Part 16 (1/2)
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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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 enc.u.mbrance 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 st.u.r.dy 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 s.h.i.+rt, worn leather chaps for comfort, and riding boots. A holstered six-shooter hung close at hand, the ivory-handled b.u.t.t 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.