The She Boss: A Western Story

Produced by Al Haines

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

THE SHE BOSS

A WESTERN STORY

BY

ARTHUR PRESTON HANKINS

AUTHOR OF

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

GROSSET & DUNLAP

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

Copyright, 1922

By CHELSEA HOUSE

The She Boss

(Printed In the United States of America)

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

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

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

The She Boss

CHAPTER I

BEAR VALLEY'S DRONE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hiram skimmed a flat piece of slate across a riffle.

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

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

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

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

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

"You know I do," promptly replied Hiram.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A wait, then a short nod.

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER II

OUT OF THE WOODS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER III

SAN FRANCISCO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Suddenly he knew that she was speaking.

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

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

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

She was speaking again, low, soothingly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER IV

TWITTER OR TWEET

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The man with the paper nodded.

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

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

A few moments they scanned the column. Then:

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

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

His smile brought Hiram's chair closer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Been everywhere."

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

"I'm a promoter and capitalist."

"A promoter and capitalist," Hiram repeated vaguely.

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

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

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

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

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

The cribbage players looked up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hiram nodded and smiled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hiram nodded.

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

"D'ye mean you're broke?"

"Broke! I'm ruined!"

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

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

"Are you a jerkline skinner?"

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

"Hiram Hooker."

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

"What!"

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

He handed Hiram a card. It read:

ORR TWEET

REPRESENTING THE CUCAMONGA
DEVELOPMENT COMPANY
Cerro Gordo, Mexico

THE HOMESEEKERS' PROMISED LAND
OF MILK AND HONEY

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

"What was it?" Hiram asked vaguely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

He yawned, rose, and started for the door.

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

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

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

"Sure not--come on."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER V

A RIVAL

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

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

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

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

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

As if answering his thoughts, Tweet said:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hiram tapped the glass.

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

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

"Why, hello!" she said lightly.

"Hello," came a quavering echo.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Fine business! Makin' good, eh?"

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

"But c'n you keep the books?"

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

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

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

A shade of pink swept her face.

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

"Just practicin' up again, eh?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Nothin'"--sheepishly.

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

Hiram closed his lips tight. He hated Tweet.

Tweet slapped him on the back and laughed.

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

"Nothing," Hiram retorted resentfully.

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

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

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

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

He turned abruptly and strode away.

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

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

Then Hiram bolted, half blind with pain.

CHAPTER VI

THE FIRE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What'll I do?"

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

Hiram was stunned. Had the girl gone crazy?

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

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

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

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

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

"Are you Mr. Kenoke?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hiram nodded.

"Oh, what did he say?"

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

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

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

Lucy at once ignored her.

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

Hiram grinned and bobbed his head.

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

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

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

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

Hiram bobbed his head again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER VII

HIRAM, THE BUTTERFLY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Set us back?"

"I mean, how poor are we now?"

"How poor are _we_?"

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

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

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

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

"Stand up."

Hiram did so.

"Turn round."

Hiram wheeled slowly.

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

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

"Ain't they all right?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Nothin', I suppose."

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

"Yes."

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

"I don't know--why?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No--to-morrow."

"Not on your life! This afternoon."

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

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

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

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

Hiram hurried out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Silence claimed them for a time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes, ma'am."

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

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

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

Hiram only stared and waited.

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

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

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

Hiram waited again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER VIII

LUCY'S AMBITIONS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes, ma'am."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She sighed and leaned back.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She closed the door and hurried him below.

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

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

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

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

"I can't tell you."

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

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

"Now? What do you mean, now?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER IX

HIRAM WAKES UP

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"New Ditch Digger Makes Good."

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

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

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

"I thought you were broke."

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

Hiram obeyed.

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

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

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

"Really! Is it worth anything to you?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You wouldn't go!"

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

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

"You betcha my life!" Lucy said lightly.

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

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

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

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

In the lounging room he found Tweet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Cut all that," dryly interrupted Orr Tweet.

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

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

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

"We are there," replied Orr Tweet.

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

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

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

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

The employment agency clerk shrugged and took their names.

CHAPTER X

JERKLINE JO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XI

THE RETURN OF JERKLINE JO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XII

SKINNERS FROM FRISCO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"_What_?"

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

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

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

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

"What a godlike physique!" she thought.

Then impulsively she stepped forward and extended her hand.

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

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

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

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

"Where have you worked?"

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

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

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

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

"And you?" she asked.

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XIII

THE START FOR JULIA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hiram smiled and spoke to Jerkline Jo.

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

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

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

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

"Get 'em out," ordered Jo.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hiram Hooker nodded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Madam, I could--and would."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"_Hi_-ram!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jerkline Jo smiled at his bewilderment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XIV

A WIRE TO JULIA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Do you do that?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Of course he's talking nonsense."

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

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

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

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

Jerkline Jo glanced at her leather-protected wrist watch.

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

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

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

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

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

Jerkline Jo glowed with pleasure over her success.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XV

MR. TWEET NEGOTIATES A LOAN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Seven dollars."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Tell me about it!"

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

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

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

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

Hiram smiled wryly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes--I got that."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No--he won't talk."

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XVI

TEHACHAPI HANK

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

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

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

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

"Who-hoo!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yeah."

"Is he here?"

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

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

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

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

"You! Where?"

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

"You mean Lucy?"

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

"A little. But I interrupted."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blink Keddie promptly agreed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Two dollars! You mean----"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Will you accept my check?"

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

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

Tehachapi Hank touched his broad-brimmed hat again. "All right and proper, ma'am," he assured her.

He was waiting by the roadside when her stanch whites marched past him, and she reached the check out through the slats of the rack. He touched his hat brim again and smiled then with true Western politeness, pocketed the slip of paper without so much as glancing at it.

Dully she watched the broad straining backs of her beloved animals as they planted their great fetlocked feet and heaved their burden ever upward. Ahead of them she could hear her skinners shouting back and forth from wagon to wagon above the jingling of the bells, their tones high-pitched and angry. Why had she not consulted with Demarest and asked him to lay before her details of every angle that might present itself in such an undertaking as hers?

Demarest knew all the twists and turns of modern business ruthlessness. He might have been able to foresee a situation like this and to put weapons into her hands with which she might have combated it.

She shrugged her sturdy shoulders finally, and as noon was close at hand gave attention to her cooking. For the present she would drive the matter from her thoughts. There was work to be accomplished, which was a part of the present delivery of freight. When this task was completed she would see what could be done.

CHAPTER XVII

IN LETTERS OF BLACK

There was a general outburst of indignation on the part of Jerkline Jo's devoted retainers when the outfit went into camp at noon, quarterway through the mountain pass.

"We'll fix 'im, Jo!" Heine Schultz exclaimed angrily. "All we gotta do is make out to get ahead o' his old cough wagons and not let 'em pass. We can hold 'im back clear through the pass, if we string out. Le's figger it out fer the rest o' the trip, Jo. There's not over six places where one vehicle can pass another. Now what we gotta do is string out our outfit so's none o' us'll hit one o' those places when the machines are comin'. Say, we can hold 'em up till----"

"Heine," said Jerkline Jo quietly, "is that your idea of business."

"Course it is. Stick it to the Al Drummond, Jo! He's started somethin' that he'll have a hard time finishin', that's all. Say, we can slip it to him till he'll be sick o' that dirty deal he handed you. Leave it to Blink and me. We got it all schemed out."

"Heine," Jo remarked, "we'll travel right along as we have always traveled. If one of Mr. Drummond's trucks comes up behind us and wants to pass we will let it pass when it is convenient to do so."

"Not here, Jo! My team don't put one foot outa the road to let a truck pass."

"No, I don't expect you to do that. But it will depend on conditions. If you are loaded and he is empty, of course he must look out for himself. Again, if you are climbing and he is coming down, he must get out of the difficulty as best he can. But when you, loaded, reach a place where a truck can pass you, and you know one is coming up behind you and wishes to pass, you will stop your team in the road and let it circle around you."

"I won't, Jo! I----"

"Yes, you will. You will do as I say, as you always do." She smiled at him sweetly and patted his shoulder. "Loyal old Heinrich!" she said. "Just the same old-timer, we must observe the courtesy of the road always. Think it over--you'll see I'm right."

"Jo, you can't afford a jolt like that," said Jim McAllen.

"I can't," Jo told him frankly. "Right now I don't know what to do. I must keep on, by some hook or crook, till I can get advice from some one who's onto such tricks--Demarest, perhaps."

"It's a rotten deal!"

"I have an idea it's perfectly legitimate, Jim."

"They ain't gonta do anything to the road to make it worth a tenth o' what they ask to travel on it. You saw the little putterin' jobs they did, Jo."

"I have an idea," replied the girl, "that when winter comes they'll be quite busy. And it also occurs to me that, now that they've agreed to maintain the road if given the franchise, we can make them do it down to the letter, or render their franchise void."

"By golly, I bet you can at that, Jo!" put in Tom Gulick. "I've heard, though, there's a rotten bunch of grafters runnin' this county. They'd probably beat you out some way, so long as Drummond was puttin' up cigar money for them."

Up until now Hiram Hooker had said nothing. Now came his soothing drawl, and the others listened.

"I don't know much about automobiles and what they can do," he said. "But I do know mountains and mountain roads, and somethin' about mountain soil. And I've this to say: If Jo can hang on till winter there'll be no trucks runnin' against her. Then if they still collect for crossin' through the pass, all she's got to do is raise the freight rate to meet the extra expense. There's exactly ten places on the road where we're goin' to hook maybe thirty horses on every wagon to get across next winter. And I'll bet my month's wages against a dollar of Mr. Drummond's money that he'll be begging for teams to haul him out. Then, of course, the price ought to be about fifty-six dollars a haul, regardless of distance, hadn't it?"

"Good boy!" cried Keddie. "Listen to our Gentle Wild Cat pur! He's right, too, I'll say. If we can hang on till winter, Jo can collect back all she's paid out for tolls--and I'll say a little profit on the deal wouldn't make me weep."'

"But winter's a long way off," Jim McAllen gloomily pointed out.

After this there was thoughtful silence.

To add to the misfortunes of the second trip to the camps, Jim McAllen broke a reach when the train neared the foot of the grade. There were spare reaches in the outfit, of course, but they had to unload the wagon to substitute one, and it all took a great deal of time. Then a horse became sick, and Jerkline Jo positively refused to work a sick horse. The animal was taken out of harness and allowed to tag along behind with his mate, who automatically became useless, too. A ton of supplies was taken from the wagon to which the sick horse belonged, and distributed among the other loads. This took more time, and night overtook the outfit with several miles between them and the tank wagon that awaited their coming on the desert.

Hour after hour they plodded along, not daring to camp until they had water. There was no moon, and as the desert road was little more than a trail Heine Schultz let his team tag Keddie's and walked ahead with a lantern to guide the lead skinner. Thirsty and hungry and weary, they reached the tank about nine o'clock. Then came a hearty curse from the man with the lantern, followed by:

"Lord, be merciful unto me, a skinner! The tank's empty, Jo!"

The party descended hurriedly and crowded about him. It was a steel tank, and a careful search failed to show that any of its plates had sprung a leak. Then the light was held under the spigot, and, though the hot desert sun had evaporated every drop of water, there was a hole worn in the sand where it had fallen in a stream. The spigot was open.

"How 'bout it now, Jo?" Heine queried. "Is this what you call legitimate business--huh? I guess now you'll let me hold 'em back when I can."

Without replying Jo stooped and made an examination.

"Some one has turned the water out," she said, rising wearily. "Will we be obliged to hire a watchman to camp by our water tank? This is serious, boys. The unwritten law of the desert would condemn whoever did this to a lariat and a yucca palm. Still, we don't know who did it. It's too dark to find tracks or to learn anything about it. It's seventeen miles to the Washburn-Stokes outfit--the nearest water ahead. Or it's eight miles back to the lake in the mountains. What's best to do?"

They turned the problem over and over, and finally decided unanimously that to send the tank with six horses back to the lake, to be refilled, was the wiser plan. Hiram volunteered for the trip, and Schultz volunteered to go with him. At once the two set off behind six of Hiram's lamenting animals for the long night trip, eating a hasty lunch as they traveled.

Dawn was breaking when they returned with a full tank, and were greeted by the braying of the mules and the expectant nickering of the horses, who smelled the water from afar.

Jo ordered a rest until ten o'clock, to counteract the suffering that the thirsty animals had undergone and to rest Hiram's six after the performance of their double task.

These setbacks made them late in their arrival at the scene of coming toil, but gradually the distant buttes grew plainer as they moved on steadily toward them over the crunching sands, so hot and barren.

Hiram Hooker was riding with Jerkline Jo as they approached the buttes. She was hammering away on her typewriter, while Hiram was deep in a mathematical problem, his tongue out and gripped by his teeth. The clicking of the typewriter ceased suddenly, and Jo asked:

"Isn't that a tent over there near the buttes, Wild Cat?"

Hiram looked up and shielded his eyes, straining his vision over the rolling white backs of Jo's team into the yellow vastness beyond.

"Looks like it," he said.

"We'll not have to arrange for a watchman then. Demarest has sent a man, I guess. Get out my binoculars, please, and see what you can make out."

Hiram took the strong glasses from their case, and, steadying himself against a side of the freight rack, trained them on the distant speck of white that represented a lonely tent.

At once the tent seemed to jump across the desert to a point a short distance ahead of them. Hiram's lips parted and a snort of surprise escaped him.

Before the front of the tent, on a pole planted there, was a big sign composed of black letters against a white background. And this is what Hiram Hooker read:

The Homesteader's Promised Land of Milk and Honey

OFFICE OF THE PALOMA RANCHO INVESTMENT COMPANY

Orr Tweet, President. Walk In

CHAPTER XVIII

GREATER RAGTOWN

Indeed he was an important-looking individual who greeted the freight outfit of Jerkline Jo when it came to a weary halt at the foot of the desert buttes. He wore a new olive-drab suit, composed of Norfolk jacket and bellows breeches, an imposing Columbia-shape Stetson, and shiny new russet-leather puttees. From one corner of 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,