Part 18 (1/2)
”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 p.r.o.nto 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 pa.s.s. 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 pa.s.s before darkness had overtaken them completely. They camped for the night beside a picturesque and cold mountain lake, at an alt.i.tude 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 pa.s.s.
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 cl.u.s.ter 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.