Part 20 (1/2)
The head skinner, Blink Keddie, had no more than entered the pa.s.s 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 cla.s.s. I guess he's inst.i.tutin' 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 pa.s.s. 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.