The summer progressed, and great changes were wrought on the desert. To the last soul Ragtown moved from its first location into the hospitable arms of Mr. Tweet—but Tweet's hospitality demanded its price. Outfit after outfit came crawling across the desert to pitch camp somewhere along the line and begin its portion of the big work in band. There was a post office at Ragtown, twenty or more saloons, dance halls and gambling dens combined, restaurants, tent hotels, stores, and even a bank and a motion-picture show. Thousands of rough, hard-drinking, hard-fighting men thronged the mushroom town, and it resembled a mining town of California's early days. Miners and cattlemen, too, made the town headquarters, and there were frequent fights and an occasional shooting scrape. The cost of everything was high. Money flowed freely, as did bootleg jackass brandy. It seemed that the prohibition enforcement officers had been unable to locate the infant town. The rough, unrestrained life of the frontier was rife at Ragtown, and Twitter-or-Tweet Orr Tweet gleaned shekels right and left.
Jerkline Jo had not seen Al Drummond to speak with him after the fight. He had been laid up for a week from the terrible battering that Hiram had given him, and when he was about again he left the country in his touring car.
His drivers continued to transport freight to the new Ragtown and to certain independent contractors who had reached the work. In truth, it developed that there was plenty of hauling to keep both outfits busy, and Jerkline Jo was making money hand over fist, as was every one who had services to offer or something to sell.
Tehachapi Hank no longer stood like an ogre guarding the portals to the mountain pass. Drummond had been beaten on that deal, and the gunman's removal was an admission of defeat. Consequently, Tweet exacted no charge for the trucks to cross his ranch. Things were running smoothly between the two freighting enterprises, and Jerkline Jo hoped against hope that there would be no more trouble. But she had not liked the baleful look in Drummond's eye when she caught it on the street in Ragtown one evening. It was plain that he considered great humiliation had been heaped upon him, and that he was waiting and watching for an opportunity for revenge.
Then one day she met him face to face in Julia, and stepped to him to tell him about the boulder in the road. His glance was like a knife thrust as he turned on his heel and stalked away before she could speak. After that, of course, she made no further effort to enlighten him.
As the weeks passed it developed that Orr Tweet was not the slowest salesman in California, where salesmen—especially land salesmen—achieve their greatest triumphs. Not only did he sell lots and building sites in Ragtown, but he disposed of the surrounding acreage to would-be ranchers and speculators, and had been able with ease, he informed his old friends, to meet his second payment on the ranch. He urged Jo to invest her earnings in the company, and after consideration she resolved to take a chance with him; for here and there, where wells had been sunk and pumping apparatus installed, the once barren land was turning green and showing evidences of rich and productive soil.
So things stood, or refused to stand, in Ragtown and the vicinity when Drummond drove in one day with no less a passenger than a pretty girl, all pink and white, named Lucy Dalles. Hiram Hooker came face to face with her in Ragtown's boisterous business street an hour after her arrival, for Jo's freight outfit was at rest there for the night.
Lucy was as pretty in her petite, doll-like way as when she had so fascinated him in the city, but now he could not help comparing her hothouse beauty with the brown-skinned, outdoor desirability of Jerkline Jo. Jo could have picked up this frail, silk-garbed creature and thrown her overhead; yet in pure womanliness and tenderness Lucy was not her equal. Jerkline Jo was a queen—a ruler—a fearless woman with a purpose in life, big of body and soul and brain. Lucy Dalles was merely a pretty girl, with an ambition for money and life's frivolous pleasures. Hiram understood this now.
She greeted him glowingly, and called him by his first name.
"I told you I was coming," she cried, giggling. "And isn't this rich? If only I were writing scenarios now!"
"Aren't you?" asked Hiram.
"No, I gave it up. They got too exacting for me, and began buying the picture rights of books and magazine stories by established authors in preference to original scripts for the screen. I was a piker, anyway—nothing in me, I guess. So I threw up the sponge."
"You're still a waitress, then?"
She looked at him archly. "Not on your sweet young life!" and she laughed. "I didn't throw ambition overboard when I quit writing scenarios. Writing in any form is usually a slow road to success, I've learned. I never wanted to be a writer just for the sake o' the work. I want jack, and lots of it, and what it'll buy."
Hiram felt a sudden disgust for her and her sordid aims in life. But to appear polite he asked:
"What are you doing, then?"
"Everybody I can," she retorted. "I worked in a beauty parlor for a little as a hairdresser and manicure. I'm out for the money, Hiram. I'm not a pickpocket yet, but that's because I don't know how to be one. But if you've got any loose change in your pockets watch out. I'm out for the coin. But here comes Al. He brought me down. He's going to set me up in business."
"Drummond?" he asked. "He and I don't speak. We had a little trouble."
Again she arched her penciled brows. "He didn't tell me," she said. "He'll be sore at me talkin' to you then. See him over there by that saloon? He's stopped and is scowling at us. Well, I'll just stick with you to show him his place. Take me somewhere, Hiram; I want to see the life."
Hiram did not know what to say. He would have preferred to terminate the conversation. Lucy Dalles held no fascination for him now. Hiram had met and loved a woman without parallel in his brief experience of life. But he could not be impolite, so he sauntered down the street with the girl, trying to make conversation and hoping that Drummond would not be offended all over again.
In all the resorts men and women were crowding before the bar, gambling with abandon or dancing.
"Buy me a drink, Hiram," Lucy pleaded. "I just want to go into one of these places. Women do it here, I understand."
Hiram shrugged and led her into the Palace Dance Hall, conducted by a notorious character, who followed big construction camps, called "Ghost" Falcott because of his chalk-white skin.
It was pay day at Demarest, Spruce & Tillou's, and the Palace was crowded. They found a place at the bar, however, and the girl stood looking over the half-drunken throng with eager eyes, now and then casting a glance through the door to see if Drummond was following her.
Their drinks had just been served when into the dive, with a grinning construction stiff on each arm, marched Jerkline Jo, laughing gayly.
This was no new sight. Frequently Hiram had seen his adventure girl in such places, laughing and chatting with old friends of the grade. Always, it seemed, they respected her and took her actions for granted.
"Hello, Gentle Wild Cat!" Jo called, catching sight of him. Then she noticed that he was with the girl, and a quick look of puzzlement came in her dark eyes.
Hiram made haste to call her.
"I want to introduce you," he said quickly.
Jo turned, still holding to the arms of the stiffs, and Hiram made the introduction. Jo responded pleasantly, and the look that came in her eyes told Hiram that she remembered the name and knew who Lucy was.
"Sorry I can't join you, Hiram," said Jo. "These plugs have got me dead to rights, and I've promised to set 'em up to the house."
She released the arms of the stiffs, and, cupping her hands about her mouth, shouted above the general din:
"Drinks for the house on Jerkline Jo! Le's go!"
Some one nudged Hiram on the other side, and he turned to find Orr Tweet.
"Did you ever see the likes o' that Jerkline Jo?" he said admiringly. "What a woman, Hiram! She can get away with anything, and there ain't a stiff on the grade that would think any the worse of her for it. She's pure-hearted and clean-minded, and everybody knows it and treats her like the lady she is. But say—— For Heaven's sake! Look who's here!"
His steel-blue eyes had taken in Lucy, who stood studying Jerkline Jo, the center of a crowd of rough, appreciative men who wrung her hands right and left.
Lucy turned and flashed Tweet a bright smile. "I remember you, o' course," she said, shaking hands. "They tell me you hit the ball an awful bang down here in Ragtown. I always knew you were there when you talked to me up in Frisco."
For several minutes, while bartenders worked frantically to supply Jo's big order, Tweet and Lucy talked, and Hiram watched Jo. Then Tweet excused himself and hurried away after some man—a prospective citizen of Ragtown, no doubt—and Lucy turned to Hiram.
"So that's Jerkline Jo, is it?" she said half scornfully. "What is she, Hiram?"
"A lady," said Hiram with a dangerous note of warning in his tones.
Lucy sensed it and shrugged. "Maybe she is," she said lightly. "I don't know anything about her beyond what I've heard, of course—except that she's a heart-breaker—a man-killer. But what's she doing here?" she could not help tacking on.
"I might come back and ask you what you're doing here," Hiram retorted coldly.
Lucy shrugged. "Oh, I don't make any pretenses of piety—now," she said significantly. Then, casting a defiant glance at him, she produced a silver cigarette case, took a cigarette from it, and begged for the end of his cigar at which to light it. "They say Jerkline Jo is grabbing off big jack. How 'bout it?" She puffed indolently, greatly to her companion's disgust.
"She works hard and earns money," Jo's supporter defended. "She raised the wages of all of us, too, as soon as business began to look up. We skinners get ninety dollars a month and board now."
"Ninety dollars a month!" Lucy said jeeringly. "D'ye call that money! I didn't think you'd continue to be such a fish as long as this, Hiram."
"Well, I'm investin' it," said Hiram. "It may be more some day."
Luck looked suddenly into Hiram's eyes, then let her lashes cover her own.
"I guess this pious Jerkline Jo has got you goin'," she observed.
"I work for her," said Hiram awkwardly.
"Any man would, I guess. Men are all suckers."
Hiram said nothing to this, and presently, stating that he would be obliged to return to camp, asked Lucy if she was ready to go.
Rather petulantly she gave in, and just outside the door they encountered the glowering Al Drummond.
"Lucy," he said sharply, "come here!"
"I'll have to go," Lucy said to Hiram. "See you later, honey boy from the woods. Good night!"
Hiram saw Drummond take a step and roughly grab Lucy's arm as she tripped up to him. They walked away, plainly indulging in a heated argument.
"'Honey boy,' huh!" and Hiram snorted. "Men are suckers—till they meet a regular woman!"
He hurried back to camp and rolled himself in his blankets without further thought of the girl who had caused him to make such a fool of himself in San Francisco. Had he but known it the advent of Lucy Dalles in Ragtown was to have a great deal to do with the future fortunes of both Jerkline Jo and himself.
There was so much freighting that summer that the combined outfits of Jerkline Jo Modock and Al Drummond were taxed to capacity. The new settlers made constant demands upon them, and, though their wants were puny in comparison with those of the camps, Jo accommodated them whenever she could. Water had been struck at the surprisingly shallow depth of forty-five feet in some places, and many pumping plants were transported over the mountains. Things looked as if Twitter-or-Tweet was about due to make his fortune, and Jo kept investing more and more of her surplus earnings, and he was meeting his payments promptly. There was talk of Ragtown eventually being made a division point. If this transpired, the railroad shops would be erected there, and the permanent success of the town would be assured. Already a few venturesome souls were building permanent structures whenever they were fortunate enough to get building materials hauled in.
Drummond's five-ton trucks seemed to be meeting all requirements, and he had added to his fleet. Jo, however, remained conservative. She had seen rag towns spring up on railroad grades before—many of them—only to disappear forever with the laying of the steel. Still, she had confidence in the farming possibilities of Paloma Rancho—but she bought no more equipment, principally, perhaps, because she could not get desirable jerkline skinners, and because extra equipment would mean more work for her, more time taken from her studies. She was content with a good thing so far as financial success was concerned—her great ambition was for an education.
Drummond, of course, was also making money; but he fell a prey to the lure of the free-and-easy life of the frontier town, and gambled and drank perpetually. There were stories of big losses at faro, under which Drummond did not always bear up as a good sport should.
As for Lucy Dalles, that ambitious young woman entered with gusto into the feverish life of Ragtown. Drummond had leased a shooting-gallery concession from the accommodating Tweet, and had ensconced the girl behind the rifles—or in front of them—to run the gallery.
So she confided to Hiram Hooker, when he passed along Ragtown's main thoroughfare one night, and for the first time saw her on exhibition in the gallery. She had partitioned off one corner of the gallery and set up a manicure and hairdressing parlor. Of mornings, when business in the gallery was dull, she made many an extra dollar by beautifying the women of Ragtown.
"Yes, there's money in it," she said. "Al had the gallery stunt in mind when he brought me down, so I quit the beauty parlor where I was working in Frisco and got a job in a shooting gallery and learned how to run one and to keep my noodle from getting in front of a gun. My face is my fortune, after all, Hiram boy. One look at my smile, and the hicks come right in and pick up a rifle. I'm coinin' money, and I'm having the time of my young life. Last night a miner bet me five dollars against a kiss he could knock over ten ducks in ten shots. He did it, and I paid up like a sport. It got the gang started at the game, and in the end I grabbed off thirty bucks, and only kissed twice. Pretty soft—what? I guess you're horrified, Hiram?" She glanced at him with coquettish defiance.
"Disgusted," Hiram could truthfully have said, but he only grinned and thanked his stars for his escape.
Lucy's dark eyes flashed daggers at the broad back of Hiram Hooker as he left her and swung along indifferently up the street. With a woman's intuition she had known in San Francisco that the big, handsome countryman with the soft, drawling voice had fallen a victim to her charms. Now, because of Jerkline Jo, he was utterly indifferent to her. Lucy was piqued, angry at him, angrier at Jerkline Jo. She did not love Hiram, but she wanted him to love her, and though she did not want him she wanted no other woman to own him.
"I'll fix you one o' these days, you big hick!" she threatened between clenched teeth.
Summer passed all too quickly for those who labored incessantly, and the winter rains set in. They at once grew harder and more frequent, and then it poured as it does only in the West. Snow fell in the mountains. Then the activities of Al Drummond ceased abruptly.
No wonder, for often as high as twenty teams were hooked on to the enormous wagons of Jerkline Jo, and every animal was obliged to pull to the limit of his strength to move the terrific weight, hub-deep in the clinging mud. This did not tend to improve the road, of course, and all of Drummond's efforts to corduroy it and otherwise preserve a firm path for his machines were unavailing. The tortoise had won the race!
Drummond had gambled away his profits, and now it was whispered about that he still owed money on his trucks. Before the last of November he gave up in despair, allowed his trucks to be taken by the mortgagees, and settled down to a life of gambling on the proceeds of his shooting-gallery concession.
One day there trudged into Ragtown a strange figure, marked by the desert, bent and old, in the wake of six lamenting burros laden with mining supplies and tools. He gave the name of Basil Filer, and said that he was seeking gold. Ragtown promptly wrote him down as a crazy prospector. His eye caught the eye of Lucy Dalles, leaning over her carpeted counter between her rifles, and when he had made camp he limped along and accosted her.
"Come in and try a string, Uncle," she begged with the little pout she had found so effective in coercing male humanity into her lair. "An old desert rat like you oughta hit the bull's-eye every shot."
Filer grinned and stepped up to the counter, eying the girl from under heavy, fierce eyebrows that looked as if the dust of a thousand trails had settled in them. Lucy lowered her dark lashes and looked demure.
"B'long on the desert, girlie?" rumbled the deep voice of the old prospector.
"Sure, Uncle."
"Uh-huh. And how old might ye be, now?"
"Nearly twenty-two."
"Uh-huh—pretty near twenty-two. That's nice. Where's yer paw and maw?"
"They're both dead," Lucy told him, trying to appear innocent and unsophisticated as she lifted her glance to his face.
"Maybe now yer paw was a desert prospector," he suggested.
"Uh-huh." Lucy nodded her fluffy head vigorously up and down. This was another childlike action which she had found pleasing to men—especially the older men. Of course she was lying like a little sailor; but "Uncle" seemed interested in her, and business was dull just then. She would pretend to be all that he seemed to wish her to be as long as she could successfully follow his conversational leads.
"What do they call you, girlie?" he asked next.
"Lucy."
"Lucy, eh? Lucy what, now?"
"Lucy Dalles."
"Dalles, huh? Dalles!" His weird old eyes, peculiarly tinted from years of looking into the mirage-draped distances of the desert, were strangely reminiscent.
"Maybe that ain't your right name, though," he kept on feelingly.
"Maybe not," replied Lucy quite truthfully. After all, she had only her father's and her mother's word for it. For all she knew she might be the reincarnation of the Queen of Sheba. "Let's try a shot, Uncle," she added, sensing deep water ahead.
Indolently he picked up a .22 rifle, and rang the bell of her most difficult bull's-eye target eight shots out of ten. He paid her and seemed in nowise elated over her fulsome praise, designed to keep him shooting.
He took up his long cane again. "I'll drift up the drag a ways," he said, "and see what's goin' on. Nothin' but desert owls lived here when I traveled through last—two years ago. I'll be back. Maybe I'll want to ast ye a few p'inted questions. Will ye answer, eh?"
"Sure," she told him lightly, whacking her gum for emphasis. "Come and pour your heart out to me, Uncle—I'll listen."
Lucy had taken more of the well-filled buckskin poke that the old man had pulled from the neck of his greasy shirt to pay her for the pastime.
She leaned out and craned her neck to watch him moving up the street, glancing through doors and openly investigating on every side.
Her intuition told her that the gray old rat had something on his mind. Lonely old soul that he was, she reasoned, he was bashful and at a loss how to conduct himself in the unfamiliar presence of a woman. "When he's all gowed up he'll talk my head off," she decided. "He's going to fortify himself now. Guess I'll have to look into this."
When the bent, plodding figure had disappeared through the entrance to Ghost Falcott's Palace Dance Hall, Lucy called across the street to a boy sitting on the edge of the new board sidewalk. The boy crossed to her and she handed him a dime.
"Find Al Drummond and tell him I want to see him at once," she directed.
A little later Al Drummond presented himself. His face showed the effects of a sleepless night, but he was already refortified with jackass brandy for the ordeals of the day, and was in nowise stupid.
They leaned on the carpeted counter, heads close together, and talked in lowered voices.
"What this old bird has got on his chest I can't tell," Lucy explained. "But I played up to him, and if he gets all gowed up he'll spill it. He's crazy as they make 'em, Al. It may not amount to anything at all, but I'm for always lookin' into such little things. You never can tell, Al. Maybe this'll be good. Anyway, he's got a leather bag that's heavy with jack, and he won't need that when he hits the trail again. Warm up to him and get 'im started, then steer him to me."
"Wise little kid," Al Drummond commented. "Leave it to me."
The male plotter experienced no difficulty in finding the grizzled desert rat. He was evidently a self-starter, having brought his own, and, all alone at Ghost Falcott's bar, he was pouring raw jackass brandy down a throat that seemed urgently in need of it. Seeing that he was satisfactorily working out his own destruction, Drummond shot craps to divert himself until the prospector should become mellowed to a point where it was safe to approach him.
It seemed though that the old man had an enormous capacity. An hour passed, and, though he drank repeatedly on his high-lonesome, he seemed little the worse for it. Drummond patiently watched and waited. He knew that with some newly distilled brandy does not take immediate effect, but that drunkenness comes on suddenly when the victim least expects it.
Meantime events were happening out in the street which were to have a distinct bearing on Lucy and Al's plot to separate Basil Filer from the contents of his buckskin poke.
These events, however, were quite commonplace on the face of them. The first was the arrival of Jerkline Jo's wagon train, loaded to the gunwales with case goods, general merchandise, and food for stock.
The arrival of Jerkline Jo and her proud huskies always was an event of importance at Ragtown. They made a picture as the heavy eight and ten-horse teams with the hundreds of bells a-jingle rolled the immense wagons down the street, while Jo's skinners, quite aware of the furor they were creating, called "Gee" and "Haw" and manipulated their jerklines unnecessarily, for the sole purpose of awing the spectators. One wagon was stopped at Huber's store; the rest continued on through to Demarest, Spruce & Tillou's Camp Number One, a half mile beyond the town.
It was Jo's whites that had been brought to a halt before Huber's. The proprietor came out and asked that the load be discharged in the rear, as he had just completed a new freight platform at the back entrance.
"Right!" called Jo. Then, "Annie! Ned! Feel of it, white folks! Bert! Snip! All together. Let's go!"
Like a well-trained company of infantry, the ten whites leaned to the collars, and the eight tons behind them moved off as easily as a baby buggy. The hub of all eyes, the attractive girl with cries of "Gee" and "Haw" and picturesque manipulation of the jerkline, swung her team around the corner and into the alley. Men with whom she had a standing agreement to unload freight for her when their services were needed already had come through the store, and were waiting for her on the new platform. Dexterously she guided the team with the jerkline and by word of mouth, so that the load crept along not two inches from the edge of the platform and came to a stop.
She left her team standing, for Hiram Hooker was to ride back on her black saddle pony for them as soon as the remainder of the outfit had reached the camp. Whistling, with her leather chaps swishing, she walked through the store, smiling right and left at the clerks.
"Well, Jo, how was the trip?" asked Huber as she leaned on the edge of the window to the proprietor's office and handed him her bills of lading.
"Oh, much the same as usual," she replied. "The whirlwinds gave us some trouble. They're prevalent this time of year on the desert, and are sometimes fearfully annoying—especially so if it's been dry for a few days and the top of the sand isn't moist."
"What do they do to you, Jo?" asked Huber interestedly.
"Drive you crazy sometimes," she laughed. "They're just like little cyclones, you know. You'll be moving along serenely, when one of them will steal up behind you, and before you know it you're the center of a maelstrom of sand and dust, unable to see, your hat gone, your mouth and nose filled with—well, about everything that the desert boasts of. I was feeding hay to a pair of my horses this noon, when a whirlwind slipped up on me. I threw myself flat on the ground, as one must do or be swept off his feet, and when it had passed there was not one scrap of that dry alfalfa hay where I'd thrown it. I found my hat a mile distant. My nostrils and ears and eyes and mouth were literally loaded with dirt and fine hay chaff. And my hair! Heavens!" She put her hands to it. "I usually wear it in braids, you know, but to-day I thought I'd be smart and perk up a bit. Now I'll have to 'go to the cleaners,' as Heine says."
Huber laughed. "Say, Jo," he said, "that reminds me. There's a girl here that'll give you a shampoo. She runs a shooting gallery, and has a little beauty parlor on the side. Oh, we're getting quite urban at Ragtown. We'll have Turkish baths next. Go to see her—she'll fix you up."
"I'll just do that," said Jo, and went out on the street.
Then for the first time she became aware that Lucy Dalles was the proprietress of Ragtown's beauty parlor, and even then she did not find it out until she was inside the parlor and Lucy entered by a side door that connected with the gallery. It was too late to back out gracefully, even had Jo been inclined to do so.
"Why, hello!" she said. "I didn't know you ran this place. Miss Dalles, isn't it? We met in the Palace Dance Hall one night, didn't we?"
Lucy smiled professionally. She did not like this strong, rugged, beautiful girl who strode along the street with such a firm, conquering tread and left men gaping after her. Still, she could not afford to show her dislike.
"Oh, yes—I remember you perfectly well," she said. "Who wouldn't remember the famous Jerkline Jo! Is there something I can do for you?"
"Mercy, yes!" laughed Jo. "One look at me ought to show you that." She told about the whirlwind, and Lucy smiled thinly, and indicated the chair.
Jo climbed into it, and was bundled with clean, perfumed towels that caused her to grow reminiscent of school days and dainty dresses and all the things that as Jerkline Jo she had been obliged to put aside.
"Do you know," she said as Lucy began her delicate ministrations, "I've never before in my life been in a beauty parlor."
"You are one of the few women who do not need one," said Lucy, forced to a sincere compliment by the undeniable, fresh beauty of her patron.
"Oh, thank you!" said Jo with a laugh. "It's not just that, though. I expect, if the truth were told, I've needed the services of a beauty artist for years. But I was raised in a construction camp, you know, until I was pretty much of a young lady, and such things were entirely out of my ken. Then at Palada, where my foster father eventually settled and went into the freighting business and running a store, we were not so progressive as Ragtown even. So when I went to boarding school in the Middle West I was virtually immune from many of the new fads. You, then, are the first person that ever washed my hair—except myself, of course. I remember even that my dear old foster mother always made me wash it when I was a kid—once a year perhaps," she ended with a laugh. "Poor ma! She had little enough time to fuss with a child's hair, cooking for big, hungry men all the time as she was, and driving a slip team while she was resting."
Jo was merely trying to make conversation, for she could think of little to say that she thought might touch a responsive cord in the fluffy girl from the city. Jerkline Jo was a man's woman. She could talk about almost anything that other women could not bring into their conversation.
"You've had an interesting life, haven't you?" observed Lucy, manipulating Jo's scalp till the skin tingled pleasantly. "I wish I could have met you when I was writing moving-picture scenarios. What a character you would have made for the heroine of a Western thriller!"
"Oh, you've written scenarios! How interesting! And—and—if this isn't trespassing on delicate ground—sold them?"
Lucy tittered. "Yes, I sold some of them," she replied.
This gave them a basis for conversation, and they progressed famously until the grinning face of a railroad-construction stiff appeared suddenly at the door.
"Hey!" he called to other stiffs behind him. "Look wot's goin' on!"
"Hello, there, 'Squinty' Malley!" and Jo laughed. "Get your face out of that door. This is sacred ground, you roughneck!"
"Look at Jo!" derided Squinty, an old friend of the girl's in many a half-remembered camp. "Hey, youse plugs, gadder 'round here and lamp Jerkline Jo dollin' up! Good night!"
"Beat it now!" Jo reiterated.
"Say, dis here's good!" retorted Squinty. "I to't youse was a reg'lar woman, Jo! Youse know more 'bout cuffin' ole Jack an' Ned dan youse do 'bout fixin' yer hair. Say, lady," he addressed Lucy, "fix 'er up—hey? Doll 'er up proper, an' le's see wot de ol'-timer looks like."
"You'll oblige me by getting out of the door," said Lucy indignantly.
"Oh, don't scold the poor eel!" pleaded Jerkline Jo. "He doesn't know any better. So you want to see me dolled up, do you, Squint? By George, you're on, old-timer! I've got some glad rags here in this burg. Go on now! I'll be the queen of the ball to-night!"
"Lucy," Jo laughed familiarly when the tramps had vanished, "fix up my hair the best you possibly can. Give me the latest, will you? I'm going to have some fun to-night."
An hour later, when darkness had settled over Ragtown and the night's revel was on, there entered the Palace Dance Hall a figure that brought gamblers from their absorbing games, stopped the dizzying whirl of the dancers, and caused glasses that were halfway to eager lips to pause in mid-air.
Jerkline Jo's almost black hair was piled on top of her head in bewildering fashion, and set off with flashing rhinestone ornaments, furnished by Lucy Dalles. Jo wore a semievening dress of pale-blue silk, and Lucy had powdered her face and neck until little contrast could be noted between skin that had braved the desert winds and that which had been protected. Jo wore fashionable slippers with great shell buckles and high French heels. She cast a dazzling smile over the silent assemblage, then threw back her glorious head and let her laughter ring.
That laugh revealed her identity.
"Jerkline Jo!" came a chorus of yells, and men stared at her, while women drew together in groups, their comments expressed in lowered voices.
As they crowded around her Lucy Dalles peered in at the door, a contemptuous sneer on her lips.
"Have a good time, old girl!" she muttered, grinding her little white teeth. "But I learned something to-day that'll setyouback a step or two. Get me to doll you up, will you, you impossible roughneck? You'll pay for that!"
Shortly after Jerkline Jo left the beauty parlor of Lucy Dalles, mischievously bent on giving Ragtown a harmless little shock, Al Drummond sidled up to the old prospector at the bar in the Palace Dance Hall.
"Hello, old-timer," he said with a cheerful smile. "How's prospecting these days?"
The old desert rat fixed a filmy eye on him. "Have a shot," he invited with the suggestion of a thickening tongue.
"Thanks, old hoss. Don't care if I do. That is, if you'll have one with me."
They drank, and Drummond promptly ordered another. A lowering of his left eyelid gave the bartender his instructions, and a sprinkling of powder found its way into the glass that was thumped before Basil Filer.
Not long after this he became agreeable to anything that Al Drummond might suggest. Al took him from place to place, always standing his share of the exorbitant prices demanded in Ragtown, and finally suggested that they try their marksmanship as a diversion.
"Good!" agreed Filer gutturally. "Little girl, eh? Pretty!" He winked knowingly at Drummond. "I wanta have talk with her. I know who she is. B'en trailin' her fer years. Le's go, pardner. You're goo' scout. So'm I—hey?"
"You bet your sweet life you're a good scout! Come on—we'll have a time to-night."
Drummond had previously sent a boy to Lucy with a note informing her that the come-on was about ripe for plucking, and telling her to put some one else in charge of the gallery and be in readiness. Lucy had sent out and found the man who at times relieved her, and when Drummond and the old gold-seeker lurched up she was free to act as the circumstances might demand.
The two men fired at the targets for a little, Filer failing to display the same wonderful marksmanship which he had done earlier in the evening. Eventually Lucy invited the two to go back into the little cabin in the rear of the gallery where she carried on her trifling domestic activities. Filer readily agreed to this, and presently the three were seated around a table in Lucy's cabin, with a coal-oil lamp on it, a deck of cards suggestively in evidence, and a bottle of precious brandy and glasses. Lucy had brought from San Francisco her leopard-skin rug, the overstuffed chairs, and her other extravagances in house furnishings. Their contrast with the new pine walls of the cabin produced an effect quite startling and bizarre. Basil Filer saw none of it, however. He became very drowsy when he was seated. Al Drummond winked at Lucy.
The girl shook her head, and presently, seeing that the prospector was almost asleep, leaned toward her fellow conspirator and whispered:
"Don't hurry about getting his roll. Try to liven him up and get him to talking. I'm curious. He's got something on his mind that may make that buckskin bag look like thirty cents."
"Get the jack," ordered Al. "To-morrow he won't even remember he ever saw us. You're letting your story-telling instinct warp your judgment, Lucy. You're looking for mysteries. I'll get that roll right now."
"No, leave it, Al, please! You can get it later, if I'm wrong. But I just feel that this old fella's got something locked up in his breast. Rouse him and leave him to me. I'll make him talk. I'm sorry you doped him. You may have spoiled everything."
At this instant she looked up to see the bleary old eyes fixed on her intently.
"Feeling better, Uncle?" she asked lightly. "I've got some bromo-seltzer. I'll give you a shot; it will liven you up. Don't want to go down and out so early in the evening, old sport!"
"Desert girl, huh?" thickly muttered Basil Filer. "Huh—I know somethin' 'bout you. You was found on the desert, wasn't ye—when you's li'l' girl—baby girl? I know. Can't fool o' Filer. B'en huntin' you f'r years." He closed his eyes again, and his head sank forward on his breast.
Lucy shook him awake and prepared a dose of bromo-seltzer, which he readily drank at her command.
"How did you know about me, Uncle?" she asked. "What you said is the truth. I was found on the desert here when I was a baby girl. But how did you know? Tell me all about it. Do you know my father's name?"
"Sure! Sure! Name was Len-Len-Len-Leonard Prince. You're Jean Prince. Len Prince was m' ol' pardner. I'm lookin'—lookin' for the claim Len Prince and me and The Chink found—and lost ag'in. Rich! Yellow with gol'. You're Jean Prince—I know. I c'n prove it by your head. Tha's what I wanta see—yer head—down under the hair. That'll tell me you're Baby Jean Prince. Then I c'n find the gold."
Lucy clutched Al Drummond's arm. "Listen to him! Listen to him!" she breathed.
Hiram Hooker stood aghast in the entrance of the Palace Dance Hall. All eyes within were focused on a couple waltzing in the center of the floor to low music. The man was a Mr. Dalworth, Ragtown's new banker, in charge of the branch of a Los Angeles banking institution that had been opened in the frontier camp. The girl, smiling and radiant and glistening with pale-blue silk and gems, was his adventure girl, Jerkline Jo.
Never had Hiram seen Jo in anything but a flannel shirt, Stetson hat, and chaps or divided riding skirt. Despite the fact that she was making money fast and that he was working for her at ninety dollars a month, Hiram had not before looked upon her as entirely out of his reach. He was learning fast, and had lost much of his backwoods uncouthness. He loved Jerkline Jo as only a big-hearted, simple-souled man can love a woman. Some day, he had told himself, he would do something to make himself worthy of her, for he never would ask her to marry him while he was in her employ. He was too proud to ask an independent girl to marry him when he had nothing to offer.
That rare feminine creature gliding so gracefully over the floor with the dapper, well-dressed banker, however, plunged Hiram into the depths of despair. Financially, mentally, and now socially, he felt her altogether out of his world. He had forgotten until now her days at school and in polite society.
It did not make him think the worse of her to see her dancing in a saloon, with rough men from the cities standing about and looking on admirably. Ragtown was Ragtown, and people did things here which would have ostracized them from decent society elsewhere. It was not this that hurt; he knew that the girl was pure-minded and that her morals were flawless, despite what prudish persons—of which there were none in Ragtown—might have thought of her choice of the place which she chose to satisfy her whim of the evening. Jo was one of those rare souls who can pass among evil men and women and not only not be contaminated, but preserve an unsullied reputation, too. It was the dress and the glittering tones and the wonderful coiffure, and her gentlemanly, well-groomed partner of the dance, that caused him to turn away, bitter and broken in spirit.
"Well, how do you like her to-night?" came a taunting voice.
Lucy Dalles had stepped beside him and peering in at the revel.
"Some class, eh? Some lady, I'll say! Oh, sure!"
Hiram could have choked her, but without a remark he sped away from her into the night.
It was then that Lucy Dallas clenched her teeth and hurled invective at the radiant girl within.
She left the scene and hurried back to her little cabin, where the crazy prospector, Basil Filer, lay in a heap on the floor, snoring loudly.
A moment after her entry Al Drummond came in again with another man following him.
"How much jack did you leave him?" he whispered to the girl.
"I left it all. It's safest. What I copied from the paper will be worth a thousand times what's in that money bag."
"Just the same, I want money now—to-night," Drummond said, and, stooping, pulled the poke from the shirt front of the unconscious miner.
"Take only half of it, then," Lucy pleaded. "Then he'll think he spent that much. Don't be a piker, Al. You've got something big to work for, and you try to spoil it by rolling a stiff for a few dollars."
Drummond grunted, slipped a wad of bills into his trousers pocket, and replaced the poke in the desert rat's shirt.
"All right, Stool," he said to the other man. "You take his head; I'll take his feet."
A little later a train of pack burros moved away from Ragtown into the desert night.
A mile from town the man Stool halted them and waited, and presently heard the chug of a motor. Soon Al Drummond drove up in the last of his five-ton trucks, in the bottom of which, tossed about, lay the still unconscious form of the old prospector.
The two men worked swiftly, and slanted two twelve-inch planks two inches thick from the rear end of the truck to the ground. With ropes about the necks of the desert rat's six burros, they hauled and hammered and coaxed them one by one aboard the truck. Then on into the night they drove, over the vast, black desert.
Seventy-five miles from Ragtown they stopped the car, and unloaded the burros and their snoring master. They rolled the man in his blankets, then set the burros' packs about in orderly array and loosed the little animals to crop the bunch grass that was green and succulent in winter. From one pack bag they took cooking utensils and other articles, and ranged them about on the ground as the old man himself might have done upon making camp.
"He'll wake up to-morrow and think he dreamed about Ragtown," chuckled Drummond.
"He sure will know he's nutty then," said Stool.
They climbed once more into the truck, and before dawn were back in the city of tents and new pine shacks.