Part 40 (1/2)

”So that failed beautifully!” exclaimed Al Drummond to Lucy Dalles.

”Who'd have thought that old rabbit would be too quick for Hank! He must have been on his guard.”

Lucy shrugged indifferently. ”Filer was a master shot,” she observed.

”Failed beautifully is right, Al--beautifully for us. It couldn't have happened better. Now Brother Hank is out of it. If you can contrive some way to shake Hank's partner, Pete, there'll be no one but you and me to whack up.

”Since Hank is numbered among the late lamented,” she continued, ”I can forgive you for bungling the Hooker end of your job. With Hank's finger out of the pot, I'm content to split with Jerkline Jo. So, no thanks to you, everything has worked out all right after all. Can't you send Pete out with instructions to bite a rattlesnake, or something like that?”

”You're mighty good-natured to-day, kid,” Al said.

”Why shouldn't I be? Since we know the original doc.u.ment and that b.o.o.b's copy are both destroyed--and that before he had time to commit the directions to memory. We have nothing whatever to do but wait for Jerkline Jo to come to us and ask us what our terms are. Then if you and I aren't foxy enough to squeeze out the amiable Mr. Pete---- Well, leave it to me!”

”But have you thought,” Drummond pointed out, ”that perhaps Filer has committed the instructions to memory?”

Lucy scoffed at this and dismissed it with: ”That old lunatic? Never!

He can hardly remember the story, and now and then forgets that he's hunting for Baby Jean and hikes back for the desert. Don't worry about his having committed anything to memory. He has no memory to commit it to!”

At about the time the foregoing dialogue was being spoken in Ragtown, Jerkline Jo, in her tent at Julia, was making strange remarks to Hiram Hooker, to wit, as follows:

”Hi-_ram_! It ti-i-i-ickles! Sto-op-op! Wait a minute, Hiram!”

”Huh!” snorted the unfeeling man. ”Whoever heard of anybody being ticklish on the head!”

”But I am, Hiram! I just know I am! And isn't that razor far too sharp?”

”'There ain't no such thing,'” quoted the man out of the store of his masculine experience. ”Now quit wiggling, Jo, or I'm liable to cut you.”

”Now go slow, Hiram. And if I say it feels funny, you stop. Now easy at first! Horrors! I wouldn't be a man for anything!”

”Don't blame me,” mumbled Hiram. ”Now quit wrinkling your scalp, Jo.

Fella'd think I was going to cut your head off, the way you dodge and shrink.”

They were alone in the tent. Jo was on her knees on the ground, and behind her and over her stood Hiram with an old-fas.h.i.+oned razor in his hand. Beside them on a chair lay a strand of almost black hair three feet in length, which Hiram swore that he would preserve until his dying breath. On the back of Jo's head appeared a round spot, covered with hairs half an inch in length, and these the brutal man was trying to shave off with the razor. Never had barber a more provoking customer.

”Oh, I'll look like a fright, Hiram! I've always been proud of my hair.”

”It'll grow out again,” he said soothingly. ”Besides, what I cut off didn't cover a spot an inch and a half in diameter. With hair like yours, it can't be noticed. If I'd thought it would disfigure your hair, girl, I'd have said, 'Let the old gold go!' What an idea!”

”I positively never heard of such a weird thing. And to think it's on me! And---- Oo-oo-oo-oo! You cut me, Hiram! It's bleeding!”

”No, no, no! Only more lather. Don't wiggle, Jo!”

”There! It's all over,” Hiram said after a minute of silence.

Four days later Lucy Dalles and Al Drummond stood behind the counter of the shooting gallery at Ragtown, and with a certain amount of nervous expectancy watched the freight outfit of Jerkline Jo grow larger and larger as it neared the journey's end.

Soon they heard the merry jingling of hundreds of bells, and next the big horses were planting their heavy fetlocked feet in the street, their glossy necks arched proudly as Ragtown turned out to greet them.

Lucy stood on tiptoe and craned her neck along the line of heavily loaded wagons. ”Don't see Jo's whites at the tail end,” she remarked.

And presently her companion supplemented: ”Nor Hooker's blacks. Say, that's funny. There's only four teams, Hooker and the girl didn't come!”