Part 17 (2/2)
”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 a.s.sured 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 s.h.i.+pment, 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 la.s.sie 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.”
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