Part 23 (2/2)

”Then the best thing you can do is make a d.i.c.ker 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed. 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.

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