had not before looked upon her as entirely out of his
+reach.  He was learning fast, and had lost much of his backwoods
+uncouthness.  He loved Jerkline Jo as only a big-hearted, simple-souled
+man can love a woman.  Some day, he had told himself, he would do
+something to make himself worthy of her, for he never would ask her to
+marry him while he was in her employ.  He was too proud to ask an
+independent girl to marry him when he had nothing to offer.
+
+That rare feminine creature gliding so gracefully over the floor with
+the dapper, well-dressed banker, however, plunged Hiram into the depths
+of despair.  Financially, mentally, and now socially, he felt her
+altogether out of his world.  He had forgotten until now her days at
+school and in polite society.
+
+It did not make him think the worse of her to see her dancing in a
+saloon, with rough men from the cities standing about and looking on
+admirably.  Ragtown was Ragtown, and people did things here which would
+have ostracized them from decent society elsewhere.  It was not this
+that hurt; he knew that the girl was pure-minded and that her morals
+were flawless, despite what prudish persons--of which there were none
+in Ragtown--might have thought of her choice of the place which she
+chose to satisfy her whim of the evening.  Jo was one of those rare
+souls who can pass among evil men and women and not only not be
+contaminated, but preserve an unsullied reputation, too.  It was the
+dress and the glittering tones and the wonderful coiffure, and her
+gentlemanly, well-groomed partner of the dance, that caused him to turn
+away, bitter and broken in spirit.
+
+"Well, how do you like her to-night?" came a taunting voice.
+
+Lucy Dalles had stepped beside him and peering in at the revel.
+
+"Some class, eh?  Some lady, I'll say!  Oh, sure!"
+
+Hiram could have choked her, but without a remark he sped away from her
+into the night.
+
+It was then that Lucy Dallas clenched her teeth and hurled invective at
+the radiant girl within.
+
+She left the scene and hurried back to her little cabin, where the
+crazy prospector, Basil Filer, lay in  a heap on the floor, snoring
+loudly.
+
+A moment after her entry Al Drummond came in again with another man
+following him.
+
+"How much jack did you leave him?" he whispered to the girl.
+
+"I left it all.  It's safest.  What I copied from the paper will be
+worth a thousand times what's in that money bag."
+
+"Just the same, I want money now--to-night," Drummond said, and,
+stooping, pulled the poke from the shirt front of the unconscious miner.
+
+"Take only half of it, then," Lucy pleaded.  "Then he'll think he spent
+that much.  Don't be a piker, Al.  You've got something big to work
+for, and you try to spoil it by rolling a stiff for a few dollars."
+
+Drummond grunted, slipped a wad of bills into his trousers pocket, and
+replaced the poke in the desert rat's shirt.
+
+"All right, Stool," he said to the other man.  "You take his head; I'll
+take his feet."
+
+A little later a train of pack burros moved away from Ragtown into the
+desert night.
+
+A mile from town the man Stool halted them and waited, and presently
+heard the chug of a motor.  Soon Al Drummond drove up in the last of
+his five-ton trucks, in the bottom of which, tossed about, lay the
+still unconscious form of the old prospector.
+
+The two men worked swiftly, and slanted two twelve-inch planks two
+inches thick from the rear end of the truck to the ground.  With ropes
+about the necks of the desert rat's six burros, they hauled and
+hammered and coaxed them one by one aboard the truck.  Then on into the
+night they drove, over the vast, black desert.
+
+Seventy-five miles from Ragtown they stopped the car, and unloaded the
+burros and their snoring master.  They rolled the man in his blankets,
+then set the burros' packs about in orderly array and loosed the little
+animals to crop the bunch grass that was green and succulent in winter.
+From one pack bag they took cooking utensils and other articles, and
+ranged them about on the ground as the old man himself might have done
+upon making camp.
+
+"He'll wake up to-morrow and think he dreamed about Ragtown," chuckled
+Drummond.
+
+"He sure will know he's nutty then," said Stool.
+
+They climbed once more into the truck, and before dawn were back in the
+city of tents and new pine shacks.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+WHAT HAPPENED AT THE LAKE
+
+Shortly before dusk on the night following Jerkline Jo's revel in
+Ragtown, the empty wagons of her train rumbled to the highest point in
+the mountain pass and were drawn up side by side, like an artillery
+organization in "battery-front" formation, on the shores of the
+mountain lake.
+
+Jo's fireless cooker had been working for her throughout the trip, and
+while her bantering skinners cared for the teams and greased the great
+axles in preparation for the morrow's journey, the girl made ready the
+evening meal.
+
+At last supper was over, and, as was their custom, the men helped her
+wash the dishes.  Thus the task became a short one.  The men settled
+down to their smoking about the crackling camp fire, and as light still
+remained at this high altitude, Jo decided on a stroll along the lake
+shore.
+
+All about stood the tall peaks, their crests snow-mantled.  Over the
+level lowlands about the lake the silent forests of pine and fir swept
+away on all sides.  The lake, some two miles in length, lay like an
+opal in the palm of the mountains, flashing fiery colors that it stole
+from the sunset clouds above it.
+
+The air was chill and quiet.  Not a ripple disturbed the surface of the
+tranquil lake, so cold and remote.  Jo buttoned her coat for warmth and
+trudged on away from the camp, watching flocks of chattering mudhens
+and mallards that fed on a long spaghettilike growth which grew on the
+lake bottom and floated to the surface.
+
+She walked for a mile before she turned.  She was thinking of the
+previous night, and of the banker's unexpected proposal of marriage
+when she had accepted his invitation for supper after the dance.  She
+had known Dalworth only a short time, and his ardent wooing had come as
+a distinct surprise.
+
+Now she had turned back toward the winking eye of the camp fire, which
+threw a brilliant dagger of light across the now dark lake.  In the
+stream of fiery color, water fowl bobbed about grotesquely.  Close at
+hand was a grove of pines, a few trees extending down to the shore,
+though for the most part the land immediately about the lake was an
+open, grassy meadow.  She heard a slight rustling in among the pines as
+she passed them.
+
+She had not strapped on her cartridge belt and six-shooter when leaving
+camp.  In fact, she seldom carried the weapon, but always kept it
+hanging close to her hand in the wagon.  Now and then she strapped it
+on when in Ragtown, for of late an element had been sifting in with
+which she was not familiar.  It represented the riffraff from the
+cities--men who knew nothing of construction camps and were unaware of
+the fact that she, because of old associations and a thorough
+understanding of frontier men and frontier life, could enter a dance
+hall and still be respected and absolutely safe from harm.  One of
+these had put an arm about her one night, and promptly had been
+rewarded with a blow on the nose; for Jo did not slap when she
+administered rebuke, but punched expertly and powerfully, as does a
+man.  Next moment the offender had been pitched bodily into the street
+by as many rough hands as could lay hold of him.  Only Jo's
+intervention had saved the man from being kicked into insensibility.
+
+Once again she heard the rustling, and wished that she had her gun.  It
+was only some animals, she told herself--a coon or a skunk, or perhaps
+a wild cat or coyote prowling about to spring upon an unsuspecting
+mudhen that had swam too far inshore.  Still, a strange dread seized
+her, and she quickened her step.
+
+Again she heard the rustle and the sound of a soft footfall.  No animal
+would have produced that single, rather heavy tread.  She glanced
+apprehensively toward the dark trees, and it seemed to her that she saw
+a black upright bulk move stealthily from one trunk to another.
+
+Then two things happened at once.  From the pines stealthily emerged
+the figure of a man--there was no mistaking it.  But in the same
+instant there came a call from close at hand:
+
+"Jo!  Jo!  Where are you?"
+
+A feeling of vast relief came over the girl as she recognized the
+caressing voice of the man from Wild-cat Hill.  Instantly the figure on
+her left faded; the blur of it became one with the shadows of the trees.
+
+"Hiram!" she called gladly.  "Here I am!  Hurry!"
+
+The sound of running feet answered her, and in a little while the big
+form of Hiram Hooker reached her side.
+
+Jo was breathing weakly.  She could not remember of ever before having
+been so near a panic or fright.  What had caused the unfamiliar feeling
+now was a mystery to her--unless the suggested menace in the sight of
+the dark, skulking figure had been augmented by the ghostly quietude of
+the black forest and the unfriendly solitude of the cold mountain lake.
+
+"Oh, Hiram!" she cried.  "I'm so glad you're here!  Hiram--I--I believe
+I'm sc-scared."
+
+How it happened neither of them knew, for all at once his powerful arms
+were about her, and she had crept into them as less courageous women
+instinctively seek the protection of the stronger sex.  His arms
+tightened and she pressed closer to him as if she were cold and seeking
+warmth.  Hiram was ablaze with love for her and exultation.  He lifted
+her bodily from the ground, and her lips quivered against his.
+
+"Oh, Hiram!  Hiram!" she cried then as if in terror.  "What am I doing?
+What is the matter with me?  You kissed me, Hiram, and--and I let you!
+I must have been terribly frightened.  I--I seem to have lost my
+reason."
+
+"No!  No!  Don't say that!" begged Hiram huskily.  "Jo, I love you!
+You love me, Jo.  Say you love me."
+
+She hid her face against his breast and said nothing, but her shoulders
+shook.
+
+"Jo, say it!" he pleaded.  "Don't torment me!  You must love me.  You
+came to my arms when trouble threatened.  Tell me that you love me, Jo!"
+
+She only trembled and shivered as if cold.
+
+"Tell me, Jo!  Don't torture me.  Tell me that you love me!"
+
+There was a stifled sob; then, in muffled tones:
+
+"You big, blind country jake!  If you don't know that I'm telling you
+that with every nerve and fiber of my being, you deserve torture!"
+
+The forest and the lake came together in Hiram's vision, then vanished.
+There was no lake, no trees, no sentinel peaks about them.
+
+"But, Jo," said Hiram as they walked back slowly toward the camp, his
+arm about her waist, "I can't marry you.  I've got nothing--I'm only
+your skinner.  You--why, your profits every month run up into four
+figures.  Oh, I wish you hadn't a cent!  I wish Drummond had beaten us
+out!"
+
+"What foolish talk!" she said scornfully.  "What is money?  I care so
+little for money, Hiram.  It was only to try and preserve from total
+collapse all my hard-working, indomitable, old foster father had built
+up so patiently that I undertook the freighting job.  I've made
+money--lots of it--and if you think you and the rest of the boys
+haven't had a big share in my success you're all wrong.  We'll keep on
+skinning them to Ragtown till the steel is laid; then I mean to do
+something handsome by the men who have been so loyal to me, and sell
+the outfit.  Then"--she sighed--"then something else," she finished.
+
+"But that's neither here nor there," Hiram pointed out.  "I'm penniless
+compared with you.  I couldn't marry a girl who had money while I have
+nothing to offer her.  I'm too much of a man for that.  Why, everything
+that I have I owe to you--even the education I am so slowly acquiring."
+
+"Oh, I won't listen to such talk, Hiram!  Most of my money is invested
+in Tweet's project, anyway.  We'll let him handle it, and you and I
+will continue to study and improve ourselves.  Then when Tweet begins
+to pay us dividends we'll travel, and----"
+
+"On your money!  Not in a thousand years!"
+
+"You're bull-headed about a trifle, Hiram," she accused.
+
+"Jo," he said after a thoughtful pause, "don't wear that blue silk
+dress and those diamonds and have your hair fixed that way any more.
+It--it makes me feel hollowlike."
+
+They had almost forgotten the man in the pines, there was so much else
+to think about now.  Jo was almost ready to confess that she had
+imagined the entire incident--that she had heard only a prowling animal
+and had seen the shadow of a shrub.  Hiram, on his part, was too
+triumphant over the thought that he, only a few months from the
+backwoods of Mendocino County, had captured the heart of this splendid
+girl, whom men praised and admired and swore by throughout all the
+desert region.
+
+Still the man was stubborn.  In him was a knight-errantry which forbade
+him to marry a girl and profit by the rewards of her pluck, energy, and
+business courage.  If he could not make money to offer her, he must do
+something big for her, must win for her some conflict that threatened
+her fortunes, must make himself worthy of her by some great service.
+
+Hiram still kept his boyish dreams of the adventure girl who had
+beckoned him from the forests to deeds of emprise.  He had found his
+adventure girl, but he would not consider that he had won her yet.  He
+little knew that night that his opportunity was close at hand, and that
+the shadow which the coming event had cast before it had lurked there
+in the lakeside pines.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+JO LOSES HER SUPPORT
+
+Eight days later Jerkline Jo leaned on the ledge of the office window
+in Huber's store at Ragtown and handed him the various papers which
+accompanied a consignment of freight from Julia.
+
+"There's no hay, Jo," he cried, looking up in perplexity and worriment.
+
+"The Mulligan Supply Company was short of hay when we left," Jo
+explained.  "They hoped to have a trainload in by the time I got back."
+
+"There's the dickens to pay!" he grumbled.  "They know I have to have
+hay right along.  I've a standing order for at least half a load of hay
+every trip.  These settlers are buying it fast.  I have only ten bales
+on hand.  Next fellow that comes along will probably want all ten of
+them.  A nice mess!  What's the matter with those Ikes over there at
+Julia?  Are they asleep?"
+
+"It seems they've had some difficulty in getting alfalfa here lately,"
+the girl explained.  "I'm sorry, Mr. Huber.  The best I can do for you
+is to promise to bring every bale I can next trip."
+
+"Rush it," ordered the merchant.  "If you can make it, let somebody
+else's order ride, Jo, and bring me every pound you can."
+
+"I'll see what can be done," was her promise as she left and went to
+the little cabin that she had had built for her at the edge of town.
+
+Here she cleansed herself of the stains of the trip, and substituted
+for chaps and flannel shirt a new tailor-made suit which had just come
+from Los Angeles.  As she was about to go out again Twitter-or-Tweet
+Orr Tweet knocked on her door.
+
+"Jo," he said with his whimsical smile, "I'm showing a couple o' men
+some property, and thought you might like to take a ride.  You've never
+seen much of the cultivated land, have you--except from a distance?
+Come 'n' see what chances your money's got in Paloma Rancho, the
+Homesteader's Promised Land of Milk and Honey.  Won't be gone over an
+hour."
+
+His car was waiting, with his two prospective land purchasers in the
+tonneau.  Jo readily agreed, for she had nothing to occupy her, and
+Tweet helped her in beside the driver's seat, after introducing the men
+to her.
+
+Tweet drove slowly and talked a great deal, steering the car with one
+hand and directing his conversation at all three of his listeners.  He
+dwelt at length to the strangers on Jerkline Jo's great success in her
+freighting enterprise, not neglecting to mention that she was investing
+a great portion of her profits in Paloma Rancho.  The men were
+impressed.
+
+Jo, too, was impressed with Tweet's abilities as a salesman.  He
+emanated confidence, and his enthusiasm seemed well-founded and
+sincere.  In fact, the new alfalfa ranches and the orchards of young
+pear trees looked promising indeed, and the projects showed evidences
+of thrift and capability on the part of the ranchers and near-ranchers
+who had bought land on contract from the discoverer of Paloma Rancho's
+dormant possibilities.
+
+Tweet told of his idea of eventually tapping the mountain lake near
+which Jo was wont to camp and bringing the water down to irrigate such
+portions of desert land as might require it; for there were places
+where three hundred feet of boring had not developed a drop of the
+precious fluid.  The promoter had an engineer's estimate of the cost of
+the entire water system, and said that his original figures had been
+pretty close.
+
+It all seemed feasible, and things looked generally prosperous.  Jo
+enjoyed her ride and the opportunity to see what had been accomplished.
+Returning, however, the complete enjoyment of the trip was marred by
+tire trouble, and, with one thing and another, it was nine o'clock at
+night before the party, reached Ragtown.
+
+They were ravenously hungry, and Tweet invited the three to dinner in
+the town's closest approach to a satisfactory restaurant.  It was after
+ten o'clock when they left the table.  Tweet gallantly asked to
+accompany Jo to her cabin, and both were laughing at the absurdity of a
+girl like Jerkline Jo needing an escort, when Hiram Hooker hurried up
+to them.
+
+"Well, I c'n see who's cut out," said Tweet, assuming a mournful
+expression.  "So, if you don't mind, Jo, I'll get over to the hotel and
+keep after those two suckers.  Take care of her, Wild Cat, and do
+whatever she tells you to do, or answer to me with your life.  There's
+only one Jerkline Jo, you know, and the world needs her all the time.
+So long, playmates!"
+
+"Jo," said Hiram when Tweet had bustled away up the dimly lighted
+street, "there's an awful mess.  Heine and Jim and Tom and Blink are
+all drunk as fiddlers!"
+
+"What!"  Jo stopped in her tracks and held him by the arm.  "Oh, dear!"
+she cried.  "How could they do such a thing!  I've watched them so
+carefully, and they've been so good.  But the moment I'm out of their
+sight for a few hours----  Oh, dear!  I didn't think that they'd treat
+me that way!"
+
+"I can't get it straight myself, Jo," Hiram told her.  "They always
+hoist a few when we get in, and sometimes I join them.  I've never
+before seen any of them when he wasn't at least able to ramble safely
+back to camp.  But to-night they're all four dead to the world.  I
+can't even shake a word out of them.  Heine just sits there in the
+Dugout, with his head on his breast, and is like a dead man."
+
+"Where were you?"
+
+"In camp--studying.  About half past nine I thought I'd stroll into
+town and get a cigar and see what the boys were doing.  I couldn't find
+them in the Palace, and went from place to place till I stumbled on
+them in the Dugout, every last one of them down and out.  I was looking
+for Tweet, to have him take the bunch of them to camp in his car, when
+I saw you folks come out of the restaurant."
+
+"The Dugout," puzzled Jo.  "Do they go there often?"
+
+"Hardly ever.  It's the worst dump in town, as you know.  They're all
+crooked enough, but I've heard strange whisperings about certain shady
+happenings in the Dugout."
+
+"Was anybody with them?"
+
+"Not when I found them."
+
+"Hiram," said Jo, "it sounds like dope to me.  They're loyal to me, I
+tell you.  No, they're not to blame--they'd never treat me that way.
+They've been doped."
+
+"But why?  And by whom?"
+
+"Those are questions.  None of them have any money on them to speak of,
+I know.  I've got the bank pass books of every one of them in my chest.
+Again, who'd have the nerve to dope and try to roll a skinner of
+Jerkline Jo's?  He'd be playing with fire.  These dive keepers know all
+about me; they know my power.  I could mobilize an army of two hundred
+stiffs in an hour's time, and if I asked it they'd lay every dump in
+Ragtown flat.  You bet these parasites know better than to trifle with
+Jerkline Jo."
+
+Her dark eyes flashed angrily in the light of a store window.
+
+"Well, let's not stand here bewailing our fate like children lost in
+the woods.  We've simply got to _get_ out to-morrow.  Mr. Huber is wild
+about the shortness of his stock of hay, and I promised to rush him all
+I could.  Get Tweet and dump my boys into his car and take 'em to camp.
+We'll see what we can do to bring them out of it and make them fit for
+the trip by morning."
+
+Far into the morning hours, in the outfit's camp on the edge of town,
+Jo and Hiram strove to revive the stupefied men, but nothing beyond
+groans could they get from them.
+
+"They're doped, Hiram--pitilessly doped!" Jo cried in despair at last.
+"Go for Doctor Dennison.  Carry him on your shoulders if he won't come."
+
+The medical man came readily at Hiram's request, and after a brief
+examination of the sluggish men remarked that Jo's surmise had been
+correct.  He then ordered her to go to her cabin and get some badly
+needed sleep, and at once went to work on the unconscious quartet, with
+Hiram aiding all he could.
+
+"Whoever did this cursed thing, Wild Cat," said the physician, "was an
+amateur.  He might have killed them.  They've taken aboard terrible
+doses, and I can tell you right now that not one of them will start for
+Julia to-day.  You may as well tell Jo to make other arrangements."
+
+His prophecy proved correct.  Heine Schultz had regained consciousness
+when dawn came, but was unable to tell a coherent story of what had
+occurred, and was deathly sick.  The other three still remained
+unresponsive to the doctor's treatment.
+
+"Well," said Jo, when she answered Hiram's knock on her cabin door at
+five-thirty, "what must be must.  Huber has to have hay.  I promised
+it, and Jerkline Jo never, never breaks a promise.  So hook up the
+blacks and whites, Hiram, and lead six of Heine's team to be added to
+yours and six of Jim's for me.  Hook on two trailers.  You and I will
+make it to Julia and drive sixteen each back here with Huber's hay.
+That's the very best we can do, but we'll do that the best we know how.
+I'll be out by the time you get 'em hooked up.  We'll nibble our
+breakfast as we travel.  Shoot the piece, Hiram boy, my knight from
+Wild-cat Hill!"
+
+That night in a pelting hail storm Jerkline Jo and Hiram went into camp
+beside the mountain lake, and the stage was set for the second act in
+the plot cooked up by the two who had lost all principle under
+Ragtown's subtle influence--Al Drummond and Lucy Dalles.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+AT THE HAIRPIN CURVE
+
+The storm in the mountains continued all night, the downpour shifting
+from hail to sleet and from sleet to a cold, drenching rain.  Jo in her
+remote little tent kept dry and comfortable.  Hiram kept the same,
+rolled in his blankets under a wagon, the ground about it ditched to
+run the water off.  There was shelter for the mules and horses, too,
+for at the approach of winter Jo had freighted to the mountain camping
+site sufficient lumber for a roof, which was supported by poles cut
+from the forest.
+
+It was still dark and raining when the two beleaguered freighters
+continued their journey next morning.  Hiram, with eight of his own
+black horses hitched to the wagon, and four span of mules and horses
+leading, went ahead, as usual.  They left the level mountain valley
+that swaddled the lake and started down the steep grades toward the
+Julia side of the desert.
+
+"We'll have a pull coming back if this keeps up!" Jo shouted through
+the rain, just as Hiram's teams began negotiating the system of hairpin
+curves upon which Jo's skinners had rolled the boulder in retaliation
+for the drained water tank.
+
+Hiram did not hear her, for the wagons were rumbling, thirty-two sets
+of big hoofs were sloshing in mud, the bells a-jingle, the rain a roar.
+
+Jo wore a yellow oilskin slicker and a sou'wester of the same material,
+and rubber knee boots.  Only her pretty face, smiling from the
+concealing garments, showed that she was a woman.
+
+The animals that trailed behind Hiram's wagon went out of sight around
+the first curve.  The last of these mules were not a hundred feet ahead
+of the noses of Jo's white leaders.  As her leaders reached the curve
+Jo called shrilly to her off-pointer to cross the chain and pull the
+wagon away from the rock wall on the right-hand side.  Obediently the
+mare stepped over the chain, and she and her mate began pulling the
+pole at an angle of forty-five degrees from the direction in which the
+leaders and swings were traveling.  The wagon and its trailer made the
+sharp curve, and the mare was stepping back into place at Jo's command,
+when suddenly the girl's breathing was shut off, and she was whipped
+from her feet as if a cyclone had struck her.
+
+Several pairs of arms were about her; a heavy cloth was over her mouth
+and nose and eyes.  Fighting frantically against she knew not what, she
+was borne rapidly toward the tail-end of the wagon.  Some one's arms
+were about her middle; another pair circled her shoulders; still
+another held her booted legs at the knees.
+
+She tried to scream, but only a vague b-b-r-r sounded through the cloth
+that covered her face.  She kicked and clawed and twisted and jerked
+and squirmed with surprising suddenness.  Nevertheless, a rope was
+bound about her slicker, round and round from her shoulders to her
+ankles, swathing her like the bandages of a mummy, until she was almost
+as stiff as one.  She heard the roar of the rain, but no sound of her
+moving team.  She was whipped from the ground as if she weighed no more
+than ten pounds; and in a horizontal position the three pairs of arms
+bore her along rapidly in the direction that she had come, much as if
+she were a roll of canvas bound about with marline hitches.
+
+Presently she felt herself ascending; then wet foliage brushed her
+face.  Not a word had been spoken--almost she had heard not a sound,
+because of the noise of the rain and the slushy hoofbeats and the
+bells.  Whoever her captors were, they had lain in wait until the elbow
+of the curve separated Hiram's outfit and hers, and then had climbed in
+her wagon at the rear and stolen stealthily upon her from behind.
+Their work had been distressingly thorough.
+
+She was not greatly frightened, merely stunned and bewildered.  What on
+earth could be the meaning of such an act, was the question that kept
+uppermost in her thoughts as she felt herself borne swiftly along
+through the dripping forest.
+
+Meantime, Hiram Hooker had looked back to watch Jerkline Jo's whites
+round the curve.  There were not many opportunities for looking back at
+the girl that Hiram did not improve.  He loved to watch Jo's expert
+handling of the team in tight places.  It made a picture to delight the
+heart of any man.  He saw the leaders come around, then the swings.
+Next he saw the off pointer mare recrossing the chain and returning to
+place.  Then came the butt team and--an empty wagon.
+
+For an instant or two Hiram gazed unbelievingly, then turned and set
+his brake, calling to his team to whoa.  Next moment he was running
+back.
+
+He sprang into Jo's empty wagon, set the brake, and stopped her team.
+Then he was out by the tail end, running back along the road, calling
+frantically.
+
+On the left-hand side of the road yawned a chasm, five hundred feet in
+depth.  Had something happened?  Had Jo fallen down this precipice?
+
+As he ran he skirted the edge, shouting down.  Only the pelting rain
+and the swish of forest trees made a mocking answer.  If for any reason
+the girl had been obliged to leave the wagon, she would have stopped
+her team.  This was no place to allow a team to travel alone.
+
+He was thunderstruck--scarce able to believe his senses.  Back in the
+road he trotted along, his blue eyes searching expertly in the mud for
+signs of what had happened.  But it seemed that the trampling of the
+animals that were following Jo's wagon had obliterated every trace,
+provided the girl had been afoot in the road.  And she must have been
+afoot there, or flown up into the sky!
+
+Ah!  He came to an abrupt halt.  In the mud at the roadside was a
+single footprint--the print of a man's shoe.  Then on the rock wall on
+the right-hand side of the road, and close to the footprint, was fresh
+mud.  On hands and knees Hiram climbed up the rocky slope, and at the
+top found mud again.  Buckthorn bushes grew close by.  Some one had
+brushed against them recently, for the raindrops had been shaken from
+the leaves.  In all the big-timber country of Mendocino County there
+had been no surer trailer than Hiram Hooker.  For days he had followed
+panther and bear, eventually to track them to their lairs.  No big
+animal hunt ever had been considered complete without Hiram Hooker to
+go along.
+
+He remembered the incident of the man in the pines by the lake shore
+and groaned: "Fools!" he muttered.  "They thought the rain would help
+cover their trail, where it only makes it plainer.  Men can't travel
+through wet bushes without leaving a trail that looks like it had been
+made with whitewash and a broom.  What has happened?  Oh, Jo!  Jo!"
+
+He was off at a lope, his eyes darting glances hither and thither,
+following the trail as accurately as a hound follows a scent.  Here
+leaves glistened with raindrops--there they looked dull.  The trail was
+plain.
+
+What has happened?  The footprint of a man, and no sight of tracks made
+by the girl!  Hiram was unarmed.  He had left his wagon too surprised
+to think of grabbing up the Colt that he carried.  Should he go back
+now and get Jo's six-shooter?  No, the rain was falling too fast.  Soon
+the bushes that the kidnapers had brushed in their escape would be
+covered with drops of water again, and the tail would vanish, since the
+land was rocky and showed no footprints.  He must keep as close to the
+fleeing men as possible.  He knew there must be more than one to
+manhandle Jerkline Jo!
+
+Thus raced his thoughts as he sped on, never for an instant faltering
+on the trail.
+
+"If it only doesn't rain harder!" came his groan.  He prayed with
+childlike simplicity against this calamity, for more rain would wipe
+out the trail altogether.
+
+He saw a large pine knot as he ran along, and paused to grasp it up.
+It was heavy with pitch and shaped like the warclub of an Indian.  It
+was, in fact, too heavy, and few men would have considered it in the
+light of a weapon.  Fifty yards farther Hiram found a mate to it, and
+picked it up too.  Then he sped on and on into the forest of pines and
+firs, praying that the brush would not give out and make his trailing
+slower.
+
+If these men ahead of him were trusting to their own legs to get away
+with Jerkline Jo, their legs would have to be better than any Hiram
+Hooker ever before had matched his own against.  Why, he could keep up
+this pace for hours and hours!  He knew more about surmounting the
+difficulties of a forest wilderness than any man in the south, he
+proudly told himself.  These woods were as nothing compared with the
+majestic, seemingly endless sweep of the vast forests which he had
+roamed since childhood!  If they did not take to horses, he'd make them
+sick of their bargains before they had gone many miles!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+UNDER THE DRIPPING TREES
+
+Vaguely Hiram Hooker sensed a diabolical plot as he pounded on through
+the rain, tireless, determined, remorseless, on the trail of the
+abductors of Jerkline Jo.
+
+The doping of his four fellow skinners at Ragtown had a part in the
+plan.  It had been done deliberately to force the girl and Hiram into
+the wilderness alone.  Some one had known of Huber's shortage of hay,
+and had schemed accordingly, aware of Jerkline Jo's eternal willingness
+to do her best by her patrons, regardless of the strain upon herself.
+The plotters had not been able to get at Hiram.  Perhaps they had not
+tried.  Jerkline Jo would hardly essay a trip to Julia and back alone.
+Too many difficulties might arise on the road that a lone skinner--even
+a man skinner--could not cope with.  So they perhaps had not molested
+Hiram, hoping, if he were on his feet, that the girl would attempt the
+trip with him.  They had waited at the first U curve, and the moment he
+was out of sight had pounced upon her.  Suppose he had not chanced to
+look back?  The many curves ahead would have hidden her from him for
+nearly an hour after that first one had been passed.  That would have
+given them a start, the disadvantage of which he could not have
+overcome.  As it was, though, he knew that he was hot on their trail,
+and burdened as they were, was gaining on them at every leap.  Was
+Drummond back of this?  Hiram could think of no one else who would be
+even remotely at enmity with the lovable Jerkline Jo.
+
+He brought up suddenly and squatted behind a bush of southern
+manzanita.  Just ahead, in an open portion of the forest, was a group
+of three men, standing in a circle about a stiff, immovable figure on
+the ground.  Three saddled horses stood close by, their tails turned
+toward the rain, their heads lowered disconsolately.
+
+The men had just stopped and laid down their burden, which was nothing
+else than the tightly bound body of Jerkline Jo.  All three men wore
+masks over their faces and new bright-blue overalls to further aid in
+hiding their identities.  Hiram saw the rope about the girl, running in
+a spiral from her shoulders to her ankles.  He saw the cloth over her
+face, knotted behind her head.
+
+What should he do?  There were three men standing about the girl,
+rubbing their arms, which probably ached from the strain of carrying
+her.  Beyond a doubt they were armed.  He tried to think, to plan; but
+in the midst of it all half-formulated schemes deserted him because of
+the sudden action of one of them.
+
+He had taken something from his pocket, and now he and another stooped
+over the prostrate figure of the girl.  One man grasped her head in
+both hands; the next instant Hiram realized with horror that a blade
+was gleaming dully through the rain in the right hand of the other man.
+The third stooped and squatted on Jo's ankles.
+
+Hiram Hooker had at least one more accomplishment than has been
+mentioned.  As a boy he had used it to terrify his elders on dark
+nights in the forest.  He could imitate the piercing, blood-chilling
+scream of the prowling panther until women in lonely forest cabins
+clutched their breasts in fear, and men's faces blanched.  Sprinting
+from his place of concealment like a football player, crouching low as
+he ran, he bore down upon the three men, and had almost reached them
+before he loosed that terrorizing cry.  Before it had died out in the
+lonely, dripping wilderness, he was flailing right and left with a huge
+pine knot in either hand, amazing and invincible as Sampson with his
+jawbone of an ass.
+
+With yells of terror, the trio rocked back on their haunches and
+struggled frantically to gain their feet.  There was a sickening crack,
+and the man who had held Jo's head pitched backward, a victim of one of
+Hiram's warclubs.  Swinging about, he aimed a blow with his left-hand
+club, but its intended target ducked, and the club descended on the
+man's shoulder, wringing a cry of pain from lips that whitened suddenly.
+
+The third man was up now, and sprang upon Hiram's back.  The other
+charged him from in front.  Hiram hurled his left-hand club straight
+into this man's face, and with his free hand reached down and grasped
+the left leg of the man who had climbed him in the rear.  Carrying this
+man, who all the time was raining blows on his head, Hiram ran with all
+his might for a close-by pine.  As he neared it he whirled about and
+threw himself at it backward with every atom of his force.
+
+There followed a terrible impact, and in his ear exploded the breath of
+the man on his back, as he came in violent contact with the trunk of
+the tree.  The shock pitched Hiram forward on his face, and the man who
+had climbed upon him fell limply to the earth, the wind entirely
+crushed out of him.
+
+Hiram bounded to his feet and confronted the man into whose face he had
+thrown the pine knot, and who now was rushing him, brandishing a
+revolver.  Hiram's blow had knocked the mask from this man's face, but
+it was a face that Hiram had never seen before.
+
+A shot barked dully in the heavy atmosphere of the forest, and the
+smoke hung in a little ball.  Hiram felt the impact of the bullet, and
+was whirled half around with the force of it.  He knew he had been hit
+some place--in the breast or shoulder perhaps--but as yet felt not the
+slightest pain.  Fire flashed in his very face, now, and this time he
+smelled the acrid powder; but he had been in motion when the trigger
+was pressed and the bullet whined away fretfully through the trees.  On
+the heels of the second report came that sickening crack once more, and
+the face of the man that glared through the smoke at Hiram went red
+with a smear of blood.
+
+He sank to his knees, and Hiram spun about just in time to aim another
+crashing blow at the skull of the man whom he had catapulted into the
+tree.  His mask still held in place, but his hat was off and Hiram saw
+that his hair was brown and wavy.  There had not been time to aim, and
+the blow fell on his assailant's neck.
+
+They clinched, went down together, rolling over and over, clawing at
+each other like fighting lynxes.
+
+"Gi' me the paper!  Gi' me the paper!" yelled a voice, as Hiram climbed
+uppermost on his man and fought to free his entangled arms.
+
+At the same instant other arms were thrown about him from behind.  The
+man he had hit first had reentered the fight, it seemed.
+
+With a herculean heave the man from Wild-cat Hill lurched backward,
+carrying his lighter assailant with him.  Hiram had lost his club.  He
+grasped the man on his back by the under part of his thighs, as he had
+the other, and lifted his feet from the ground.  Then, so quickly that
+the man was taken off his guard, Hiram leaped into the air and fell
+backward, falling with all the weight of his huge body on the man who
+clung to him like an abalone to a rock.
+
+"_Wuff_!" he heard again, as the fellow's breath forsook him in a spasm
+of pain.  He lost his hold on Hiram, and Hiram flopped over.
+
+"Run!  Get a horse!  Get away with the paper!" this fellow choked; and
+as Hiram sprang upon him he saw the other rise and totter toward a
+horse.
+
+Crashing a blow to the face of the man under him, Hiram sprang to his
+feet and lunged at the one who was fleeing.  Whatever "the paper"
+meant, it was the nucleus of the plot, it appeared, and Hiram purposed
+to have it.
+
+But, grasping frantically for a stirrup, then sprawling along the neck
+of the nearest horse, the man yelled to the animal, and it leaped away
+with him through the trees.
+
+Hiram whirled back, beaten in that direction, and made for the other,
+who was on his feet and also running toward the two remaining mounts.
+The third man still lay inert.
+
+Hiram started running for the second escaping man, but suddenly his
+knees refused to hold his legs to their accustomed task.  Blindness was
+coming upon him, but he continued to grope toward the horses.  Then
+again came the sounds of rapidly thundering hoofs.  Hiram Hooker sighed
+weakly and placed both hands to his breast, which seemed weighted with
+some heavy object, or bound about tightly with a rope.  His hands came
+away red and wet  He wilted in his tracks, sighed again, and seemed to
+drift placidly into a deep, soothing sleep.
+
+Then a noise partially awoke him.  His senses swam, and he thought he
+heard himself laughing crazily, but could not make sure whether he was
+laughing or only had imagined it.  A man was reeling toward the
+remaining horse, both hands to his head, and he looked so helpless and
+befuddled that Hiram laughed again--or thought he did.  The man groaned
+and mumbled, then fell flat on his face, as a baby falls in an
+unchecked collapse.  A little while he lay there, then struggled to his
+feet again, and tottered toward the horse, who seemed to be neighing
+shrilly for the mates that had deserted him.
+
+Why, that was what Hiram had heard, he reasoned.  He had not been
+laughing at all.  A long space of semiconsciousness.  Then came the
+dull thunder of hoofs once more.  Hiram half raised his body on an
+elbow.  There lay Jerkline Jo, stiff and immovable in her yellow
+oilskins.  There was no one else about.  Save himself, of course, but
+he was so sleepy.
+
+He fell back with a crash.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+FOUR-UP FOR HELP
+
+Bound and helpless, Jerkline Jo Modock lay on the ground and listened
+to the sounds of the battle raging around her.  She knew that her hero
+from Wild-cat Hill had come with his terrorizing panther scream, and
+she heard curses and thudding clubs, then popping revolver shots.
+
+She was struggling desperately to free herself of her bonds, but she
+only wearied herself and accomplished nothing.  With her teeth she
+chewed at the cloth that covered her face, trying to draw it down below
+her eyes, so that she could at least see; but her efforts here proved
+futile, too.  Then she began twisting her head from side to side and
+hunching her shoulders, which she found she could move, in an effort to
+loosen the knot at the back of her head, or to scrape the cloth away.
+
+This last in time she accomplished, but it was long after all sounds of
+the conflict had ceased.
+
+As the cloth came loose she moved it along by sticking out her tongue
+and working it from side to side, at the same time tossing her head
+about.  At last it slipped off, and, by raising her head, she gazed
+about through the dark, wet trees.
+
+She had heard the thud of horses' hoofs, but now not a horse was to be
+seen.  Fifty feet from her, perhaps, lay the silent form of Hiram
+Hooker, flat on his back.  No other human being save herself and Hiram
+seemed to be in all that dripping wilderness.
+
+Time and again she called to the man to whom she had given her heart,
+but Hiram's lips remained motionless.  A great fear clutched at her.
+Hiram was dead.
+
+She fought down her terror, the horror of it all, and sought
+desperately for a way to release herself.  She was bound round and
+round until she was so stiff that even to roll over and over on the
+ground was impossible, as she could get no purchase whatever for her
+strong, tough muscles.  She began striving to bend her knees, and in
+this, as the bonds gradually changed position and gave a little, she
+was eventually successful.  Once she had a start in this tiresome
+process, she gained more and more, and finally she could move her legs
+from their straight position.
+
+She rested then, and when she began squirming again found that she was
+able to flop over on her side.
+
+In this new position she looked about over the ground for something to
+help her, and close at hand she saw the dull gleam of steel.
+
+As yet she had not the remotest idea of why she had been kidnaped; nor
+had she seen any of the persons who had perpetrated the act.  Not a
+word had been spoken to her or in her presence before the fight.  She
+had heard the man yelling about "the paper," though, toward the close
+of the battle, but no other words throughout the entire ordeal.
+
+The blade that showed its dull steel against the soggy brown pine
+needles lay five feet beyond her reach.  But now she could roll to it,
+and began to do so, flopping along like a fish in the bottom of a boat.
+She rested when her face was close to it, and began to study how she
+might make use of it.
+
+She might be able to take it in her teeth, but doubted if she could
+reach that part of the rope about her shoulders, even then.  If it was
+a dagger, she could not think how she could utilize it, as it probably
+would have no cutting edge.  If it was a pocketknife, it doubtless
+would be dull, as pocketknives usually are, and therefore useless.
+With any pressure that she might be able to command, a keen cutting
+edge would be necessary to free her from the coils of the lariat.
+
+By now she had regained her strength, and once more began wriggling and
+worming until her eyes were close to the blade, half hidden by pine
+needles.  Then she realized with surprise and a thrill of hope that the
+object was a razor.
+
+How such a tool came to be dropped by her assailants was more than she
+could fathom.  She did not try.  Working her face closer and closer to
+the razor she took the end of the handle between her teeth, and,
+twisting her head from side to side, finally managed to close the blade
+without cutting herself by pressing it against the ground.
+
+Then she rolled so that her face was directly over it, and took both
+handle and blade in her mouth, by the middle.  Her brain had been
+active through these clumsy maneuvers; she had a plan.
+
+Now for a tree from which suckers were growing close to the ground.
+The pines were hopeless in this respect, but off a way she saw the
+naked branches of a black oak, and toward it she rolled, the closed
+razor in her mouth.
+
+It was a long, tiresome trip, and when she reached the tree there was
+not a sucker growing from it.  She saw another black oak close at hand,
+and continued her flopping, seallike progress, toward it.
+
+Here, to her unbounded delight, slender suckers grew up from an exposed
+root.  She released the razor and chewed upon one of them until she had
+browsed it down to a leafless stub four inches high.
+
+Then, working with her teeth and tongue and straining every muscle in
+her neck, she contrived, at the risk of slashing her face, to insert
+the stump of the sucker between the two halves of the razor handle.
+
+This pushed up the blade, and it remained in a half-closed position
+like a threatening guillotine.  Knowing now that she would not be cut,
+she took the end of the handle in her teeth and pulled it down as far
+as it would go.  Still the edge of the blade remained balanced against
+the top of the sucker.  So she rolled about until she found a pine
+twig, which she took in her mouth, rolling with it back to the razor.
+With one end of the twig in her mouth, she was able to push the blade
+open with the other end, and it fell back against the root of the oak,
+edge uppermost.
+
+She rested again, and then crawled over the root until a coil of the
+rope that bound her shoulders was pressing against the keen edge of the
+razor blade.  Working her shoulders up and down, she saw the leather
+strands parting clean, and soon only one strand remained uncut.  She
+rolled from the razor and scraped this last strand against another
+exposed root of the oak until it parted.
+
+Two minutes more, and she was sitting up, unwinding the rawhide lariat
+from her legs with hands that were free.
+
+She struggled to her feet, and though she ached in every bone and
+muscle, ran to Hiram and bent over him with a little cry of anguish on
+her lips.
+
+His shirt front was stained crimson, and terror seized her.  She fought
+it off and, bending down, listened with an ear to his heart.  She
+breathed a little tremulous prayer of thankfulness as she heard his
+regular heartbeats, and then tore open his shirt to find that a bullet
+had entered his breast, high up on the right-hand side.
+
+As best she could she stopped the bleeding and tried to revive Hiram.
+Into cold rain water, collected in a hollow of the ground, she plunged
+her handkerchief again and again, bathing the man's temples and chafing
+his wrists.
+
+At last he opened his eyes, stared oddly at her a little, then, seeming
+to remember everything, strove to rise.
+
+Probably one woman in all that country could have completed the
+gigantic task of getting this big, wounded man back to the wagons, but
+Jerkline Jo was fortunately that woman.  With an arm of Hiram about her
+neck, and her arm about his waist, they staggered away through the
+rain, Hiram conscious enough to direct the way, for the girl was
+completely lost.  It was early in the morning that their journey had
+been interrupted so ruthlessly, but it was afternoon before they came
+again to the road, and Hiram dropped exhausted in Jo's lead wagon.
+
+Here she was able better to attend to his wound, and brandy, which she
+always carried, revived him greatly.
+
+There was no course open now but to loose all the horses but four,
+leave three of the wagons where they stood, and drive as fast as she
+could with the four hitched to the head wagon, to get the wounded man
+to Artesian Ranch, about eighteen miles distant down on the Julia side
+of the desert.
+
+Never before or afterward in the lives of the actors in this outland
+drama were the mountains that divided the desert to know such a drive
+as that.  Jerkline Jo had a set of four-up checks which she carried in
+case of emergency, and by one o'clock four of her big whites were
+racing down the perilous grade, with Jo holding the four leather lines
+and operating the brake repeatedly, urging them to greater efforts
+continually.  The huge wagon careened about hairpin curves, skirted
+precipices, rumbled from canon to canon, while the girl, always sure of
+herself, always sure of her horses, guided it skillfully and laughed at
+catastrophies that yawned at her every foot of the way.
+
+In the middle of the afternoon they raced out on the desert and took up
+the long miles to the ranch.  At dark they reached it, the horses badly
+spent, unaccustomed as they were to moving faster than a walk.  There
+was an automobile at the ranch, and Hiram was hurried on to the doctor
+at Julia, while Jo worked far into the night rubbing down her trembling
+whites, crooning to them, and giving them short drinks of water until
+they were resting their weary bodies in the litter, content and quiet
+at last.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+THE GENTLE WILD CAT RETURNS
+
+Hiram Hooker was very weak when he reached the doctor.  The bullet was
+found and successfully removed, however, and Hiram's great physical
+perfection did the rest.
+
+He was quickly on the mend, and in a month was able to take his team
+again.
+
+Meantime Jerkline Jo and her four other skinners had contrived to make
+their customary trips from Julia to Ragtown, all of them calling to see
+Hiram, who was being cared for at the doctor's house, the minute they
+completed their west-bound trip.  Jo spent most of her time with him
+when in Julia, and when he was well enough they talked frequently of
+the strange occurrence in the mountains.  But they did not get down to
+solid work on the mystery until Hiram was on his first trip to Ragtown
+after his wound had healed.  Then the wagon train came to a stop at the
+curves, and Jo and all of her skinners walked through the forest to the
+scene of Hiram's battle.
+
+After a search they found the spot.  Jo showed the men the razor, still
+propped up as she had left it, held up by the sucker of the black oak.
+She found the remains of the lariat, too.  A search failed to reveal
+anything beyond the razor that had been dropped by the surprised
+kidnapers.
+
+"Lord, be merciful unto me, a skinner!" exclaimed Heine Schultz,
+seating himself on a prostrate pine.  "Wild Cat, you say one o' these
+Jaspers was bendin' over Jo with this here razoo?"
+
+"I'm sure it was that that he had in his hand," Hiram replied.  "He was
+the second one that I soaked, and I saw him drop it."
+
+"Boy!  Boy!  That musta been some fight," observed Jim McAllen.  "Think
+of our ol' Wild Cat puttin' the three of 'em on the run!  Man, how
+comes it I miss all the good things in this life?  Jo, was they aimin'
+to cut your pretty throat?"
+
+Jo shuddered.  "Thank Heaven I was blindfolded!" was her grateful
+thought.  "But how ridiculous, boys!  A razor!  If they'd wanted to
+kill me, at least one of them had a gat.  Ask Hiram."
+
+"Maybe they was just goin' to cut you loose and tell you why they'd
+swiped you, when the Gentle Wild Cat went wild again," suggested Gulick.
+
+"Cut a perfectly good lariat!" Jo picked it up.  "Couldn't they have
+untied the knots?"
+
+Gulick took the lariat and examined it.  "Thirty-five feet," he said.
+"Rawhide--six-strand plait Been rubbed with cow's liver to soften 'er,
+too.  What else?  Whoop!  What's this?"
+
+He was studying the honda, also of rawhide, pressed flat when soaked
+and riveted in shape, a plaited button on the end of the lariat proper
+to keep it from slipping through the hole.
+
+"Letters cut in this," Gulick announced.  "T. H.'  Who's that stand
+for?"
+
+All went silent for a time, thinking; then Hiram Hooker said quietly,
+as if what he suggested mattered but little:
+
+"Tehachapi Hank."
+
+All talked at once now.  Not one was there that was not sure Hiram had
+hit upon a clew.
+
+"And Tehachapi Hank's a bad man," said Heine.  "Admitted it himself.
+And he's a side-kick of that cholo-faced Drummond!"
+
+Study of the razor, now red with rust, showed the amateur detectives
+nothing.
+
+"And ye saw only the face of one of 'em, Hiram?" Blink Keddie asked it.
+
+"Only one.  The others managed to keep their masks on."
+
+"Tehachapi Hank and Al Drummond them other two was," said McAllen
+positively.  "Too bad it wasn't one o' them you knocked the mask off
+of, Wild Cat."
+
+"And you never saw this fella that you got a look at?" asked Schultz.
+
+Hiram shook his head.  "I didn't even see him well," he added.
+"Through revolver smoke--and the rain pouring--and next instant his
+face didn't look like anything much.  That was a wicked old pine knot."
+
+"I'll say she was, boy!  But about the razor?" Keddie kept on.
+
+Again Hiram could not answer.
+
+"Why, that's easy!" laughed Heine Schultz.  "They was gonta give Jo a
+shave!"
+
+Jo and Hiram walked together behind the rest and talked as the party
+returned to the wagons.  For the first time she told him of what her
+skinners had had to report when they were over their sickness following
+the doping at Ragtown.  One and all, they said, they had been invited
+to the little cabin of the girl who ran the shooting gallery for a
+drink; after having fired several strings of shots and "joshed" with
+her out in front.  From there they had gone to the Palace, and
+afterward, being dazed and feeling drowsy, had wandered in a group into
+the Dugout, a place that they seldom frequented, and could remember
+nothing after that.
+
+"Why--why--do they think Lucy doped them?" cried Hiram.
+
+Jo shrugged.  "They can't remember drinking anywhere but with her and
+in the Palace," she said.  "They got it one place or the other, Hiram."
+
+"The Palace, of course, then.  Why--Lucy--she----"
+
+"Is a friend of Al Drummond," Jo helped him out, her red lips set.
+
+"Did you find out whether or not Drummond was in Ragtown at the time?"
+
+"I looked into all that I dared, but it was nine days before I got
+back.  Oh, I had an awful time, with nobody to help me but a few green
+men I'd picked up at Julia--finding the horses and all.  But Huber got
+his hay!" she added proudly.  "When I got back to Ragtown, of course
+nobody remembered whether Drummond had been there that day or not.  He
+goes and comes frequently, you know.  And I didn't dare press
+questions.  I told the boys to keep still about it all.  I thought that
+best."
+
+"Was Drummond there on your last trip in?" he asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Beaten up?  I'm sure I must have left my mark on all three of them."
+
+"I didn't get to see him, but no one said anything about any injury."
+
+"Much as we dislike him, it's hard to think that Drummond would be
+concerned in such a plot," Hiram remarked.
+
+"Plot?"
+
+"Of course, Jo."
+
+"Against me?  What have I done?"
+
+"We're getting nowhere with such speculation, Jo," said Hiram.  "We
+boys will just have to keep our eyes open and see what we can find out.
+There's more back of it than the idea to tantalize you because you beat
+Al Drummond in the freighting game.  I wish I knew what the razor was
+for."
+
+"Of course, they weren't going to kill me, Hiram.  No need for all that
+monkeywork, if that had been the case."
+
+"I only saw the man with the razor," Hiram told her, "and got busy.  Of
+course, I didn't even know it was a razor then, but I saw steel.  I
+thought they were going to kill you.  Didn't take much time to think,
+at that."
+
+"You terrible scrapper!" laughed the girl.  "Who'd have thought that
+I'd ever have needed such a man--and got him!  Hiram, you've--you've
+never kissed me since that night."
+
+Hiram's face turned red as fire.  "I ain't worthy to kiss ye, Jo," he
+said, lapsing into his backwoods drawl.  "Wait'll I settle this thing
+that's come up for you.  Wait'll I find out about 'the paper.'  Then
+maybe I'll have somethin' to offer you."
+
+In his great embarrassment he pointed to the ground, where were tracks
+and scratches.
+
+"Ben a bob cat usin' thereabouts," he drawled.
+
+
+With Twitter-or-Tweet Orr Tweet the month that Hiram had been laid up
+had developed a new and unforeseen situation.  He laid the particulars
+before Jerkline Jo and Hiram, both investors in his enterprise.  The
+conference took place when Jo's freight outfit jingled into Ragtown two
+days later.
+
+Tweet invited them to dinner in the Wigwam, a saloon and restaurant and
+gambling house combined, where the patrons sat on stools before a high
+counter which was in the nature of a continuation of the bar.  The
+three took seats at the farther end, so that their conversation would
+be less likely to be overheard.
+
+"Playmates," Tweet began, when their orders were before them, "I didn't
+think our Uncle Sam would go to work and hand us a package just when we
+were gettin' us a toehold.  But that's just what he's done.  I been
+watchin' for it to develop for some little time.  Now the leak has
+sprung.
+
+"You see, outside o' Paloma Rancho, every other section o' land in here
+b'longs to the Gold Belt Cut-off, and adjoinin' sections are government
+land.  Maybe you c'n guess what's happened."
+
+"Thrown open," Jerkline Jo said promptly.
+
+"Yep--open to homesteaders.  They're flockin' in in automobiles, in
+perambulators, on motor cycles, burros, horseback, and afoot--in
+everything but submarines.  So far as any one can see, they're gettin'
+just as good land as Paloma Rancho; and the folks we've sold to are
+castin' dark looks at one Tweet.  As if I was to blame!  Two fellas
+that hadn't paid in much have jumped their contracts with us, and are
+takin' up claims.  If many more pull stuff like that--say, somebody'll
+be in bad!
+
+"Just the same, though, my engineers tell me there's shallower water
+here than any place on this ol' desert.  Butte Springs proves that,
+too.  And we got the water right on the mountain lake; so they can't
+get that.  Riparian rights--all straight, by golly!  No worry there.  I
+don't think settlers'll have any luck striking water without big
+expense anywhere around us.  Just the same, it'll take time to prove
+that.
+
+"The settler, you savvy, has six months after he files before he's got
+to get on his land.  Even then he ain't required to develop water; and
+chances are he won't.  He'll put in dry crops to cover the improvements
+demanded by the government, whether they succeed or not--which they
+won't.  But all this time, because nobody'll be makin' a great effort
+to locate water, folks will be believin' that government land is as
+good as ours.  See the point?  Paloma Rancho land will stop sellin'
+pronto, and our pleasant little dream will turn into a scary nightmare."
+
+"But if the surrounding land is inferior to the rancho," said Jo, "it's
+only a matter of time until people will find it out.  Then you'll
+regain your old status, won't you?"
+
+"In time.  Yeah--that's it.  But time's money, little girl; and once
+every three months I gotta slap down six thousand filthy lucreinos,
+plus a neat little bunch o' interest, or--bingo!  All is lost!
+
+"Folks that peddled me this property are gettin' on their feet again,
+and their young lives are one long regret over havin' had ta part with
+Paloma Rancho.  'Salways th' way.  One dog leaves a bone, and another
+dog comes along and goes to work and picks her up.  Then the other dog
+he goes to work and thinks that was a pretty darn good bone after all.
+Then fur begins to fly, and old ladies yell: 'How cruel!  Stop it, you
+big heartless men!'
+
+"So the other dogs won't miss a chance to shoot the prongs into me the
+moment I fail on a single payment and the interest due.  They don't
+have to; I signed to forfeit everything any interest day that I failed
+to pungle up.  Three days o' grace--then--boom!  'Wasn't it pretty,
+papa!  Shoot off another one just like it!'"
+
+Jerkline Jo sipped her near-coffee thoughtfully, and gazed unseeingly
+at the menu card, a marvel of weird orthography, punctuated with fly
+specks and splatters of egg yolk.  Jo had over ten thousand dollars
+invested in Paloma Rancho.
+
+"We're not doing the freighting business that we did," she confessed,
+aware that Playmate Tweet was studying her face expectantly and
+patiently straightening a nose whose tip always left true center the
+moment he released it.  "Lots of the smaller contractors have finished
+here, and are moving on to new jobs up the line, out of our reach.
+Ragtown, too, seems to be slowing up, don't you think?"
+
+Tweet pursed his lips.  "I hate to admit it," he said, "but I guess
+you're right.  Still, we can expect things to be slower in winter.
+Then these settlers oughta help Ragtown some when spring comes along.
+Chances are, though, most of 'em are broke.  'Salways like that.  I've
+been homesteadin' communities before now.  No good, as a rule.
+
+"But I ain't worryin' about Ragtown.  She'll perk up.  We're gonta get
+the yards and the roundhouse--that's a cinch.  I know it now.  Demarest
+slipped it to me.  I've spread the glad tidin's, o' course, but it
+didn't seem to help.  Folks have believed it all along, and have gone
+ahead on that belief--so the rush because of that feature was over
+before I sprung it.  But Ragtown'll pick up in time.  The floaters will
+go, and substantial citizens will take their places.  It's the land
+contracts that we need in order to meet our payments and have a future
+to bank on, and they're what'll slow up and hurt us till folks get sane
+and see we got the only dope."
+
+"You'll have to meet the next payment--when?" Hiram put in here.
+
+"April first--two months off.  Six thousan' dollars and interest on
+deferred payments."
+
+"Can you meet it?"
+
+"I couldn't if it was due now," was Tweet's reply.
+
+"Well, I'll see that you meet that payment," Jo said.  "That will give
+you three months more leeway--five months, counting from now--and by
+that time things should begin to look up once more."
+
+Tweet heaved a great sigh of relief.  "That's a big load off my chest,"
+he claimed, as they left the stools.
+
+Two hours later Hiram Hooker, apparently wandering aimlessly about the
+dimly lighted street, saw Al Drummond lift a hinged portion of the
+shooting-gallery counter and pass within.  A man was in charge, and
+there was nobody shooting.  Drummond nodded briefly to him, traversed
+the length of the target range, and disappeared through a door in the
+rear.
+
+Three minutes after this Hiram slunk stealthily along the alley and up
+to Lucy's little cabin.  Softly his fingers plucked at a knot in a
+knothole, which he had loosened that evening while Lucy was on watch in
+the gallery.  Holding the circular bit of wood in his hand, he placed
+an ear to the knothole, which was hidden from those inside by a huge
+piece of furniture.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+HIRAM TAKES THE TRAIL
+
+Hiram Hooker stood motionless in the alley back of Lucy Dalles' cabin
+and listened intently through the knothole.
+
+"Well," he heard Al Drummond saying to Lucy, "I see they got in again
+this evening."
+
+Hiram supposed "they" referred to the freighting outfit of Jerkline Jo.
+
+"Yes," replied Lucy, "and here it is late January, Al, and we've
+accomplished nothing."
+
+"No, nothing," Drummond admitted gloomily.  "And our chances look
+mighty slim to get at her.  Every trip she's got those five husky
+skinners with her, and I guess every one of them is fool enough to put
+up a scrap for her if he knew he'd get croaked in the deal."
+
+"We must think up another plan to separate her from them," the girl
+suggested.
+
+"Confound it!" muttered Drummond.  "Everything was moving along
+smoothly, and the next minute we'd have had the razor working; then
+here comes that big boob and takes us by surprise.  Lord, how he swung
+those clubs!"
+
+"You're afraid of him, since he beat you up on the desert," Lucy said
+tauntingly.
+
+"Huh!  I'll get him yet!  I'm willing to admit he's too many for me in
+a stand-up and knock-down fight.  He's a whirlwind--I never saw his
+like.  Why, up there in the mountains he seemed to have a dozen arms,
+all working at once.  Wild Cat is right!  But I haven't been raised on
+salt pork and corn bread.  I've lived.  Just the same, when I get good
+and ready I'll fix his engine for him."
+
+"I imagine he'll be around to oversee the work," remarked Lucy in a
+tone that probably made Drummond long to choke her.
+
+"Well, that's not the point," she went on after a little.  "What are we
+going to do to get at that creature known as Jerkline Jo, the
+four-flusher?  She's crooked as a dog's hind leg, and goes around
+pulling the pious stuff on the roughnecks."
+
+"You think because you're crooked every other woman is, eh?  I'll say
+this for Jo--she's straight and a dead-game sport.  She's not a
+four-flusher.  Of course I'd do anything to get even for the way she
+handed it to me in the freighting game.  But there's no sense in you
+and me running her down to each other when we don't believe ourselves."
+
+"So you've fallen for her, too, have you?" Lucy asked sarcastically.
+
+"Don't be a fool, Lucy!  A man can't help admiring a girl like Jo."
+
+"Thanks for your assurances, Al," Lucy said cuttingly.
+
+"Well, well, well!  Scrap all night about nothing!  Forget it!  Shut
+up!  Guess who I saw to-day as I was driving over the desert."
+
+"Who?" sullenly.
+
+"Your dear old uncle."
+
+"My uncle!"
+
+"Sure--that's what you called him.  Basil Filer, the crazy prospector."
+
+"Sure enough, Al?"  Lucy's tones were brighter.
+
+"Pretty much so.  Didn't seem to recognize me at all.  I was at
+Comstock's camp, and he rambled in with his burros.  Stood within five
+feet of me and looked right at me.  Never saw me before!" and Drummond
+chuckled.
+
+"Al, where on earth do you suppose he's been since you took him out on
+the desert and dumped him?"
+
+"Heaven knows!  Wandering about looking for a prospect, I suppose.  I'd
+have given fifty dollars to be hidden close by when he came out of it
+next morning."
+
+"Poor old duffer!  But suppose Hooker and Jo or some of that bunch
+should stumble onto him, Al!  Was he making this way?"
+
+"Yes; but he was fifty miles up the lines.  There were two or three
+women about Comstock's commissary tent--two of Comstock's daughters and
+the wife of his walking-boss.  The old bird kept looking at them and
+shaking his head, just like he did with you.  He's still hunting for
+his pardner's daughter.  He's a crazy nut, and I guess wherever he goes
+he's trying to get on her trail."
+
+"Don't you suppose he remembers me, Al?  We sure had him going that
+night.  I was Jean Prince to him, all right.  And when you inked me up,
+and he got a look--say, he couldn't tell his story fast enough, could
+he?"
+
+Drummond chuckled reminiscently.  "Yes, next minute he'd have had you
+scalped, kid, if I hadn't slipped him another powder.  Well, if he does
+drift back here you've simply got to lie low and keep out of his sight.
+I'll tell the boys to keep their eyes open and slip me the dope if they
+see him rambling into Ragtown.  Then you fade away till he beats it out
+again."
+
+"Won't he ask about me?  And try to find out where I've gone?"
+
+"I doubt it.  He's still got his precious paper.  If, we'd stolen that,
+instead of copying it, there might be the very devil to pay.  But as
+long as he's still got it he's too nutty to suspect.  Of course,
+though, nobody can tell what's going on in the other fellow's noodle.
+I'd say, though, that if you aren't here he'll think the whole business
+was a pipe dream."
+
+"I hope so.  We don't want any further complications.  Now when are you
+and Hank and that friend of his going to make another attempt to get
+Jerkline Jo?  And how are you going about it?"
+
+"Hank's still camping up in the mountains and spying on the outfit when
+it travels through the pass," Al informed her.  "He's watching their
+habits, and taking note of just how they travel along, trying to dope
+out something new.  He'll get a scheme before spring, I'm thinking.
+There's a bad hombre, kid.  It would give me the creeps to know he was
+trailing me through those lonesome woods.  Man!  I wouldn't turn my
+back to that plug with fifteen cents in my jeans!"
+
+"Can't we get some more of Hank's pals and simply ambush Jo's whole
+outfit?  Collar all of them, and then get after Jo.  Surely a bunch of
+men could take them all by surprise and put the fixin's to 'em."
+
+Drummond snorted.  "We've got to split the haul four ways as it is," he
+pointed out.  "And that bo that helped us get Filer away--Stool--he
+smells a rat and is keeping an eye single to horning in on the
+clean-up.  Lucy, I wouldn't attack Jo's bunch of roughnecks with less
+than a dozen men; and you can bet your young life our gang is too big
+as it is.  Keep the home fires burning, I'll say!"
+
+"Well, for Heaven's sake, try and get busy soon!" Lucy cried
+petulantly.  "Goodness knows I did my part--all that any woman could be
+expected to do.  So far I'm the only one that's accomplished anything.
+Why in thunder didn't Hank's friend, Pete, 'tend to the business up
+there in the mountains, after you and Hank had beat it?  Hooker was
+out, this fellow said, and the girl still tied.  And then he comes out
+of his dope and gets on a horse, and beats it like you other two
+quitters!"
+
+"He didn't have the paper," explained Al.  "Besides, Pete thought he
+was going to croak.  He was laid up longer than Hooker, even, and
+Hooker had got a bullet.  Pete's skull was cracked, and for a time it
+was a toss-up whether he'd pull through or not.  He went nutty up
+there, I guess.  He was lying sidewise across the saddle, unconscious
+but holding on for dear life, when the horse caught up with us.  And
+Hank and I ducked out because--well, it's hard to explain.  Both of us
+were pretty badly beaten up, you know, and there wasn't much fight left
+in us.  Hooker had surprised us, and we were rattled.  I don't know--a
+fellow can't explain just why he does the wrong thing in a situation
+like that.  But knock the fight out of a man and make him groggy, and
+he'll bungle every time."
+
+"Well, do something now," ordered Lucy frigidly; and Hiram heard
+Drummond scrape back his chair in rising.
+
+"All right--we'll see.  I'll beat it now.  Up late last night playing
+poker.  Rotten luck, too!"
+
+"Al," said Lucy's voice, "when we get that jack, are you going to give
+me a fair share of it?"
+
+"Sure--sure!  Why do you keep harping on that, Lucy?  Haven't I
+promised you I would?  Good night.  I'm dead tired!"
+
+Half an hour before dawn next morning Hiram Hooker crawled from his
+blankets in camp and fed hay and grain to Babe, Jerkline Jo's black
+saddle mare.  Then, leaving his companions placidly snoring, he walked
+briskly along the trail to Ragtown.  Ten minutes after his start he was
+knocking on the door of Jo's tiny pine cabin.
+
+"What is it?" finally came the girl's sleepy tones.  "Who is there?"
+
+"It's I, Jo.  Hiram.  Will you come to the door a second?  I want to
+talk with you."
+
+"You big whale!  What do you mean, waking me up in the middle of the
+night?  Anything wrong?"
+
+"No, Jo.  And it's almost time to get up.  The boys will be out by the
+time I get back.  Hurry and get dressed, won't you?"
+
+There was a rustling and quick moving about inside, and presently the
+door was unlocked and Jerkline Jo poked her head out inquiringly.
+
+"I came to ask you for a few days off," he explained.
+
+"Why, Hiram?"
+
+"Yes, just one trip, Jo.  There isn't any more freight than the rest of
+you can handle just now.  Won't be till spring, I'm thinking."
+
+"Oh, I could spare you now better than later on.  But--but what, Hiram?"
+
+"And I'd like to borrow Babe and your saddle and bridle, too."
+
+"Take them," she said confidently.  "Whatever your mysterious
+disappearance means, I know I can trust you."
+
+Half an hour afterward Hiram swung himself into Jo's big California
+saddle, and then leaned over and spoke to Blink Keddie and Heine
+Schultz, busy at harnessing the teams.
+
+"I don't know when I'll be back, boys," he said.  "But remember what I
+told you: Don't let Jo out of your sight in the pass--nor anywhere
+else, for that matter--and keep your guns handy all the time."
+
+"Don't worry, Gentle Wild Cat!" Schultz assured him.
+
+"So long, then," said Hiram, and swung Babe into the road that
+connected Ragtown with the line of camps which dotted the desert from
+end to end.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+A TALE OF THE DESERT'S DEAD
+
+No land seems so delectable as the desert early on a crisp morning.
+The rare air causes the blood to pound through one's veins, and an
+unexplainable rapture seizes man's spirits.
+
+Jo's black mare, Babe, had not been ridden for weeks, and every
+greasewood bush that she saw became in the weird light of sunrise a
+grotesque goblin ready to spring at her and devour her whole.  At
+least, so she pretended, and as her natural weapon of defense lay in
+flight, she kept Hiram Hooker busy holding her down to a fast gallop.
+
+The low-hanging tapaderos flapped loosely.  Hiram's borrowed
+silver-mounted spurs--a reminder of Tom Gulick's cow-punching days in
+Utah--jingled merrily.  The heavy six-gun at his hip flopped against
+the silver-rimmed cantle of Jo's fifty-pound saddle.  The smells of the
+morning were sweet.  Away over the vast expanse of bronze greasewood,
+far-flung buttes caught the early rays of the sun and took on something
+of the likeness of a solar spectrum, purple at their bases, the colors
+ranging upward through blues and greens and yellows to a spun-gold
+glitter at their summits.  Jack rabbits loped away through the brush.
+Now and then a coyote, ears pricked up, trotted along, his tail
+dragging.  Tecolote, the little desert owl, came from his hole and sat
+on the pile of dirt beside it, while his wife peeked out with her round
+head just above the ground and gave silent approval to her lord and
+master's querulous criticism of the rider.
+
+Life was good--life was glorious.  Life was love!  The poetic heart of
+the man from Wild-cat Hill sang ceaselessly.  He was away on his
+romantic quest to serve the most splendid girl a man had ever loved!
+
+As the morning progressed and the sun climbed higher and higher, Babe
+bore him through many camps, both large and small.  At each he drew
+rein and made inquiry after an old prospector called Basil Filer, who
+drove six burros.  No one had seen such a man, however, and Hiram
+continued on toward the north until noon.  Then he stopped for dinner
+and to feed and rest the mare at Demarest, Spruce & Tillou's Camp
+Number Two.  They had come twenty-one miles that morning, he learned at
+dinner in the huge dining tent; and when he started out again he held
+Babe in, because she was soft for want of exercise.
+
+On and on they traveled, nevertheless, Hiram making inquiry at every
+camp.  At last, thirty miles from Ragtown, he got word of the
+prospector.  A camp freighter who traveled to the north for supplies
+from Demarest, Spruce & Tillou's Camp Number Three had seen such a man
+trudging along with his long staff, eyes bent on the ground, behind his
+six burros.  He had been seen about ten miles farther north, traveling
+south, the day before.
+
+Hiram loped on, and now reached a strip of the right-of-way where camps
+were few and far between.  The desert was dryer here than in the
+vicinity of Ragtown, and greasewood and whispering yuccas gave place to
+low sage and the shimmering dry lakes, which lure thirsting men on to
+their doom with their mocking resemblance to the life-saving water the
+wanderer craves.
+
+Always, it seemed, there was somewhere within the range of Hiram's
+vision one of those weird whirlwinds sweeping along.  Often they were
+so far away they seemed motionless, and looked like brown funnel-shaped
+pillars, wrong end up, supporting the turquoise sky.  Again, they were
+close--sometimes six or seven in sight at once--as they spun like huge
+tops, sucking up everything loose in their path, and whirling it round
+and round with stupefying rapidity.
+
+At last one of them overtook the horse and rider, and the mare stopped
+short, thrusting her head between her front legs and tucking in her
+flowing tail.  Hiram had time only to grab his hat and throw himself
+forward along the mare's neck; the next instant it seemed as if a
+million tugging hands had hold of him and were trying to whirl him into
+the heavens and carry him, like a garment whipped from a clothesline,
+into mysterious distances.
+
+When it had passed he sat erect once more and dug the dirt from his
+ears and eyes, trying to follow the twister's progress as it sped
+drunkenly on to find other victims.
+
+Then it was that Hiram saw the pack train, not far distant over the
+desert, making ready to receive the coming whirlwind.  The burros, wise
+little animals that they are, had huddled together, tails outward,
+heads down; and in the center of them Hiram saw a man just stooping for
+the protection of their bodies.  Next instant the group vanished--was
+swallowed up by the wind demon.
+
+When the old man looked up after the onslaught, Hiram was riding upon
+him.  The prospector stood trying to stare at him from the center of
+his pack train, wiping his watering eyes and sand-stained mouth.
+
+"Hello, there!" called Hiram.  "It spoke to us in passing, too.  How do
+you like 'em?"
+
+"I got to like 'em," returned the old man.  "I eat 'em--breakfast,
+dinner, and supper.  Grub don't taste good any more 'less a twister's
+passed over it and seasoned it up.  Who are you?"
+
+Hiram swung his great frame from the creaking saddle.
+
+"I'm Hiram Hooker," he announced, lowering the mare's reins and
+advancing until a mouse-colored burro aimed a kick at him to show him
+that he was a rank outsider whose company was not desired.
+
+"Why, Muta, that ain't no way to act!" mildly expostulated the burro's
+master.  "She's just a mite playful," he explained apologetically to
+Hiram.  "Muta, she thinks a heap o' the ole man, ye see, an' she's
+always lookin' out that strangers don't mean 'im any harm."
+
+He placed both arms about the shaggy burro's neck.  "You must be more
+polite, Muta," he said chidingly, while the little animal trust out her
+upper lip and nibbled at the large horn buttons on his dusty canvas
+coat.
+
+"Which way are you bound?" asked Hiram.
+
+"South now.  Just travelin'.  Maybe I'll make it over to Rattlesnake
+Buttes"--he raised an arm toward the northeast--"and maybe down Caldron
+Canon way."  He pointed southeast toward the mountains.  "I dunno--just
+driftin' along, me an' the little fellas.  Sometimes we drift here, and
+sometimes we drift there.  Don't matter much, s'long's there's grub an'
+a little rolled barley in the pack-bags.  What's the dif'rence anyway?"
+His red-lidded eyes looked up weirdly at Hiram.
+
+Bent and pathetic he was, this old man of the hills and deserts--this
+old lizard of the unfriendly sands.  In his eyes all time seemed to
+have written its history.  His brows were shaggy and desert-colored,
+like the brows of the Ancient Mariner whose scrawny, clutching fingers
+robbed the Wedding Guest of his night of pleasure.  His hands shook,
+and he carried a long cane; but for him the merciless desert seemed to
+hold no lasting terror, for he spent his life on its desert searching
+for the treasure that is hidden there.
+
+"Me and the little fellas just drift along.  We get work at the camps
+when our grubstake's gone; and then we ramble on and on--just driftin',
+kinda.  I got a ole jack rabbit for supper, pardner.  He was sleepin'
+under a sagebrush, and I puts out his eye with my six and twenty paces.
+Can you do that?  But you're young--young and got a clever eye.
+Anyway, I got a ole jack for supper.  Now, if you had a bottle on you
+couldn't we have a time!"
+
+"I've no bottle," Hiram said.  "I'm sorry.  But, if you'll invite me,
+I'll help you with the jack."
+
+"Got blankets behind yer saddle, I see.  All right, my friend.  Ole
+Filer's always ready to share his grub with a passer-by on the desert.
+There's water in my little tank.  Burros don't drink much, you know.  A
+taste's enough till we get to a camp to-morrow.  Handy, those camps,
+for prospectors needin' a grubstake.  Let's camp over there by that
+lonesome yucca palm.  He looks as if he wanted company.  Maybe he'll
+whisper where they's gold to-night--if we keep on ear awake.  He-he!
+Oh, they whisper lots--lots--lots!  But they always lie like sin!"
+
+When the "ole jack" had paid the final price of his lack of
+watchfulness, Hiram Hooker and the crazy prospector leaned back and
+looked up at the cold stars that smiled cruelly down on the arid waste.
+The wind whispered mysteriously through the bayonets of the yucca palm
+above them.  Not long would one be obliged to live and move and have
+his being alone on this desert before strange messages would begin to
+formulate in the wind's eerie whispering in the yuccas.
+
+The burros ranged about, browsing off the desert growth.  There had
+been barley for Babe, and Hiram had watered her at the last camp.  A
+rinse-out of her mouth and she would do very well till morning.
+
+And there under the scornful stars Hiram and the old man lounged on
+packbags and talked, with their tiny camp fire of greasewood roots
+between them.  And gradually as Hiram told what he knew and convinced
+the gray old rat of his honesty, an uncanny tale of the barren lands
+began unfolding, a tale revolving about a little girl baby left by
+prospectors in a yucca-trunk corral--the tale of Jean Prince, daughter
+of Leonard Prince, whose bones had been gnawed by coyotes and covered
+by the shifting sands for over twenty years.  And the baby girl, Jean
+Prince, was none other than the magnetic, dark-haired woman who now
+drove jerkline to Ragtown and numbered her admirers by the
+thousand--Jerkline Jo, Queen of the Outland Camps.
+
+"They was three of us at first," narrated Filer in a shaky voice.
+"Three of us and Baby Jean.  Baby Jean and me and Len Prince and 'The
+Chink.'  And that makes four.  But Baby Jean was only two years old.
+
+"Hong Duo was the chink--a grinnin' yenshee hound from up beyond the
+Tehachapi--way up--up toward the Sierra Nevadas, in the placer country.
+White prospectors ner white miners don't often work with chinks.
+Chinks is only good for workin' tailin's when it comes to mines.  But
+Len he'd saved Hong Duo's life in trouble in a dump in Placerville--ol'
+Hangtown--and the chink had clung to um like a burro to somethin' he's
+swiped from Camp.
+
+"Agin' that, too, the chink had money--an' Len and me was broke.  Fer a
+year he grubstaked us, and followed us around pocketin' up that a way,
+cookin' and such, and livin' for Len and Baby Jean.
+
+"Baby Jean's maw she died when the kid was borned; and everywhere Len
+went after she was a year or more he took her.  We drifted south--me
+and Len and the chink and Baby Jean.
+
+"Up Death Valley way we got wind o' somethin' good.  Days and days we
+makes it into the land that God forgot, and here and there we pecked
+out a little color.  Then Len and me we gets a lead, and we leaves the
+chink and Baby Jean and drifts on into a country that makes me shiver
+yet ta think of.
+
+"We got some gold--quite some.  And me"--his voice grew low--"I was
+younger then, and mean as dirt.  I was high-gradin' on my pardner right
+and left.  I guess I was always mean; but I've paid the price.
+
+"Then Len he gets onto me, but he holds his tongue.  And we make it on
+and on into Little Hall, till the sandstorm come.
+
+"Fer nigh onto fifty-nine years I've roamed the desert, pardner, but
+I've never seen another storm like that.  Days and days she blowed, and
+sometimes you couldn't see yer hand before yer face for the flyin'
+sand.  Someway we gets out of it, the Almighty knows how!  But from
+that day to this I've never been able to find that place ag'in.
+
+"There was gold there--piles and piles o' gold--and Len he'd found it.
+Found it out alone one day before the storm set in.  And knowin' I'd
+been high-gradin' on him, he kep' this find to 'imself.  Then come the
+storm, and we fought out just ahead o' death.
+
+"Then Len he keeps tryin' to go back--wants to work long for a big
+grubstake, and is quiet and dreams a lot, with Baby Jean in his arms,
+and the chink settin' cross-legged lookin' at 'em with his glitterin'
+little eyes--half full o' hop, I guess.  And I gets onto why Len wants
+to drift back there to that land o' dead men's bones, and I watch 'im,
+and freeze to 'im continual.
+
+"Len he makes a bluff at this an' that an' the other--him and me and
+the chink driftin' from here to there over this part o' the desert, or
+hereabouts, scratchin' a little now and ag'in.  But Len his heart ain't
+in it, I see; and all the time he's tryin' to shake me off, I get it.
+But I won't shake.
+
+"Well, Len he ain't no more good after the awful time we went through
+up there in that terrible land.  He never was a man ag'in after that;
+and he gets scared, I guess, and thinks he's gonna cash his chips.
+They's a queer look in his eyes, and in camp he just sets and sets with
+Baby Jean in his arms, and the hophead lookin' at 'em from across the
+fire with his glitterin' little eyes.  And sometimes Len he just sets
+and sets and watches Baby Jean asleep, and his eyes are worried like a
+horse's eyes when he knows he's starvin'; and the yenshee hound he just
+sets and looks at Len, and Heaven only knows what he's thinkin'!
+
+"Then we make it up along in where the Salt Lake road was buildin'
+then--up Barstow way--all wild them days.  And one day Len and me and
+the chink goes out into the buttes, and leaves Baby Jean in a
+yucca-stump corral so's the c'yotes can't get at her, like we did
+sometimes.  She wasn't never a yellin' kid.  Give her a bottle o'
+canned cow, and she'd suck herself to sleep with varmints prowlin'
+about and sandstorms blowin'.  Sometimes she'd sob if things was goin'
+wrong in her little world--low and heartbroken, like a woman cries.
+But yell--never!
+
+"So we leaves her suckin' at her bottle, for Len he'd never broke her
+of it, and out we goes to scratch around some more up in Turkey Buttes.
+
+"It was lookin' to storm and we hadn't oughta gone maybe; but we didn't
+aim to make it far, and could come back any time.  But when she broke
+she broke sudden; and only once before had I seen such a blow as that.
+We got plumb lost five miles from camp; and all that day and all that
+night and all next day we wandered about in the whirlin' sand, outa
+water, and goin' crazier every minute.  The chink he gives up, and so
+does Len; and I'm too crazy to make 'em keep on fightin'.  I dragged
+out two days later, way north o' the buttes--plumb bughouse, my tongue
+all black and stiff as rubber.  I've never been the same man since, I
+guess.  I dream about them days and nights.
+
+"The folks that found me they go huntin' for Len and the chink and Baby
+Jean t'other side o' the buttes.  They find Len and the chink, both
+dead, their faces and tongues----  But I don't like to remember that!
+Sometimes the yuccas they whisper about it; but I always plug my ears
+and begin to sing, or talk to the asses about the fun we'll have when
+we find Jean Prince and get the gold Len knew about up there Death
+Valley way.
+
+"They turned Len's things over to me.  The baby they couldn't find; but
+after weeks they stumbled onto the camp where we'd left her and found
+everything almost buried in sand.  The kid was gone, and the c'yotes
+hadn't got her.  They was a piece o' paper in the camp; but it had
+rained and rained since it was stuck up there, and all the writin' was
+gone.  In Len's things I finds the paper that I'm carryin', and I kep'
+it to myself.  I've got it now--right here"--he thumped his
+breast--"and for twenty years I've hunted for Baby Jean and never found
+her.
+
+"They's gold up there--up where Len Prince found it.  The paper tells
+only half o' how to relocate Len's claims.  At the beginnin' it says
+the paper's for Baby Jean, and no one else is to have it.  Len knew he
+was soon goin' to croak--and he fixed it for Baby Jean when he was
+gone.  He done his best.  Any one who's got the paper knows only half.
+Whoever's got the paper can't do nothin' without Baby Jean.
+
+"The chink he done it.  It was crazy--loco, you'll say.  But what c'n
+you expect from a man who's suffered as he did?  Lissen, pardner--the
+chink he done it.  The paper tells about it.  The chink he doped the
+kid--with opium, some way, I guess--so's it wouldn't hurt her, and then
+he tattooed the rest o' the directions for findin' the gold on the head
+o' Baby Jean.  Cut off some hair in back, and shaved a spot on her
+little head, and tattooed it there.  The chink he did.  And then the
+hair grew out ag'in, and nobody ever knew!
+
+"Even Baby Jean don't know--a woman grown up now.  And years and years
+I've hunted for her, but couldn't find her.  Cause I couldn't stick, I
+guess.  Somethin' always kep' callin' me back into the hills, and I'd
+forgot.  Just me and the little fellas, we understand.  And we're
+driftin' about ag'in huntin' for Baby Jean.
+
+"I had a funny dream.  I dreamed I'd found her--a young woman grown.
+And in that dream she told me she was Baby Jean, and I told her all
+about the paper and the tattoo marks.  And then it looked like I
+drifted into deeper sleep and I woke up in camp way out in nowhere.
+I'd forgot again, you see, and drifted for the hills just when I'd
+found Baby Jean.  Or so I dreamed.  But sometimes I think I wasn't
+dreamin', pardner.  It wasn't just like other dreams I've had.  I got
+it that I was in a place called Ragtown, and I know they's such a
+place, cause everybody tells me so.  And I was sick after the dream.
+Funny!  I'm drifting that a way now.  I want to see that Ragtown.  Was
+it a dream?  Or was the yuccas laughin' at ole Filer ag'in?  I dunno.
+But how come it I dreamed about a place called Ragtown, a place that
+really is but that I never seen?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+LUCY PLANS A COUNTER-ATTACK
+
+One who has never lived in a frontier camp such as Ragtown may find it
+difficult to analyze the characters of Lucy Dalles and Albert Drummond.
+
+Less than a year before Ragtown had sprung up overnight, both had been
+ordinarily respectable American citizens.  Lucy's crowning fault had
+been the lust for wealth.  Added to this now was the fierce
+determination to realize her ambition, coupled with the complete
+breakdown of the moral fabric of her soul.  She had been flirtatious
+and pleasure-loving in San Francisco, but perhaps not really bad at
+heart.
+
+Drummond had been as decent as millions of other young men who pass for
+that in good society.  A bit wild, but a man who dealt squarely with
+others sportsmanlike, and perhaps considered perfectly honest by
+himself and all who knew him.
+
+But all this the frontier town had changed.  That little semidormant
+spark of wickedness and criminality which is perhaps in every mother's
+son and daughter of us had been fanned to a flame by the lawlessness of
+Ragtown.  The feverish night life, the chink of gold on gambling tables
+that were seldom unoccupied, the continual drinking of intoxicants, the
+doping and robbing of stiffs, which was practiced with studied,
+businesslike regularity, the brawls and shooting scrapes--all these had
+worked their insidious spell upon mentalities not forfeited by careful
+early training and bed-rock character.
+
+Drummond and Lucy Dalles were dangerous conspirators now, and took a
+certain pride in the knowledge of it.  They not only schemed for great
+rewards, but for the love of it.  Lust for wealth and for revenge, the
+thrill of the dangerous and underhanded game they played, contempt for
+those whose moral fabric was too strongly woven to break under the
+strain of Ragtown, a certain vague satisfaction in their newly
+discovered rascality--all these spurred them on to make the most of
+their opportunities.  One step in the direction they had taken leads so
+easily to another, that now they had reached a point in their moral
+lapse where they would stop at nothing--not even the taking of life--to
+win that on which they had set their hearts.
+
+From a night spent at poker, Al Drummond, weary and half dead for
+sleep, reeled from the Dugout early on the morning when Hiram Hooker
+set out to find the crazy prospector, Basil Filer.  As he slouched
+along the street in the cold he heard the jingling of bells and the
+rumbling of heavy wagons; and presently the freight outfit of Jerkline
+Jo rolled past, the girl and her skinners, bundled to the ears and
+slapping their hands against their ribs for warmth.
+
+Drummond gave them a contemptuous glance for their honest and difficult
+endeavor, then took note that his old enemy, the man from Wild-cat
+Hill, was missing.  He wondered about this, but gave it little thought
+until it dawned upon him that Jo's beautiful black saddle mare, which
+usually followed behind the wagon train with doglike loyalty, was
+absent too.  He stopped short then and found that he was thinking of
+the old prospector, whom he had seen for the second time the day before.
+
+He was worried.  Could it be possible that Jo and Hiram had got wind of
+the mystery?  For all he knew, they might have met the old man
+somewhere on the desert and learned his secret.  It was such a usual
+thing to see Hiram behind his ten black freighters on every trip in or
+out that the conspirator could not down suspicion.
+
+All that day he worried over it, but did not mention it to Lucy.
+Coming from another night of poker the following morning, having seen
+nothing of Hiram Hooker in the meantime, he decided to look into the
+matter as best he could.
+
+He would get his car and drive up the line a way, toward the camp where
+he had seen Filer two days before.  He could readily learn at
+intervening camps whether or not Hiram had ridden that way on Jo's
+black mare.
+
+He had no appetite for breakfast, so he got out his touring car and
+drove away toward the north while Ragtown slept.
+
+Men were at work in the third camp that he reached, and here a little
+inquiry brought forth the information that Hooker had gone the way
+Drummond had feared.  Now he drove fast along the road that followed
+the right of way, passing rapidly through camp after camp, until he was
+far from Ragtown.
+
+It was not yet eight o'clock when, far ahead, he saw a black horse
+galloping toward him.  He had just run the car out upon the smooth,
+dark surface of one of the desert's famous dry lakes, where almost
+nothing grew.  The ground was level and hard as a dance floor, so he
+turned from the road and drove at right angles to it across the crusted
+soil.  He drove fast, and by the time the rider reached the point in
+the road where Drummond first had seen him Drummond was so far away
+that Hiram could not recognize him or his car.
+
+Drummond circled now and regained the road, continuing on into the
+north in search of what he dreaded to discover.  But not many miles had
+been covered before he was gritting his teeth and swearing over the
+knowledge of his scheme's defeat.  He saw rolling toward him, swinging
+their packs from side to side as gently as a mother rocks a cradle, six
+shaggy, long-eared "desert canaries" with an old desert-colored man
+behind them who limped along with the aid of a cane.
+
+Drummond drove no farther in that direction.  There was no need for it.
+The sight of the old man drifting toward Ragtown and Hiram galloping on
+ahead of him showed him plainly that the cat was out of the bag, that
+the two had held a conference on the desert during the night just past.
+
+Bitter with rage, Drummond turned about and drove fiercely back in
+Hiram's wake.  He slowed down when he began to draw near to the horse
+and rider, and for an hour kept his distance while he waited for Hiram
+to reach another dry lake that was nearer to Ragtown than the first.
+
+When the rider ahead had reached it and was galloping across if,
+Drummond speeded up, reached the lake in turn, and at last was able to
+make a wide half circle over land where no greasewood grew to impede
+the course of the car.
+
+The lake was a large one, and by driving at close to sixty miles an
+hour and skirting its edge, he reached the road again a mile ahead of
+Hiram, and sped on toward home to break the news of defeat to Lucy
+Dalles.
+
+At ten o'clock he reached Ragtown, having driven recklessly.
+
+"Somebody's spilled the beans!" was his stormy beginning.  "We're
+gypped.  Got any jackass?  Gi'me the bottle.  I'm a wreck!"
+
+He dropped wearily into a chair and told of what he had discovered.
+
+"How on earth did they get wind of it?" she asked.
+
+Drummond threw out his hands in a gesture proclaiming ignorance and
+despair.
+
+"There's one thing sure," she said thoughtfully.  "He saw the paper
+only yesterday or last night for the first time.  Else why did he ride
+way up there to see Filer?  Jerkline Jo, then, has not yet seen it.
+They've heard about it, though, and Hooker was sent out to hunt for
+Filer.  So the first thing the big rube will do when he reaches Ragtown
+will be to travel over toward Julia to overtake Jo and report.  He'll
+get another horse, maybe, or hire a machine.  Tweet would be in on it,
+no doubt, and would take him in his car.  So what we've got to do, my
+dear boy, is to see that Hooker doesn't get to Jo with what he's
+learned."
+
+"What can we do?  He probably made a copy of what's written on Filer's
+paper, so, even if we were to hold him up and get it away from him, old
+Filer still would have the dope."
+
+"Of course.  That means that we've got to fix that old dub, too."
+
+"What d'ye mean fix him?"
+
+The girl shrugged.  "Stop the leak some way," she replied.  "If we can
+destroy Filer's paper and the copy Hooker's got, then we'll be the only
+ones who know the dope.  We'll have the only copy in existence, in
+other words; and even if we fail to get at Jerkline Jo and learn the
+rest of it, we can hold her to our terms.  She won't be able to do a
+thing without knowing what her father wrote on the paper that Filer
+has."
+
+"Lucy, it's a crazy business," said Drummond.  "Sometimes I think it's
+all a pipedream of that nutty old prospector.  They're all
+bughouse--these old desert rats."
+
+"It's not a pipedream," Lucy stoutly maintained.  "I tell you I saw the
+blue tattoo marks on that woman's scalp when I was beautifying her up
+for the ball that night.  I wondered what they were.  Of course, with
+her heavy hair covering them--growing right out of them, in fact--I
+couldn't make out anything but blue dots."
+
+"And you didn't ask her about 'em?"
+
+"Why, of course not, Al!  Do you suppose a hair dresser would last very
+long in the business if she showed curiosity about a thing like that?
+You don't know much about women.  If I'd found a knob on her nut as big
+as a baseball she'd never have been told that I'd seen it."
+
+"But how in thunder has she reached her present age without knowing
+it's there?"
+
+"She inadvertantly explained that; and so, when later in the day, old
+Filer spilled what he knew I was sure Jo had never dreamed of what she
+is carrying about under her hair.
+
+"You see, she was raised like an Indian.  She told me that, even when
+she was a little kid, she'd always been made to wash her own hair.  She
+naively confided to me that when she came into my place it was her
+first time in any sort of a beauty parlor.  A woman can't very well see
+the back of her head, can she?  And she'd never be able to see the
+tattoo marks, even with two mirrors, with all that beautiful hair she's
+got.  Do you know what your scalp looks like, at the back of your head,
+just above your ears?  I guess not!  You bet it's straight!  And here
+you sit arguing about a trifle, when a rich gold claim is slipping from
+our fingers.  Can't you--put your brain to work?"
+
+"Well, what's to be done?"
+
+"If that big boog starts to overtake Jerkline Jo, he's got to be
+stopped, and the copy taken away from him.  While this is going on,
+Filer must be held up and the original taken from him and destroyed.
+
+"Then when we get the copy away from Hooker and destroy Filer's
+original, we can throw our cards on the table and laugh at 'em.  Come
+right out and say, 'Yes, we schemed to beat you, and we've done it.
+What're you going to do about it?  You've got the tattooed part, we've
+got the only copy of the other part.  Make us an offer!  Otherwise,
+throw us in jail, if you think you've got it on us; but before we go
+the paper will go up in smoke!'  That'll hold 'em; and we'll demand
+that we are not to be prosecuted, and we'll shake down half of the haul.
+
+"But listen, Al--we'll do that only if they beat us out up to a point
+where negotiations become necessary.  If only we can destroy the
+original and Hooker's copy, we can hold Hooker a prisoner till we get
+at Jerkline Jo and find out what's on her head.  Then we can hog it all
+and beat it."
+
+"Well--well, how'll we begin?  You got me beat, Lucy.  You're a better
+schemer than I am.  What's to be done first?"
+
+"Beat it in your car to the mountains and get Tehachapi and the other
+roughnecks.  Send Tehachapi Hank up the line to waylay Filer between
+camps somewhere, with instructions to get the original from him by hook
+or crook.  Leave it to Hank.
+
+"Meantime, Hooker gets in here and starts after Jerkline Jo.  It's
+doubtful if the thickhead will think to memorize what's on his copy, as
+I have done.  Even if he does think to, he won't have time to do it
+before you nab him.  He's dense--he wouldn't learn it in a week, I'll
+say!"
+
+"You and Hank's friend will waylay him, then, and get his copy, destroy
+it, and take Hooker into the mountains as a prisoner, with Hank's
+friend to guard him.  Then it will be up to you and me to get Jerkline
+Jo as she's coming back through the mountains.  Yes, I'll go along!  It
+seems the rest of you can do nothing.  Leave that Jane to me!  I'll get
+her by a method unknown to you men!
+
+"We'll dope her, cut off her hair, shave her scalp, and get the part of
+the directions for finding the gold that we lack.  Then, Al, why can't
+you and I get the stuff, beat it, and give Hank and the other jasper
+the ha-ha?"
+
+"Lucy, you're getting to be a regular little devil!"
+
+Lucy shrugged and seemed rather pleased than otherwise.
+
+"And your ideas about that gold are of the vaguest," he continued.
+"You seem to think it's lying about in chunks, begging to be picked up
+and heaped in bushel baskets!  All we can do, perhaps, is make claim
+filings, and get to Los Angeles and record them.  Then, to realize
+anything, we've got to take mining engineers out there to make tests.
+Then the companies they represent will make us an offer--and probably
+skin us alive.  In the meantime we'll be having all kinds of trouble
+with Jerkline Jo and her bunch of roustabouts."
+
+"Well, then, we'll settle all that later," Lucy retorted.  "Your first
+move is to go for Hank and get a toehold, as Tweet says.  Don't borrow
+trouble!  It's time to figure out our future steps when we know we hold
+all the trumps.  And the sooner you start the better.  Thank Heaven
+you've not gambled away your last automobile, Al!  Their horses beat
+you before, but your last little old boat will win out now.  Get after
+'em, boy!  It's a great game if you don't weaken!"
+
+Five minutes later Drummond was driving rapidly toward the mouth of the
+mountain pass.  By three o'clock he was back and following the line of
+camps again, with Tehachapi Hank huddled on the floor of the tonneau
+and covered with robes.  Drummond had the good fortune to pass through
+Demarest, Spruce & Tillou's Camp Number Two when Hiram had stopped
+there for a late "hand-out," furnished by the obliging cooks.  Drummond
+saw the black mare standing near the cook tent door, and hurried on
+through, elated over the knowledge that Hiram had not seen him.  He at
+last dumped his passenger on the desert between camps, having estimated
+that the slow-moving burro train could not be many miles ahead.
+
+Promising to return for Hank as soon as possible, Drummond raced back
+toward Ragtown, passed Hiram again--at close quarters this time--and
+reached the tent village ahead of him early in the evening.
+
+Now he and Lucy settled down to wait for Hiram's coming and to watch
+his future movements.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+POCKETED
+
+Hiram Hooker, knowing well the story of Jerkline Jo's having been found
+as a baby girl in a deserted camp on the desert, had easily been able
+to convince old Basil Filer that she was the young woman he had been
+searching for so long.
+
+They had spent half the night in planning in their desert camp.
+Hiram's frank, open nature tended to breed confidence in the most
+pessimistic of men; and when he told Filer of the wonderful character
+of Jerkline Jo and assured him that, despite his past rascality, he
+would be handsomely rewarded by her, the helpless old man agreed to all
+that he proposed.
+
+Knowing that the prospector would not reach Ragtown for a long time
+with his sauntering burros, Hiram was for making a copy of what the
+precious paper contained and hurrying on ahead, to overtake Jo as soon
+as possible, and suggest that she make arrangements for a strip to the
+lost claims before starting back from Julia.  To this the desert rat
+agreed; but when they were ready for Hiram to make a copy it was
+discovered that neither man had a scrap of paper, or even a pencil.
+
+There was nothing to be done then, if the original plan was to be
+carried out, but for Basil Filer to surrender into Hiram's keeping the
+document.  This, with many misgivings, Filer consented to do.
+
+So they broke camp early next morning, and Hiram hurried on ahead with
+the original in his pocket.  The old man was to traipse along after
+him, and in all probability would reach Ragtown before Hiram had
+overtaken Jo.
+
+Al Drummond passed Hiram in his car as he was nearing his journey's end
+late that afternoon; but of course Hiram thought nothing of this, as
+Drummond and his car made a familiar sight about the country.  Hiram
+had decided to ask Tweet to carry him in his machine until Jerkline Jo
+had been overtaken, which would probably occur between the foot of the
+mountains and Artesian Ranch on the other side.  Then Tweet would
+return, and Hiram would ride on with the outfit and reveal to the girl
+what he had heard of the strange thing she had worn concealed under her
+lustrous hair since she was two years old.
+
+Hiram knew about how Drummond and Lucy had stumbled onto the truth,
+which Jerkline Jo herself had not even dreamed of.
+
+What the old prospector had told him of his "dream" convinced Hiram
+that Lucy had got wind of the secret and had cleverly posed as the lost
+child grown up, and had been able to draw Filer's story out of him.  He
+had said that in his dream he had been shown something on the girl's
+scalp, under her hair, that looked like tattooing.  Hiram reasoned that
+Drummond could have dotted Lucy's scalp with a pen and ink sufficient
+to convince the old desert rat that she was the girl he was seeking.
+Then he had told his story, but had been in some way rendered
+unconscious and disposed of before he could demand the clipping of
+Lucy's hair and the shaving of her scalp.  No doubt, while he was
+unconscious, Drummond and Lucy had made a copy of what was on the paper.
+
+To Hiram's great disappointment he found on reaching Ragtown late that
+afternoon that Twitter-or-Tweet had driven to Los Angeles on business.
+He hunted about for another machine, but there seemed to be none in
+town that he could hire.  There was Drummond's, of course, but to deal
+with him was out of the question.
+
+"Hello, Hiram boy!" Lucy called sweetly as he walked past the shooting
+gallery.  "You look worried.  Whassa malla?  Jo fired you?"
+
+"Not yet," said Hiram briefly.  "I was looking for a machine so that I
+could catch up with the outfit, but can't seem to locate one."
+
+"Not many about town this time of year," she commented.  "Did you get
+so cuckooed Jo had to leave you behind to sober up, Wild Cat?  And now
+you've got to chase her, eh?  'Fraid Heine or some of 'em'll get her
+away from you if you don't stick around--that it?"
+
+To this Hiram smiled with cold politeness, but, made no reply, passing
+on down the street.
+
+He would be forced to wait until morning.  Then, provided Tweet had not
+returned, he would have to ride Babe over the mountains and reach
+Jerkline Jo at least before she had started back.  After all, there was
+no great hurry.  The gold had lain where it did for countless
+centuries.  It would continue to lie so for a few days more, perhaps.
+
+Tweet did not return that night, and at dawn Hiram was away toward the
+mountains on the black mare, the precious paper secreted in his shirt.
+He was ten miles from Ragtown before it occurred to him what a fool he
+had been in not making a copy of it.  Any one of a hundred things might
+happen to it.  Still, the crazy prospector had carried it through all
+the years and had lost it.
+
+He wondered if it would not be a practical idea to commit it to memory.
+Why, certainly--that was the thing to do.
+
+He was nearing such foothills as the abrupt mountain range boasted when
+he decided not only to memorize it, but to make a copy on an envelope
+which was in his pocket.  It had covered a letter from Uncle Sebastian
+Burris, Hiram's benefactor, up there in Mendocino County.  He had found
+it awaiting him the night before at Ragtown.  He and Uncle Sebastian
+had kept up a correspondence ever since Hiram had come south.
+
+Although he had no pencil, it occurred to him that he could write with
+the lead bullet of one of his revolver cartridges, which simple feat he
+had often performed in idle moments in the woods up home.
+
+Dismounting, he lowered the bridle rein over Babe's head, and sat down
+on the ground.  He took out Uncle Sebastian's letter, and with his
+pocket-knife slit the envelope till it provided him with a square of
+paper.  He laid the worn original--a yellow piece of tough sheepskin
+paper--on a flat rock beside him.  He took a cartridge from his belt
+and began to copy the reddish writing.
+
+He had just completed the task when there came a sudden terrific roar
+in his ears, and before he knew what was happening a desert twister had
+swept down upon him in all its fury.
+
+It passed swiftly, and through half-blinded eyes Hiram saw that the
+original had been whisked from the rock on which it had lain as if by
+magic.
+
+Fortunately he had held to his copy instinctively; but he had not
+compared it with the original.  He might have made some small but vital
+mistake.  Away over the desert twisted the miniature cyclone, and he
+knew that, spinning around with it, was the sheepskin.  Rather
+foolishly in his excitement he grabbed his six-shooter from its holster
+and slapped it down upon his copy to protect it from another such
+catastrophe, and, still half-blinded, vaulted to the saddle and set the
+mare at a dead run in the wake of the whirlwind.
+
+Then it was that Al Drummond, who had been slowly creeping through the
+greasewood bushes toward Hiram, arose with a yelp of triumph and ran to
+the weighted-down copy of the precious directions.
+
+Out there in the whirlwind the original was fleeing rapidly away from
+the frantic rider, with the chances many to one that it would not be
+recovered.  Here in Drummond's hand was the only copy in existence,
+except the one already in his and Lucy's possession.  It was plain that
+Hiram had not previously made another copy, else why would he have
+stopped here on the desert to draft this one?  Also, by the same token,
+it was plain that Hiram had not memorized the contents.  Basil Filer
+might have done so, it was true; but, then, Tehachapi Hank would attend
+to Basil Filer.
+
+Quickly Drummond stooped and touched the blaze of a match to the
+envelope, and in a few minutes only a crinkled bit of black, charred
+paper lay on the ground.
+
+"Pete!" he called, and from the greasewood another man arose and
+hurried toward him.
+
+"Look!" Drummond cried exultantly, pointing to the burned paper.
+"There's what's left of the copy he was making.  And here's his gun--he
+used it to weigh down the copy when he raced away after the whirlwind.
+Run for the horses.  We'll get after him and get the original away from
+him, if he gets it.  Then, if Hank gets Filer--which he certainly
+will--we'll have the only copies in existence!"
+
+Pete, the bosom friend of Tehachapi Hank, turned about and ran up
+toward the fringe of junipers that concealed their horses, brought down
+the day before from the mountains.  Drummond, while he waited, gazed
+after the strange chase, and noted that the fleet black mare was
+steadily overtaking the moving funnel of dust which represented the
+whirlwind.
+
+"By golly, if he can ride into the thing and break it, or keep up with
+it till it breaks itself, he'll get the sheepskin!" Drummond muttered.
+"But he won't keep it.  He's left his gun.  He's our meat now!"
+
+Then Pete rode up rapidly, leading Drummond's mount, and next moment
+they were on the dead run in pursuit of Hiram.
+
+Time and again, as they drew nearer, they saw Hiram deliberately riding
+the mare through the whirlwind, trying to break it.  The thing seemed a
+devil, alive and diabolically bent on eluding him.  It changed course
+from right to left, but the cow pony was as quick as it was; and it
+seemed to the racing spectators that she enjoyed the game.  Hiram was
+so intent on his task, so frequently blinded by the whirlwind, while
+his ears were filled with its roar, that to ride almost upon him
+without his knowledge of it was an easy task for Pete and Drummond.
+
+They were very close to him, then, when at last the mare's lunges broke
+the whirlwind, and a scattered cloud of dust hid horse and rider.
+Whether or not Hiram had rescued the paper they could not tell, but
+they spurred their horses on.
+
+The dust settled, and close at hand they saw Hiram, dismounted.  At the
+same instant he seemed to hear the thunder of hoofs, and glanced their
+way.  He took a couple of steps and grasped his mare's bridle, and was
+standing unconcernedly at her head When they raced up, both training
+sixshooters on him.
+
+"Stick 'em up, Hooker!" ordered Drummond.  "This means business at
+last."
+
+Totally unarmed, Hiram grinned and slowly elevated his hands.
+
+Watching him closely, Drummond and Pete dismounted, and, still keeping
+their sixes trained on Hiram's stomach, approached him.
+
+"Well, Hooker," Drummond said sneeringly, "we meet again, don't we?
+You see, we've showed our hand at last--and it's a pretty good one,
+too.  You're onto us, anyway, I guess, so from now on we'll fight in
+the open.  Did you get the sheepskin?"
+
+Hiram reverted to his provincial drawl, as was his habit in moments of
+great stress.
+
+"No, she got plumb away from me," he said.  "She got outa the whirlwind
+back there somewheres, or else she's gone on with what's left o' the
+twister."
+
+"I was afraid you wasn't going to say that, Hooker," Drummond said.
+"Well, let me show you something.  Do you recognize this gat?"
+
+Hiram looked uneasily at a third big six-shooter, which Drummond had
+produced as he spoke.
+
+"I reckon she was mine a while back," he said with a gulp.
+
+"Exactly.  And what you left it to hold down, Hooker, has gone up in
+smoke."
+
+"You got----  You burned----"
+
+"Got and burned is right, Hooker.  But I don't just like your tone.  If
+you were on the stage, Brother Hiram, I think you'd get the hook.
+'Hook Hooker!' the audience might yell.  Don't you think I'm funny at
+times, Gentle Wild Cat?  It's just my pleasant little way of informing
+you that I consider you a poor actor.  'You got--you burned' was pretty
+fair, Hi-ram, but not quite good enough.  So we're going to search you
+and make sure you didn't get the sheepskin out of the whirlwind."
+
+"I didn't get it," Hiram said sulkily.  "She's gone forever."
+
+"She is in any event, Hooker.  But we have a copy at Ragtown--don't
+forget that.  Now let go these reins and step over here.  And be mighty
+careful, Hi-ram--mighty careful.  My friend here is a nervous man with
+a six-gun."
+
+Obediently Hiram dropped the mare's reins and stepped away from her
+head.  Drummond laid the two revolvers at some distance away from them
+on the ground, so that, while he was searching Hiram, the latter would
+have no opportunity to grab one from him and turn the tables.
+
+"Keep 'em up," he ordered; and, while Pete trained his gun on Hiram,
+Drummond searched his prisoner from head to foot.
+
+"Guess you told the truth," he said.  "Still, a fellow never can tell.
+You're a pretty foxy guy at times.  Strip, Hooker.
+
+"I guess you did tell the truth," Drummond said a few minutes later
+after a thorough search had been made.  "Still I'm not through yet.
+You saw us coming and had time to hide it, if you found it."
+
+He stepped to the mare and went over her saddle, even turning the cheek
+straps of the bridle inside out, and pawing through her heavy mane and
+tail.  He looked and felt in her ears.  He held her nostrils with his
+fingers until she jerked up her head and snorted out a blast of held-in
+air.
+
+"Guess that would have shot out any paper in her nostrils," he remarked.
+
+"They say this Jo's a hoss trainer," suggested Pete.  "Maybe the mare's
+a trick hoss.  Look in her mouth Drummond."
+
+Drummond did this, but found it empty.  He studied a minute, his eyes
+closed thoughtfully, then threw off the saddle and examined the
+sheepskin lining, _tapaderos_, jockeys, skirts.
+
+Now for fifteen minutes he walked about over the ground.  It was hard
+and firm here--almost as smooth as the surface of a dry lake, with no
+loose sand in which the paper might be concealed and little desert
+growth.
+
+Returning he lifted the mare's feet one by one, then faced Hiram again.
+
+"Open your mouth," he commanded; and Hiram obeyed, displaying an empty
+cavity.
+
+"Well, ole hoss, I guess the game's up for you folks," Drummond said
+chuckling.  "I never thought we'd be lucky enough to get rid of the
+original.  So now we'll leave you to put on your clothes and go your
+way.  You may see Jerkline Jo and tell her your little story; and you
+two can discuss what's best to do.  When you've decided, come to me and
+we'll dicker with you."
+
+"How 'bout takin' 'im into the mountains?" asked Pete in a low voice.
+
+"No, that won't be necessary now.  We need him to put the case before
+Jerkline Jo.  I'm against violence, anyway, in the main.  And I'm not a
+hog, like a certain person I might mention if it weren't for Hooker's
+overhearing it.  We'll let him go, and dicker later.  Half suits me."
+
+Drummond climbed into the saddle, and the two wheeled their horses and
+rode away.
+
+Hiram began to dress.
+
+"Look, Hooker!" called Drummond from a distance.  "I'll drop your gun
+right here."
+
+Hiram nodded and continued putting on his clothes, then resaddled the
+mare.
+
+Then when the departing riders were mere specks in the distance he
+stepped to Babe's head, reached his fingers up one of her nostrils, and
+pulled out the wadded sheepskin document.
+
+"A heap o' fellas call themselves hossmen that don't know about that
+little pocket in a hoss' nose," came his whimsical Mendocino drawl.
+"She could snort all day, but the pocket ain't connected with her
+nostrils."  He patted Babe's glossy neck.  "Li'l' black mare," he
+crooned into her furry ear, "le's go find Jo!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+WHILE SPRING APPROACHED
+
+At a late hour in the evening of the day that Hiram Hooker set out to
+ride with the sheepskin to Jerkline Jo, on her way to Julia, a strange
+figure presented itself at the door of the lighted commissary tent of
+Demarest, Spruce & Tillou's Camp Number Two.
+
+"Well, who in thunder are you?" exclaimed the young commissary clerk,
+as his eyes fell upon a set of shaggy gray brows and a dusty,
+bewhiskered face.
+
+"I'm Basil Filer--ole Filer," was the croaking reply.  "I jest stopped
+in to see if ye got a' automobile, or a hoss an' buggy, or somethin'
+here."
+
+"Well, what if we have?"
+
+"Thought maybe ye'd give Tehachapi Hank a ride," came the answer.
+"He's too heavy for Muta--that's my biggest burro.  His feet drags and
+ketches in the greasewood, and Muta she gets provoked at him.  He won't
+bother you none--Hank won't.  He's peaceable.  But he oughta be got to
+a constable or somethin'.  You see, Hank he's dead."
+
+This brought the clerk out into the night; and there in the light
+streaming from the tent door lay the figure of a man crosswise and face
+down on a burro's back.
+
+"Ye see, I know Hank some time," explained Basil Filer simply.  "And
+jest last night a friend o' mine he camped with me, and said Hank was
+up to his old devilment ag'in.  So I was camped on the desert out there
+this evenin', and Hank he drifts in.  And--well, I'm watchin', you see;
+and so when Hank he sidles round and I see somethin' heavylike in his
+hand, why, I ups and goes for my cannon.  Then Hank he goes for his,
+and I have to let him have it from the hip.  Got any ca'tridges,
+pardner?  Hank he wasted the last one I had."
+
+"You--you killed this man?" faltered the clerk.
+
+"I hadn't only one ca'tridge, pardner," Filer said patiently.  "And
+Hank he's accounted a pretty clever gunman.  Well, maybe he was.  Ole
+Filer he shoots ole jack rabbits in the eye at twenty paces with a six,
+they'll tell ye.  Anyway ye can figger that out, here's Hank.  And he
+oughta see a coroner er somethin'.  I don't want 'im.  Besides, time
+Muta'd packed him to Ragtown, Hank he'd spoil.  Muta she never did like
+Tehachapi Hank, nohow."
+
+The following day the mortal remains of Tehachapi Hank were brought
+into Ragtown, together with his self-confessed killer Basil Filer.  The
+constable--for Ragtown had one now--took Filer in charge and hurried
+him to the county seat in Twitter-or-Tweet's machine.  The burros had
+been loosed to pick their living on the desert.
+
+"So that failed beautifully!" exclaimed Al Drummond to Lucy Dalles.
+"Who'd have thought that old rabbit would be too quick for Hank!  He
+must have been on his guard."
+
+Lucy shrugged indifferently.  "Filer was a master shot," she observed.
+"Failed beautifully is right, Al--beautifully for us.  It couldn't have
+happened better.  Now Brother Hank is out of it.  If you can contrive
+some way to shake Hank's partner, Pete, there'll be no one but you and
+me to whack up.
+
+"Since Hank is numbered among the late lamented," she continued, "I can
+forgive you for bungling the Hooker end of your job.  With Hank's
+finger out of the pot, I'm content to split with Jerkline Jo.  So, no
+thanks to you, everything has worked out all right after all.  Can't
+you send Pete out with instructions to bite a rattlesnake, or something
+like that?"
+
+"You're mighty good-natured to-day, kid," Al said.
+
+"Why shouldn't I be?  Since we know the original document and that
+boob's copy are both destroyed--and that before he had time to commit
+the directions to memory.  We have nothing whatever to do but wait for
+Jerkline Jo to come to us and ask us what our terms are.  Then if you
+and I aren't foxy enough to squeeze out the amiable Mr. Pete----  Well,
+leave it to me!"
+
+"But have you thought," Drummond pointed out, "that perhaps Filer has
+committed the instructions to memory?"
+
+Lucy scoffed at this and dismissed it with: "That old lunatic?  Never!
+He can hardly remember the story, and now and then forgets that he's
+hunting for Baby Jean and hikes back for the desert.  Don't worry about
+his having committed anything to memory.  He has no memory to commit it
+to!"
+
+At about the time the foregoing dialogue was being spoken in Ragtown,
+Jerkline Jo, in her tent at Julia, was making strange remarks to Hiram
+Hooker, to wit, as follows:
+
+"Hi-_ram_!  It ti-i-i-ickles!  Sto-op-op!  Wait a minute, Hiram!"
+
+"Huh!" snorted the unfeeling man.  "Whoever heard of anybody being
+ticklish on the head!"
+
+"But I am, Hiram!  I just know I am!  And isn't that razor far too
+sharp?"
+
+"'There ain't no such thing,'" quoted the man out of the store of his
+masculine experience.  "Now quit wiggling, Jo, or I'm liable to cut
+you."
+
+"Now go slow, Hiram.  And if I say it feels funny, you stop.  Now easy
+at first!  Horrors!  I wouldn't be a man for anything!"
+
+"Don't blame me," mumbled Hiram.  "Now quit wrinkling your scalp, Jo.
+Fella'd think I was going to cut your head off, the way you dodge and
+shrink."
+
+They were alone in the tent.  Jo was on her knees on the ground, and
+behind her and over her stood Hiram with an old-fashioned razor in his
+hand.  Beside them on a chair lay a strand of almost black hair three
+feet in length, which Hiram swore that he would preserve until his
+dying breath.  On the back of Jo's head appeared a round spot, covered
+with hairs half an inch in length, and these the brutal man was trying
+to shave off with the razor.  Never had barber a more provoking
+customer.
+
+"Oh, I'll look like a fright, Hiram!  I've always been proud of my
+hair."
+
+"It'll grow out again," he said soothingly.  "Besides, what I cut off
+didn't cover a spot an inch and a half in diameter.  With hair like
+yours, it can't be noticed.  If I'd thought it would disfigure your
+hair, girl, I'd have said, 'Let the old gold go!'  What an idea!"
+
+"I positively never heard of such a weird thing.  And to think it's on
+me!  And----  Oo-oo-oo-oo!  You cut me, Hiram!  It's bleeding!"
+
+"No, no, no!  Only more lather.  Don't wiggle, Jo!"
+
+"There!  It's all over," Hiram said after a minute of silence.
+
+
+Four days later Lucy Dalles and Al Drummond stood behind the counter of
+the shooting gallery at Ragtown, and with a certain amount of nervous
+expectancy watched the freight outfit of Jerkline Jo grow larger and
+larger as it neared the journey's end.
+
+Soon they heard the merry jingling of hundreds of bells, and next the
+big horses were planting their heavy fetlocked feet in the street,
+their glossy necks arched proudly as Ragtown turned out to greet them.
+
+Lucy stood on tiptoe and craned her neck along the line of heavily
+loaded wagons.  "Don't see Jo's whites at the tail end," she remarked.
+
+And presently her companion supplemented: "Nor Hooker's blacks.  Say,
+that's funny.  There's only four teams, Hooker and the girl didn't
+come!"
+
+"Oh, dear, dear!  What can that mean?   Al, Hooker must have memorized
+the directions!  And----"
+
+"Nonsense!" he exclaimed.  "If he'd memorized them, why did he sit down
+on the desert to copy em?"
+
+"Oh, that's right, of course!  But I'm worried, Al.  Something must be
+wrong."
+
+Just then two men passed along the street, and a fragment of their
+conversation floated to the anxious pair: "Says Jo's sick at Julia-----"
+
+"Oh that's it!" Lucy murmured in relief.  "And the hick stayed to nurse
+her.  There's not so much freight to be hauled right now.  See,
+Al--Heine and Keddie each are driving sixteen, with trailers.  The
+extra horses are white and black--Jo's and Hiram's.  I wonder what's
+the matter with Jo."
+
+"Huh!" snickered Drummond.  "The package we handed her is enough to
+make anybody sick!  But I don't just like the way things look, either.
+By golly, aren't we to know where we stand until Jo gets well!"
+
+Three of the wagons and trailers groaned on through the town toward
+Demarest, Spruce & Tillou's Camp Number One, while the fourth--Heine
+Schultz driving--entered the alley to reach the rear of Huber's store.
+Twenty minutes later Schultz suddenly presented himself at the shooting
+gallery.
+
+"Howdy," he greeted Al and Lucy, touching the broad brim of his hat
+with a forefinger.  "Jo's sick.  I guess you've heard."
+
+"Yes, so some one said," Lucy smiled amiably at the dusty skinner.
+"Isn't it too bad!  What seems to be wrong, Heine?"
+
+"Bad cold--settled in her lungs," replied Heine briefly.  "Er--now--Jo
+told me to ask you somethin', miss.  Either you or Drummond, she said.
+I don't know what it's about.  She just said: 'Go see Drummond or Lucy
+when you get in and ask them their terms and let me know what they say
+when you get back to Julia.'"
+
+Drummond darted a quick, triumphant glance at the girl.
+
+"Oh, yes," she said lightly to the skinner, "I know what she refers to.
+Why, just tell her, 'Half,' Heine.  That's all you need to say; she'll
+understand."
+
+"Gotcha," said Heine, and lounged away, rolling a brown paper cigarette.
+
+The outfit started back again early next morning; and eight days later
+it returned, still minus its two important figures.  Again Heine
+Schultz rested his bony elbows on the carpeted counter of the shooting
+gallery, and spoke to Lucy, who this time was alone.
+
+"About that business between you folks and Jo," he said, indolently
+filling a cigarette paper.
+
+"Yes?" eagerly returned Lucy.
+
+"Jo says tell you, 'Half is too much.'"
+
+"Oh!  She--she's still ill?"
+
+Heine, shook his head sadly and tapped his chest.  "Can't hardly hear
+her talk," he said.  "It's fierce.  Wild Cat's scared stiff about it.
+Well, what'll I tell 'er, Miss Lucy?"
+
+"I'll have to see Al before giving you an answer," she told him.
+"Can't you drop around after supper, Heine?"
+
+"Sure.  I'm on the water wagon, though," he added blandly, with no
+suggestion of a deep meaning in his tones.
+
+An hour afterward Drummond met Heine on the street and handed him a
+sealed envelope.  "Give that to Jerkline Jo," he commanded shortly.
+
+"Gotcha!" drawled Heine, and slouched on up the street.
+
+"Confound it!" Drummond grumbled to Lucy little later.  "Why in thunder
+doesn't Tweet put a telephone line to civilization?   We're wasting
+time!"
+
+"Couldn't do anything, anyway, till Jo's on her feet again," the girl
+practically pointed out.  "Don't be overimpatient."
+
+Eight days later Heine Schultz faced them again.
+
+"Jo's still too sick to write," he announced.  "But she's gettin'
+better right along.  She told me to tell you that what you wrote was
+fierce, and that you was too greedy.  That's only what Jo said.  Don't
+take it out on me.  She said she'd be willin' to let you have a fourth,
+over an' above all expenses."
+
+"Well, she'll do nothing of the sort!" Lucy cut in hotly.
+
+"Come around later, Heine," put in Drummond.  "I'll have another note."
+
+"Gotcha!" replied Heine, and picked up a rifle to sight at a target
+before strolling nonchalantly on.
+
+Two miles out of town next morning Heine took out his pocketknife and
+slit the envelope covering the note that Drummond had given him to be
+delivered to Jerkline Jo.
+
+"M'm-m!" he mumbled, reading slowly, a great calloused forefinger
+following the lines.
+
+  You'll come to our terms immediately, or our copy
+  of the instructions goes into the fire.  We've reached
+  the end of our rope, and won't monkey any longer.
+  Take your choice, Miss Modock--or Miss Jean
+  Prince--half or nothing.  Yes, we're just ornery
+  enough to rob ourselves to spite you.
+
+
+Heine scratched his head and muttered: "Lord, be merciful unto me, a
+skinner!  Now what'll I say to that?  Guess I'll stretch this trip out
+to twelve days--we c'n have a breakdown or somethin'."
+
+It was indeed twelve days before the outfit was again seen in Ragtown;
+and then Mr. Schultz had this to say to Drummond and the girl:
+
+"Jo says she'll be about pretty soon now, and she'll come over with us
+next trip and see you herself.  Says for you not to do anything rash,
+or anything like that.  What'll I tell her?"
+
+"Tell her to hurry up!" Drummond said angrily.
+
+"Gotcha!" drawled Heine, and betook himself to camp.
+
+Ten days later Mr. Schultz had this to report:
+
+"Well, sir, Jo she just naturally had a terrible relapse.  Doctor's
+worried blue about 'er.  She can't talk, and she can't see to read.
+She just lays there and gasps somethin' fierce."
+
+"What on earth has she?" cried Lucy.
+
+Heine scratched his head.  "The doc said it was a kind o' complication
+or somethin'.  Dip'theria and appendiseetus, I think he said.  Yes,
+sir--that's it.  Dip'theria and appendiseetus."
+
+"Ridiculous!" scoffed Lucy.  "Did they operate?"
+
+"Operate!  I should say they did!  They whittled that woman down to
+such a frazzle and when the doc goes to see her in the mornin' he has
+to shake the sheets to find her!"
+
+"Heine, I believe you're a humorist," Lucy said doubtfully.
+
+Heine grinned.  "She's gettin' better now, though; and the doc says
+next trip she'll probably be over.  Then she c'n 'tend to her business
+with you herself.  I wish she would.  I get things all mixed up."
+
+Drummond and Lucy stared at each other when the skinner had left.
+
+"Gypped!" exclaimed Drummond.  "There's something phony about this!  By
+George, I'm--I'm scared there's something wrong!  Heine's been lying
+like a sailor.  I believe I'll drive over to Julia tomorrow and see
+what I can find out."
+
+
+"Sit down, Heine," invited Twitter-or-Tweet Orr Tweet, rising and
+lowering the window shade in his little pine office as the jerkline
+skinner entered.
+
+Heine accepted.
+
+"Well?" queried Tweet, with a look of worriment in his face.
+
+"Ain't heard a word from 'em, Playmate, since they come in and filed,
+and went back with a minin' engineer," said Heine.  "I'm gettin'
+worried myself.  You see, that's a bad country up in there where
+they've gone.  Many a man's gone in there and left his bones for the
+buzzards to pick."
+
+"But weren't they fixed for an ordeal, Heine?"
+
+"No one ever hit Death Valley better fixed," was the reply.  "Jo, she
+hires two big trucks and takes horses and pack burros and feed and grub
+and water till you couldn't rest.  They aimed to go as far as they
+could with the trucks, and then make a headquarters there, leave the
+drivers to look out for the camp, and her and Wild Cat was gonta make
+it on in with the horses and the canaries.  They had a scout that knows
+that country from the southern end o' the Panamints to Lost Valley.
+Oh, they went heeled; but it's a big job and takes time.  Still, they
+oughta be showin' up by now."
+
+Orr Tweet heaved a great sigh.  "Jo's simply forgotten all about me,"
+he said mournfully.  "Heine, I don't mind tellin' you--but if somethin'
+don't happen pretty soon one Tweet goes up Salt Creek.  Here it's only
+ten days till I gotta plunk down six thousan' iron men, plus a raft o'
+interest money.  And the mortgages o' this blame rancho are watchin' me
+like buzzards, ready to swoop down the minute I begin to gasp.  They
+got me where the hair's short, Heine.  I not only lose the rancho and
+all, but every cent Jo and me and Hiram's put into her.  I ain't
+sellin' an acre these days.  Won't till summer's here, and the
+blame'-fool homesteaders see that Paloma Rancho's worth ten times what
+the government land's worth.  The work on the grade is nearin'
+completion, and the steel's creepin' closer every day.  Every mornin',
+when it's still, you c'n hear the whistle o' the track-layin' engine.
+The camps are finishin' and movin' on, one by one.  That takes trade
+away from Ragtown, and concessionaires are quittin', too.  A month from
+now Ragtown will be only a memory, Heine.  Not that, as Tweet, she
+won't build up later and more substantially, when the steel's laid and
+trains are runnin'.  But to keep a stiff upper lip till then brings
+gray hairs!"
+
+"Don't you worry," Heine said consolingly.  "You just set tight and
+watch the spring blossoms come.  Jerkline Jo never failed man nor horse
+nor dog in her life, and she ain't forgot you for a second.  You bet
+your last dime on Jerkline Jo, ol'-timer--and Wild Cat, too, s'far's
+that goes.  They'll ramble home in time to save you.  I'll bet my bank
+roll on it!"
+
+"Only ten days more," Tweet sighed heavily.  "Oh, papa, what pretty
+fireworks you made!  Heine, are you still keepin' Drummond in hot
+water?"
+
+"Oh, yes," Heine assured him.  "They're doin' very well.  Guess
+Drummond'll be drivin' to see how Jo's gettin' along pretty soon.  I
+guess I queered things to-day.  Tried to get funny, and pretty near
+spilled the beans.  I'll say he'd better take along about five huskies
+to move boulders outa the road, if he tries to make it through the
+pass.  Them big boys just naturally roll down behind us the minute
+we've passed.  And comin' back, we hook on and snake 'em outa the way.
+And then, by golly, they spring right back again!  Funny rocks in this
+country, Tweet."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+THE WAY OF LIFE
+
+Sand, sand, sand--far as the eye can reach, a sea of sand, with here
+and there a half-buried and bleached horned skull, and vultures
+circling high above in the heavens.
+
+Away in the blinding distance five specks appear, and finally are seen
+to be slowly on the move.  Hours after this discovery, if an observer
+were to remain stationary, the specks take on the shapes of animal
+life--two men, a woman, and two burros bearing packs.  Onward they move
+slowly, and once more become mere specks, scarce discernible against
+the weird hue of the sky, then vanish altogether.  Once more in all
+this vast, dread waste moves nothing save the vultures indolently
+circling in the hot dome above.
+
+Days later a dust-covered automobile worms its way through the traffic
+in Los Angeles and comes to rest before a tall office building.  Two as
+dusty as the car descend from the tonneau, and one leaves the seat
+beside the driver.  Pedestrians stare curiously at the trio as, talking
+and laughing in high spirits, they cross the pavement to the building's
+entrance.
+
+"Desert rats--mining folks," observes a wiseacre to his friend.  "Look
+at the girl and the chaps!  Peach, eh?  That's the life!  Ho-hum!
+Gotta get back to the old office, Bill.  See you to-night at lodge, I
+s'pose.  S'long!"
+
+In a lavishly furnished anteroom of a suite of offices on the top floor
+of the building, Jerkline Jo and Hiram Hooker sank into overstuffed
+chairs and relaxed, while the other man, in khaki and scarred puttees,
+excused himself and entered the rooms beyond, carrying a suit case that
+tugged at his arm until his shoulder sagged.  He was absent from the
+intercom a half hour.
+
+"Well, boy," said Jerkline Jo, "it's all over, I guess.  What an
+experience!  I thought I knew the desert and the rough life before, but
+I wasn't out of my A B C's."
+
+"It was glorious, though," said Hiram.   "I wouldn't have missed it,
+dear, for worlds."
+
+"Nor I, either.  But I don't wish ever to return.  Once is enough."
+
+After this they were silent.  Both sat with eyes closed, dreaming of
+the past and the beckoning future.  Their dreams were finally
+interrupted by the reappearance of Mr. John Downer, the mining engineer
+for the Gold Hills Mining Co., in whose offices they now sat.
+
+"Well," he began, smiling, "if you'll come in now, Mr. Floresta would
+like to have a talk with you.  Getting a bit rested, Miss Modock?"
+
+Mr. Floresta, president of the Gold Hills Mining Co., was a pudgy, pink
+man, carefully groomed and manicured and barbered, who radiated
+businesslike good nature.  On his rich mahogany desk lay a row of gold
+specimens that glittered in the sunlight streaming in through a window.
+He shook hands warmly with Jo and Hiram; and when all were seated they
+talked of the trip for a time, and then the president plunged to the
+heart of the business that had brought them together.
+
+"Knowing that you were in a hurry, Miss Modock," he said, "I called a
+meeting of the stockholders, and we reached the conclusion that, if Mr.
+Downer's report was entirely satisfactory, there would be no use in
+quibbling over the price you and Mr. Hooker have asked.  The sum that
+you ask for the group of claims that you filed upon is, as you are
+aware, an enormous one for unproved mining properties.  Still, we wish
+to be fair; and on Mr. Downer's glowing report we are going to take a
+chance.  Therefore, please state your pleasure in the matter of
+payments, and arrangements will be made at once."
+
+A great sigh escaped Jo, and tears welled to her dark eyes.
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Floresta," she said.  "If you can let us have two
+hundred thousand at once, I'm sure payment of the remainder of the
+million can be easily arranged to suit both sides."
+
+Mr. Floresta bowed and pushed a buzzer button.  A moment or so later a
+messenger was on the way to a bank with a check.  When he returned he
+handed Floresta another check--one certified by the cashier of the
+company's banking house.
+
+"Now for yours and Mr. Hooker's signatures, please," said Floresta.  "I
+have indicated in the transfer papers that the remainder of the million
+dollars is to be paid in four semi-annual installments, of two hundred
+thousand each, with interest at six per cent on deferred payments.  Is
+that entirely satisfactory?"
+
+"Entirely," Jo told him, and went to his desk and took up the pen he
+handed her.
+
+Five minutes later Hiram and the girl were alone in the anteroom once
+more.  Hiram took the hands of Jerkline Jo and bent over her.
+
+"Ma'am," he drawled whimsically, "if you'll let me, I'll kiss you now!"
+
+
+Twitter-or-Tweet Orr Tweet paced back and forth in his little pine
+office, his hands behind his back, his brows furrowed.  Every little
+while he grabbed his nose and straightened it savagely, but each time
+it reverted to its list to port again, and Tweet marched on
+disconsolately.  It was the evening of the next to last day of his
+three days of grace.  To-morrow Paloma Rancho, Ragtown, and all that
+they represented would slip automatically from his control, and he
+could not raise a finger to stop it.
+
+Suddenly the door burst open with a bang, and Heine Schultz filled the
+little office with the roar of a behemoth:
+
+"Oh, boy!  Have you seen it?  Just come in with the mail!  Los Angeles
+papers!  Here, read, man!  And then get drunk!  I'll help you!"
+
+Tweet snatched the paper from him, and his steel-blue eyes bugged at
+the glaring headlines:
+
+  Gold!  Gold!  Gold!  Death Valley Gives Up
+  Another Secret.  Rich Find in Little-Known Corner
+  of Treacherous Waste.  Dead Father of Picturesque
+  Girl Called Jerkline Jo the Finder.  Weird Tale of
+  Struggles and Death and Baby Lost on Desert.  Gold
+  Hills Mining Co. Takes Over the Claims at $1,000,000.
+  President Says Richest Discovery Since Days of '49.
+
+
+"Great stutterin' Demosthenes!" exclaimed Tweet, and fell limply into a
+chair.
+
+Then again the door was opened, and a boy from the post office handed
+Tweet a special-delivery letter.  Tremblingly he tore the envelope and
+removed a yellow telegram.  Tears sprang to his eyes as he read aloud:
+
+  "Have to-day deposited to credit of your checking
+  account in Bluemount National Bank, Los Angeles,
+  one hundred thousand dollars.  Check against it at
+  pleasure.  Hiram and I on our way to Mendocino
+  County for a little rest and to see old friend of his.
+  Reach Ragtown in about two weeks if all goes well.
+
+  "JEAN PRINCE HOOKER, JERKLINE JO."
+
+
+Tweet sprang from his chair, cramming on his hat.
+
+"Lock the door and take the key, Heine!" he cried.  "I'm going to Los
+Angeles at fifty miles an hour!"
+
+
+At the same time in the shooting gallery Al Drummond and Lucy Dalles
+stared over the top of a newspaper at each other, their eyes tragic.
+
+"Gyped!" exclaimed Drummond at last.
+
+"Gyped!" Lucy echoed faintly.
+
+Then for a time there was silence, broken at last by Drummond's weary
+voice.
+
+"Guess I'll drift up to the Dugout," he said.  "See you later."
+
+Lucy made no reply, but stood staring out across the spring-scented
+desert, her thoughts on the tinkling streams of Mendocino and the big,
+kind, sheltering trees.  The rhododendrons were beginning to blossom
+there now.  Soon the redwood lilies would be scenting the air with
+their delicate fragrance.  Gray squirrels would be scolding in lofty
+trees, and trout would be leaping in still, dark pools.
+
+Lucy sat down very suddenly, and then her head fell forward on her
+arms.  There on the carpeted counter, between the rifles, she sobbed
+heartbrokenly.  She knew by intuition that in her quest for wealth she
+would not have Al Drummond to help her in the future.
+
+
+Ragtown's biggest day was when old Basil Filer, having been acquitted
+of the charge of murder on the evidence furnished by Jerkline Jo and
+Hiram Hooker, returned to hunt for his burros.  This was Ragtown's
+greatest day because Hiram Hooker and his bride came, too.
+
+They had spent a pleasant time with Uncle Sebastian Burris in Mendocino
+County, most glorious of countries in spring.  Hiram had expressed the
+wish to see Uncle Sebastian again and to tell him all that had befallen
+him in driving jerkline to Ragtown.  Hiram had learned a great lesson,
+he felt.  He had left the north woods to do something less prosaic than
+driving jerkline, and a series of peculiar incidents had forced him
+back into the same old groove again.  Yet the once scorned, neglected
+task had brought him adventures and a fortune and a splendid girl.
+Over all this he wished to marvel with his old benefactor and friend,
+and Jo had readily consented to the trip.  They had returned for Basil
+Filer's trial as the main witnesses for the defense.
+
+The stage brought all three into the town, and for the first time they
+saw the new steel and the track-laying engine beyond.  Carpenters were
+building the roundhouse, and new buildings were going up all over the
+village.
+
+Ragtown turned out in a body to meet them.  The wagons and teams of
+Jerkline Jo's freight outfit were covered with flags, and Jo's proud
+skinners paraded the streets, the wagons loaded with cheering
+townspeople.  Carried on the shoulders of men, the bride and groom were
+escorted to the Palace Dance Hall, where a banquet had been prepared,
+over which presided Twitter-or-Tweet Orr Tweet.
+
+Far into the night they celebrated, and in all of Ragtown there was
+only one who did not attend.  This was poor little Lucy Dalles, sobbing
+her heart out in her little cabin, her dream of wealth and marriage
+with Al Drummond gone.
+
+It was nearly midnight when there came a gentle tapping on her door.
+Dashing the tears from her eyes, Lucy walked unsteadily across her
+expensive rug and opened the door to a crack.  Next moment she found
+herself in a pair of strong arms, and her head lay on the breast of
+Jerkline Jo.
+
+"There, there, dear!  There, there!  Don't cry!  It's all right--all
+right!  I know--I understand."
+
+With her arms about the sobbing girl, big-hearted Jerkline Jo, the
+desert's grandest product, led the way to one of the big leather chairs
+and sat down.  Only Lucy's sobs broke the silence, while Jo sat and
+smoothed back her pretty hair.
+
+Presently the sobbing ceased, and then Jo rose and, taking her in her
+arms again, kissed her and smiled into her eyes.
+
+"You must bathe your eyes now, dear," said Jo, "for Mr. Tweet is coming
+to see you pretty soon.  He told me so.  Now look your best for Tweet
+has something serious to say to you."
+
+She left her then, and an hour later Tweet interrupted Jo and Hiram in
+Jo's little cabin on the edge of town.  He came in and sat down.
+
+"Well, Jo," he said, "it's a go.  We'll go to work and get married
+to-morrow mornin', if the old bus will take us to a preacher.  I guess
+I've loved her some time," Tweet added bashfully.  "Lucy and me'll make
+nice little playmates."
+
+Hiram rose and gripped his old friend's hand.  "I'm mighty glad,
+Tweet," he told him.  "Just too much Ragtown--that's all that was the
+matter with Lucy.  She was kind to me up there in Frisco when I'd just
+come out of the woods.  Her heart's warm, and that's what counts."
+
+Tweet's steel-blue eyes twinkled.  "Course nobody could blame her for
+makin' you spend four dollars an hour for an automobile," he said.  "It
+was a crime not to roll you for your jack in those days, Hooker.  I
+forgave her for that a long time ago."
+
+Next morning Basil Filer drifted into town, driving his recaptured
+burros ahead of him.  Silently he worked at packing the bags and
+throwing diamond hitches.
+
+Jerkline Jo and Hiram stood laughing at the gurgling imps of the
+desert, and Jo went up to Filer.
+
+"What does this mean?" she asked.  "You're all packed up for a trip."
+
+The weird old eyes looked up at her queerly.  "We're goin'--out there,"
+croaked Filer, a trembling finger pointing toward the fragrant desert.
+"It's spring, Baby Jean--and now's the time to hunt for gold, when
+there's lots o' feed for the little fellas."
+
+"Gold!" cried Jo.  "Why, man, you've so much money coming to you that
+you can't spend it in the rest of your natural life."
+
+"Money?" he said absently.  "Yes--you've done me han'some, Baby Jean.
+But I ain't got much use for money.  Money's only a grubstake, so's you
+c'n buy things and go out and hunt for gold.  Good-by, folks!  Next
+fall you'll see me and the little fellas ag'in.  Hi, Muta!  Lead out!"
+
+And, gripping his staff, he limped off in the wake of his long-eared
+companions, swinging their packs from side to side as a mother rocks
+the cradle.
+
+"They're all like that," said a man.  "It's the hunt for it that keeps
+'em goin'.  They don't know what to do with it when they get it."
+
+The dark eyes of Jerkline Jo were full of dreams.
+
+"Yes, we're all like that, I imagine," she said.
+
+"And how bout _you_, Jo?" some one asked.  "Now that you're rich and
+married and all?"
+
+Jo looked down the street at the nearly completed roundhouse and the
+track-laying engine working on below the town.
+
+"I?" she said dreamily.  "Why--why--I don't just know.  The steel has
+come, and now freight will reach here by train.  We're going to New
+York--Hiram and I--and maybe across the Atlantic.  But we'll come back
+soon, and--and----  Oh, there'll be a new road building
+somewhere--another Ragtown.  We couldn't quit, I guess.  What's city
+life and all that money will buy compared with the thrill of driving a
+ten-horse jerkline team over the desert and the mountains?  I guess,
+after we've looked about the Gentle Wild Cat and I will just keep on
+driving jerkline to Ragtown--somewhere."
+
+She pointed over the desert to where a bent old man and six drifting
+burros were blending gradually into the landscape.
+
+"He's not crazy," she said softly.  "He has just voiced a great
+fundamental truth for all humanity.  Money is only a grubstake.  The
+world needs gold and--and freight.  Jerkline to Ragtown--that's life!
+Some Ragtown will need freight--some Ragtown--somewhere."
+
+
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The She Boss, by Arthur Preston Hankins
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