Shortly before dusk on the night following Jerkline Jo's revel in Ragtown, the empty wagons of her train rumbled to the highest point in the mountain pass and were drawn up side by side, like an artillery organization in "battery-front" formation, on the shores of the mountain lake.
Jo's fireless cooker had been working for her throughout the trip, and while her bantering skinners cared for the teams and greased the great axles in preparation for the morrow's journey, the girl made ready the evening meal.
At last supper was over, and, as was their custom, the men helped her wash the dishes. Thus the task became a short one. The men settled down to their smoking about the crackling camp fire, and as light still remained at this high altitude, Jo decided on a stroll along the lake shore.
All about stood the tall peaks, their crests snow-mantled. Over the level lowlands about the lake the silent forests of pine and fir swept away on all sides. The lake, some two miles in length, lay like an opal in the palm of the mountains, flashing fiery colors that it stole from the sunset clouds above it.
The air was chill and quiet. Not a ripple disturbed the surface of the tranquil lake, so cold and remote. Jo buttoned her coat for warmth and trudged on away from the camp, watching flocks of chattering mudhens and mallards that fed on a long spaghettilike growth which grew on the lake bottom and floated to the surface.
She walked for a mile before she turned. She was thinking of the previous night, and of the banker's unexpected proposal of marriage when she had accepted his invitation for supper after the dance. She had known Dalworth only a short time, and his ardent wooing had come as a distinct surprise.
Now she had turned back toward the winking eye of the camp fire, which threw a brilliant dagger of light across the now dark lake. In the stream of fiery color, water fowl bobbed about grotesquely. Close at hand was a grove of pines, a few trees extending down to the shore, though for the most part the land immediately about the lake was an open, grassy meadow. She heard a slight rustling in among the pines as she passed them.
She had not strapped on her cartridge belt and six-shooter when leaving camp. In fact, she seldom carried the weapon, but always kept it hanging close to her hand in the wagon. Now and then she strapped it on when in Ragtown, for of late an element had been sifting in with which she was not familiar. It represented the riffraff from the cities—men who knew nothing of construction camps and were unaware of the fact that she, because of old associations and a thorough understanding of frontier men and frontier life, could enter a dance hall and still be respected and absolutely safe from harm. One of these had put an arm about her one night, and promptly had been rewarded with a blow on the nose; for Jo did not slap when she administered rebuke, but punched expertly and powerfully, as does a man. Next moment the offender had been pitched bodily into the street by as many rough hands as could lay hold of him. Only Jo's intervention had saved the man from being kicked into insensibility.
Once again she heard the rustling, and wished that she had her gun. It was only some animals, she told herself—a coon or a skunk, or perhaps a wild cat or coyote prowling about to spring upon an unsuspecting mudhen that had swam too far inshore. Still, a strange dread seized her, and she quickened her step.
Again she heard the rustle and the sound of a soft footfall. No animal would have produced that single, rather heavy tread. She glanced apprehensively toward the dark trees, and it seemed to her that she saw a black upright bulk move stealthily from one trunk to another.
Then two things happened at once. From the pines stealthily emerged the figure of a man—there was no mistaking it. But in the same instant there came a call from close at hand:
"Jo! Jo! Where are you?"
A feeling of vast relief came over the girl as she recognized the caressing voice of the man from Wild-cat Hill. Instantly the figure on her left faded; the blur of it became one with the shadows of the trees.
"Hiram!" she called gladly. "Here I am! Hurry!"
The sound of running feet answered her, and in a little while the big form of Hiram Hooker reached her side.
Jo was breathing weakly. She could not remember of ever before having been so near a panic or fright. What had caused the unfamiliar feeling now was a mystery to her—unless the suggested menace in the sight of the dark, skulking figure had been augmented by the ghostly quietude of the black forest and the unfriendly solitude of the cold mountain lake.
"Oh, Hiram!" she cried. "I'm so glad you're here! Hiram—I—I believe I'm sc-scared."
How it happened neither of them knew, for all at once his powerful arms were about her, and she had crept into them as less courageous women instinctively seek the protection of the stronger sex. His arms tightened and she pressed closer to him as if she were cold and seeking warmth. Hiram was ablaze with love for her and exultation. He lifted her bodily from the ground, and her lips quivered against his.
"Oh, Hiram! Hiram!" she cried then as if in terror. "What am I doing? What is the matter with me? You kissed me, Hiram, and—and I let you! I must have been terribly frightened. I—I seem to have lost my reason."
"No! No! Don't say that!" begged Hiram huskily. "Jo, I love you! You love me, Jo. Say you love me."
She hid her face against his breast and said nothing, but her shoulders shook.
"Jo, say it!" he pleaded. "Don't torment me! You must love me. You came to my arms when trouble threatened. Tell me that you love me, Jo!"
She only trembled and shivered as if cold.
"Tell me, Jo! Don't torture me. Tell me that you love me!"
There was a stifled sob; then, in muffled tones:
"You big, blind country jake! If you don't know that I'm telling you that with every nerve and fiber of my being, you deserve torture!"
The forest and the lake came together in Hiram's vision, then vanished. There was no lake, no trees, no sentinel peaks about them.
"But, Jo," said Hiram as they walked back slowly toward the camp, his arm about her waist, "I can't marry you. I've got nothing—I'm only your skinner. You—why, your profits every month run up into four figures. Oh, I wish you hadn't a cent! I wish Drummond had beaten us out!"
"What foolish talk!" she said scornfully. "What is money? I care so little for money, Hiram. It was only to try and preserve from total collapse all my hard-working, indomitable, old foster father had built up so patiently that I undertook the freighting job. I've made money—lots of it—and if you think you and the rest of the boys haven't had a big share in my success you're all wrong. We'll keep on skinning them to Ragtown till the steel is laid; then I mean to do something handsome by the men who have been so loyal to me, and sell the outfit. Then"—she sighed—"then something else," she finished.
"But that's neither here nor there," Hiram pointed out. "I'm penniless compared with you. I couldn't marry a girl who had money while I have nothing to offer her. I'm too much of a man for that. Why, everything that I have I owe to you—even the education I am so slowly acquiring."
"Oh, I won't listen to such talk, Hiram! Most of my money is invested in Tweet's project, anyway. We'll let him handle it, and you and I will continue to study and improve ourselves. Then when Tweet begins to pay us dividends we'll travel, and——"
"On your money! Not in a thousand years!"
"You're bull-headed about a trifle, Hiram," she accused.
"Jo," he said after a thoughtful pause, "don't wear that blue silk dress and those diamonds and have your hair fixed that way any more. It—it makes me feel hollowlike."
They had almost forgotten the man in the pines, there was so much else to think about now. Jo was almost ready to confess that she had imagined the entire incident—that she had heard only a prowling animal and had seen the shadow of a shrub. Hiram, on his part, was too triumphant over the thought that he, only a few months from the backwoods of Mendocino County, had captured the heart of this splendid girl, whom men praised and admired and swore by throughout all the desert region.
Still the man was stubborn. In him was a knight-errantry which forbade him to marry a girl and profit by the rewards of her pluck, energy, and business courage. If he could not make money to offer her, he must do something big for her, must win for her some conflict that threatened her fortunes, must make himself worthy of her by some great service.
Hiram still kept his boyish dreams of the adventure girl who had beckoned him from the forests to deeds of emprise. He had found his adventure girl, but he would not consider that he had won her yet. He little knew that night that his opportunity was close at hand, and that the shadow which the coming event had cast before it had lurked there in the lakeside pines.
Eight days later Jerkline Jo leaned on the ledge of the office window in Huber's store at Ragtown and handed him the various papers which accompanied a consignment of freight from Julia.
"There's no hay, Jo," he cried, looking up in perplexity and worriment.
"The Mulligan Supply Company was short of hay when we left," Jo explained. "They hoped to have a trainload in by the time I got back."
"There's the dickens to pay!" he grumbled. "They know I have to have hay right along. I've a standing order for at least half a load of hay every trip. These settlers are buying it fast. I have only ten bales on hand. Next fellow that comes along will probably want all ten of them. A nice mess! What's the matter with those Ikes over there at Julia? Are they asleep?"
"It seems they've had some difficulty in getting alfalfa here lately," the girl explained. "I'm sorry, Mr. Huber. The best I can do for you is to promise to bring every bale I can next trip."
"Rush it," ordered the merchant. "If you can make it, let somebody else's order ride, Jo, and bring me every pound you can."
"I'll see what can be done," was her promise as she left and went to the little cabin that she had had built for her at the edge of town.
Here she cleansed herself of the stains of the trip, and substituted for chaps and flannel shirt a new tailor-made suit which had just come from Los Angeles. As she was about to go out again Twitter-or-Tweet Orr Tweet knocked on her door.
"Jo," he said with his whimsical smile, "I'm showing a couple o' men some property, and thought you might like to take a ride. You've never seen much of the cultivated land, have you—except from a distance? Come 'n' see what chances your money's got in Paloma Rancho, the Homesteader's Promised Land of Milk and Honey. Won't be gone over an hour."
His car was waiting, with his two prospective land purchasers in the tonneau. Jo readily agreed, for she had nothing to occupy her, and Tweet helped her in beside the driver's seat, after introducing the men to her.
Tweet drove slowly and talked a great deal, steering the car with one hand and directing his conversation at all three of his listeners. He dwelt at length to the strangers on Jerkline Jo's great success in her freighting enterprise, not neglecting to mention that she was investing a great portion of her profits in Paloma Rancho. The men were impressed.
Jo, too, was impressed with Tweet's abilities as a salesman. He emanated confidence, and his enthusiasm seemed well-founded and sincere. In fact, the new alfalfa ranches and the orchards of young pear trees looked promising indeed, and the projects showed evidences of thrift and capability on the part of the ranchers and near-ranchers who had bought land on contract from the discoverer of Paloma Rancho's dormant possibilities.
Tweet told of his idea of eventually tapping the mountain lake near which Jo was wont to camp and bringing the water down to irrigate such portions of desert land as might require it; for there were places where three hundred feet of boring had not developed a drop of the precious fluid. The promoter had an engineer's estimate of the cost of the entire water system, and said that his original figures had been pretty close.
It all seemed feasible, and things looked generally prosperous. Jo enjoyed her ride and the opportunity to see what had been accomplished. Returning, however, the complete enjoyment of the trip was marred by tire trouble, and, with one thing and another, it was nine o'clock at night before the party, reached Ragtown.
They were ravenously hungry, and Tweet invited the three to dinner in the town's closest approach to a satisfactory restaurant. It was after ten o'clock when they left the table. Tweet gallantly asked to accompany Jo to her cabin, and both were laughing at the absurdity of a girl like Jerkline Jo needing an escort, when Hiram Hooker hurried up to them.
"Well, I c'n see who's cut out," said Tweet, assuming a mournful expression. "So, if you don't mind, Jo, I'll get over to the hotel and keep after those two suckers. Take care of her, Wild Cat, and do whatever she tells you to do, or answer to me with your life. There's only one Jerkline Jo, you know, and the world needs her all the time. So long, playmates!"
"Jo," said Hiram when Tweet had bustled away up the dimly lighted street, "there's an awful mess. Heine and Jim and Tom and Blink are all drunk as fiddlers!"
"What!" Jo stopped in her tracks and held him by the arm. "Oh, dear!" she cried. "How could they do such a thing! I've watched them so carefully, and they've been so good. But the moment I'm out of their sight for a few hours—— Oh, dear! I didn't think that they'd treat me that way!"
"I can't get it straight myself, Jo," Hiram told her. "They always hoist a few when we get in, and sometimes I join them. I've never before seen any of them when he wasn't at least able to ramble safely back to camp. But to-night they're all four dead to the world. I can't even shake a word out of them. Heine just sits there in the Dugout, with his head on his breast, and is like a dead man."
"Where were you?"
"In camp—studying. About half past nine I thought I'd stroll into town and get a cigar and see what the boys were doing. I couldn't find them in the Palace, and went from place to place till I stumbled on them in the Dugout, every last one of them down and out. I was looking for Tweet, to have him take the bunch of them to camp in his car, when I saw you folks come out of the restaurant."
"The Dugout," puzzled Jo. "Do they go there often?"
"Hardly ever. It's the worst dump in town, as you know. They're all crooked enough, but I've heard strange whisperings about certain shady happenings in the Dugout."
"Was anybody with them?"
"Not when I found them."
"Hiram," said Jo, "it sounds like dope to me. They're loyal to me, I tell you. No, they're not to blame—they'd never treat me that way. They've been doped."
"But why? And by whom?"
"Those are questions. None of them have any money on them to speak of, I know. I've got the bank pass books of every one of them in my chest. Again, who'd have the nerve to dope and try to roll a skinner of Jerkline Jo's? He'd be playing with fire. These dive keepers know all about me; they know my power. I could mobilize an army of two hundred stiffs in an hour's time, and if I asked it they'd lay every dump in Ragtown flat. You bet these parasites know better than to trifle with Jerkline Jo."
Her dark eyes flashed angrily in the light of a store window.
"Well, let's not stand here bewailing our fate like children lost in the woods. We've simply got togetout to-morrow. Mr. Huber is wild about the shortness of his stock of hay, and I promised to rush him all I could. Get Tweet and dump my boys into his car and take 'em to camp. We'll see what we can do to bring them out of it and make them fit for the trip by morning."
Far into the morning hours, in the outfit's camp on the edge of town, Jo and Hiram strove to revive the stupefied men, but nothing beyond groans could they get from them.
"They're doped, Hiram—pitilessly doped!" Jo cried in despair at last. "Go for Doctor Dennison. Carry him on your shoulders if he won't come."
The medical man came readily at Hiram's request, and after a brief examination of the sluggish men remarked that Jo's surmise had been correct. He then ordered her to go to her cabin and get some badly needed sleep, and at once went to work on the unconscious quartet, with Hiram aiding all he could.
"Whoever did this cursed thing, Wild Cat," said the physician, "was an amateur. He might have killed them. They've taken aboard terrible doses, and I can tell you right now that not one of them will start for Julia to-day. You may as well tell Jo to make other arrangements."
His prophecy proved correct. Heine Schultz had regained consciousness when dawn came, but was unable to tell a coherent story of what had occurred, and was deathly sick. The other three still remained unresponsive to the doctor's treatment.
"Well," said Jo, when she answered Hiram's knock on her cabin door at five-thirty, "what must be must. Huber has to have hay. I promised it, and Jerkline Jo never, never breaks a promise. So hook up the blacks and whites, Hiram, and lead six of Heine's team to be added to yours and six of Jim's for me. Hook on two trailers. You and I will make it to Julia and drive sixteen each back here with Huber's hay. That's the very best we can do, but we'll do that the best we know how. I'll be out by the time you get 'em hooked up. We'll nibble our breakfast as we travel. Shoot the piece, Hiram boy, my knight from Wild-cat Hill!"
That night in a pelting hail storm Jerkline Jo and Hiram went into camp beside the mountain lake, and the stage was set for the second act in the plot cooked up by the two who had lost all principle under Ragtown's subtle influence—Al Drummond and Lucy Dalles.
The storm in the mountains continued all night, the downpour shifting from hail to sleet and from sleet to a cold, drenching rain. Jo in her remote little tent kept dry and comfortable. Hiram kept the same, rolled in his blankets under a wagon, the ground about it ditched to run the water off. There was shelter for the mules and horses, too, for at the approach of winter Jo had freighted to the mountain camping site sufficient lumber for a roof, which was supported by poles cut from the forest.
It was still dark and raining when the two beleaguered freighters continued their journey next morning. Hiram, with eight of his own black horses hitched to the wagon, and four span of mules and horses leading, went ahead, as usual. They left the level mountain valley that swaddled the lake and started down the steep grades toward the Julia side of the desert.
"We'll have a pull coming back if this keeps up!" Jo shouted through the rain, just as Hiram's teams began negotiating the system of hairpin curves upon which Jo's skinners had rolled the boulder in retaliation for the drained water tank.
Hiram did not hear her, for the wagons were rumbling, thirty-two sets of big hoofs were sloshing in mud, the bells a-jingle, the rain a roar.
Jo wore a yellow oilskin slicker and a sou'wester of the same material, and rubber knee boots. Only her pretty face, smiling from the concealing garments, showed that she was a woman.
The animals that trailed behind Hiram's wagon went out of sight around the first curve. The last of these mules were not a hundred feet ahead of the noses of Jo's white leaders. As her leaders reached the curve Jo called shrilly to her off-pointer to cross the chain and pull the wagon away from the rock wall on the right-hand side. Obediently the mare stepped over the chain, and she and her mate began pulling the pole at an angle of forty-five degrees from the direction in which the leaders and swings were traveling. The wagon and its trailer made the sharp curve, and the mare was stepping back into place at Jo's command, when suddenly the girl's breathing was shut off, and she was whipped from her feet as if a cyclone had struck her.
Several pairs of arms were about her; a heavy cloth was over her mouth and nose and eyes. Fighting frantically against she knew not what, she was borne rapidly toward the tail-end of the wagon. Some one's arms were about her middle; another pair circled her shoulders; still another held her booted legs at the knees.
She tried to scream, but only a vague b-b-r-r sounded through the cloth that covered her face. She kicked and clawed and twisted and jerked and squirmed with surprising suddenness. Nevertheless, a rope was bound about her slicker, round and round from her shoulders to her ankles, swathing her like the bandages of a mummy, until she was almost as stiff as one. She heard the roar of the rain, but no sound of her moving team. She was whipped from the ground as if she weighed no more than ten pounds; and in a horizontal position the three pairs of arms bore her along rapidly in the direction that she had come, much as if she were a roll of canvas bound about with marline hitches.
Presently she felt herself ascending; then wet foliage brushed her face. Not a word had been spoken—almost she had heard not a sound, because of the noise of the rain and the slushy hoofbeats and the bells. Whoever her captors were, they had lain in wait until the elbow of the curve separated Hiram's outfit and hers, and then had climbed in her wagon at the rear and stolen stealthily upon her from behind. Their work had been distressingly thorough.
She was not greatly frightened, merely stunned and bewildered. What on earth could be the meaning of such an act, was the question that kept uppermost in her thoughts as she felt herself borne swiftly along through the dripping forest.
Meantime, Hiram Hooker had looked back to watch Jerkline Jo's whites round the curve. There were not many opportunities for looking back at the girl that Hiram did not improve. He loved to watch Jo's expert handling of the team in tight places. It made a picture to delight the heart of any man. He saw the leaders come around, then the swings. Next he saw the off pointer mare recrossing the chain and returning to place. Then came the butt team and—an empty wagon.
For an instant or two Hiram gazed unbelievingly, then turned and set his brake, calling to his team to whoa. Next moment he was running back.
He sprang into Jo's empty wagon, set the brake, and stopped her team. Then he was out by the tail end, running back along the road, calling frantically.
On the left-hand side of the road yawned a chasm, five hundred feet in depth. Had something happened? Had Jo fallen down this precipice?
As he ran he skirted the edge, shouting down. Only the pelting rain and the swish of forest trees made a mocking answer. If for any reason the girl had been obliged to leave the wagon, she would have stopped her team. This was no place to allow a team to travel alone.
He was thunderstruck—scarce able to believe his senses. Back in the road he trotted along, his blue eyes searching expertly in the mud for signs of what had happened. But it seemed that the trampling of the animals that were following Jo's wagon had obliterated every trace, provided the girl had been afoot in the road. And she must have been afoot there, or flown up into the sky!
Ah! He came to an abrupt halt. In the mud at the roadside was a single footprint—the print of a man's shoe. Then on the rock wall on the right-hand side of the road, and close to the footprint, was fresh mud. On hands and knees Hiram climbed up the rocky slope, and at the top found mud again. Buckthorn bushes grew close by. Some one had brushed against them recently, for the raindrops had been shaken from the leaves. In all the big-timber country of Mendocino County there had been no surer trailer than Hiram Hooker. For days he had followed panther and bear, eventually to track them to their lairs. No big animal hunt ever had been considered complete without Hiram Hooker to go along.
He remembered the incident of the man in the pines by the lake shore and groaned: "Fools!" he muttered. "They thought the rain would help cover their trail, where it only makes it plainer. Men can't travel through wet bushes without leaving a trail that looks like it had been made with whitewash and a broom. What has happened? Oh, Jo! Jo!"
He was off at a lope, his eyes darting glances hither and thither, following the trail as accurately as a hound follows a scent. Here leaves glistened with raindrops—there they looked dull. The trail was plain.
What has happened? The footprint of a man, and no sight of tracks made by the girl! Hiram was unarmed. He had left his wagon too surprised to think of grabbing up the Colt that he carried. Should he go back now and get Jo's six-shooter? No, the rain was falling too fast. Soon the bushes that the kidnapers had brushed in their escape would be covered with drops of water again, and the tail would vanish, since the land was rocky and showed no footprints. He must keep as close to the fleeing men as possible. He knew there must be more than one to manhandle Jerkline Jo!
Thus raced his thoughts as he sped on, never for an instant faltering on the trail.
"If it only doesn't rain harder!" came his groan. He prayed with childlike simplicity against this calamity, for more rain would wipe out the trail altogether.
He saw a large pine knot as he ran along, and paused to grasp it up. It was heavy with pitch and shaped like the warclub of an Indian. It was, in fact, too heavy, and few men would have considered it in the light of a weapon. Fifty yards farther Hiram found a mate to it, and picked it up too. Then he sped on and on into the forest of pines and firs, praying that the brush would not give out and make his trailing slower.
If these men ahead of him were trusting to their own legs to get away with Jerkline Jo, their legs would have to be better than any Hiram Hooker ever before had matched his own against. Why, he could keep up this pace for hours and hours! He knew more about surmounting the difficulties of a forest wilderness than any man in the south, he proudly told himself. These woods were as nothing compared with the majestic, seemingly endless sweep of the vast forests which he had roamed since childhood! If they did not take to horses, he'd make them sick of their bargains before they had gone many miles!
Vaguely Hiram Hooker sensed a diabolical plot as he pounded on through the rain, tireless, determined, remorseless, on the trail of the abductors of Jerkline Jo.
The doping of his four fellow skinners at Ragtown had a part in the plan. It had been done deliberately to force the girl and Hiram into the wilderness alone. Some one had known of Huber's shortage of hay, and had schemed accordingly, aware of Jerkline Jo's eternal willingness to do her best by her patrons, regardless of the strain upon herself. The plotters had not been able to get at Hiram. Perhaps they had not tried. Jerkline Jo would hardly essay a trip to Julia and back alone. Too many difficulties might arise on the road that a lone skinner—even a man skinner—could not cope with. So they perhaps had not molested Hiram, hoping, if he were on his feet, that the girl would attempt the trip with him. They had waited at the first U curve, and the moment he was out of sight had pounced upon her. Suppose he had not chanced to look back? The many curves ahead would have hidden her from him for nearly an hour after that first one had been passed. That would have given them a start, the disadvantage of which he could not have overcome. As it was, though, he knew that he was hot on their trail, and burdened as they were, was gaining on them at every leap. Was Drummond back of this? Hiram could think of no one else who would be even remotely at enmity with the lovable Jerkline Jo.
He brought up suddenly and squatted behind a bush of southern manzanita. Just ahead, in an open portion of the forest, was a group of three men, standing in a circle about a stiff, immovable figure on the ground. Three saddled horses stood close by, their tails turned toward the rain, their heads lowered disconsolately.
The men had just stopped and laid down their burden, which was nothing else than the tightly bound body of Jerkline Jo. All three men wore masks over their faces and new bright-blue overalls to further aid in hiding their identities. Hiram saw the rope about the girl, running in a spiral from her shoulders to her ankles. He saw the cloth over her face, knotted behind her head.
What should he do? There were three men standing about the girl, rubbing their arms, which probably ached from the strain of carrying her. Beyond a doubt they were armed. He tried to think, to plan; but in the midst of it all half-formulated schemes deserted him because of the sudden action of one of them.
He had taken something from his pocket, and now he and another stooped over the prostrate figure of the girl. One man grasped her head in both hands; the next instant Hiram realized with horror that a blade was gleaming dully through the rain in the right hand of the other man. The third stooped and squatted on Jo's ankles.
Hiram Hooker had at least one more accomplishment than has been mentioned. As a boy he had used it to terrify his elders on dark nights in the forest. He could imitate the piercing, blood-chilling scream of the prowling panther until women in lonely forest cabins clutched their breasts in fear, and men's faces blanched. Sprinting from his place of concealment like a football player, crouching low as he ran, he bore down upon the three men, and had almost reached them before he loosed that terrorizing cry. Before it had died out in the lonely, dripping wilderness, he was flailing right and left with a huge pine knot in either hand, amazing and invincible as Sampson with his jawbone of an ass.
With yells of terror, the trio rocked back on their haunches and struggled frantically to gain their feet. There was a sickening crack, and the man who had held Jo's head pitched backward, a victim of one of Hiram's warclubs. Swinging about, he aimed a blow with his left-hand club, but its intended target ducked, and the club descended on the man's shoulder, wringing a cry of pain from lips that whitened suddenly.
The third man was up now, and sprang upon Hiram's back. The other charged him from in front. Hiram hurled his left-hand club straight into this man's face, and with his free hand reached down and grasped the left leg of the man who had climbed him in the rear. Carrying this man, who all the time was raining blows on his head, Hiram ran with all his might for a close-by pine. As he neared it he whirled about and threw himself at it backward with every atom of his force.
There followed a terrible impact, and in his ear exploded the breath of the man on his back, as he came in violent contact with the trunk of the tree. The shock pitched Hiram forward on his face, and the man who had climbed upon him fell limply to the earth, the wind entirely crushed out of him.
Hiram bounded to his feet and confronted the man into whose face he had thrown the pine knot, and who now was rushing him, brandishing a revolver. Hiram's blow had knocked the mask from this man's face, but it was a face that Hiram had never seen before.
A shot barked dully in the heavy atmosphere of the forest, and the smoke hung in a little ball. Hiram felt the impact of the bullet, and was whirled half around with the force of it. He knew he had been hit some place—in the breast or shoulder perhaps—but as yet felt not the slightest pain. Fire flashed in his very face, now, and this time he smelled the acrid powder; but he had been in motion when the trigger was pressed and the bullet whined away fretfully through the trees. On the heels of the second report came that sickening crack once more, and the face of the man that glared through the smoke at Hiram went red with a smear of blood.
He sank to his knees, and Hiram spun about just in time to aim another crashing blow at the skull of the man whom he had catapulted into the tree. His mask still held in place, but his hat was off and Hiram saw that his hair was brown and wavy. There had not been time to aim, and the blow fell on his assailant's neck.
They clinched, went down together, rolling over and over, clawing at each other like fighting lynxes.
"Gi' me the paper! Gi' me the paper!" yelled a voice, as Hiram climbed uppermost on his man and fought to free his entangled arms.
At the same instant other arms were thrown about him from behind. The man he had hit first had reëntered the fight, it seemed.
With a herculean heave the man from Wild-cat Hill lurched backward, carrying his lighter assailant with him. Hiram had lost his club. He grasped the man on his back by the under part of his thighs, as he had the other, and lifted his feet from the ground. Then, so quickly that the man was taken off his guard, Hiram leaped into the air and fell backward, falling with all the weight of his huge body on the man who clung to him like an abalone to a rock.
"Wuff!" he heard again, as the fellow's breath forsook him in a spasm of pain. He lost his hold on Hiram, and Hiram flopped over.
"Run! Get a horse! Get away with the paper!" this fellow choked; and as Hiram sprang upon him he saw the other rise and totter toward a horse.
Crashing a blow to the face of the man under him, Hiram sprang to his feet and lunged at the one who was fleeing. Whatever "the paper" meant, it was the nucleus of the plot, it appeared, and Hiram purposed to have it.
But, grasping frantically for a stirrup, then sprawling along the neck of the nearest horse, the man yelled to the animal, and it leaped away with him through the trees.
Hiram whirled back, beaten in that direction, and made for the other, who was on his feet and also running toward the two remaining mounts. The third man still lay inert.
Hiram started running for the second escaping man, but suddenly his knees refused to hold his legs to their accustomed task. Blindness was coming upon him, but he continued to grope toward the horses. Then again came the sounds of rapidly thundering hoofs. Hiram Hooker sighed weakly and placed both hands to his breast, which seemed weighted with some heavy object, or bound about tightly with a rope. His hands came away red and wet He wilted in his tracks, sighed again, and seemed to drift placidly into a deep, soothing sleep.
Then a noise partially awoke him. His senses swam, and he thought he heard himself laughing crazily, but could not make sure whether he was laughing or only had imagined it. A man was reeling toward the remaining horse, both hands to his head, and he looked so helpless and befuddled that Hiram laughed again—or thought he did. The man groaned and mumbled, then fell flat on his face, as a baby falls in an unchecked collapse. A little while he lay there, then struggled to his feet again, and tottered toward the horse, who seemed to be neighing shrilly for the mates that had deserted him.
Why, that was what Hiram had heard, he reasoned. He had not been laughing at all. A long space of semiconsciousness. Then came the dull thunder of hoofs once more. Hiram half raised his body on an elbow. There lay Jerkline Jo, stiff and immovable in her yellow oilskins. There was no one else about. Save himself, of course, but he was so sleepy.
He fell back with a crash.
Bound and helpless, Jerkline Jo Modock lay on the ground and listened to the sounds of the battle raging around her. She knew that her hero from Wild-cat Hill had come with his terrorizing panther scream, and she heard curses and thudding clubs, then popping revolver shots.
She was struggling desperately to free herself of her bonds, but she only wearied herself and accomplished nothing. With her teeth she chewed at the cloth that covered her face, trying to draw it down below her eyes, so that she could at least see; but her efforts here proved futile, too. Then she began twisting her head from side to side and hunching her shoulders, which she found she could move, in an effort to loosen the knot at the back of her head, or to scrape the cloth away.
This last in time she accomplished, but it was long after all sounds of the conflict had ceased.
As the cloth came loose she moved it along by sticking out her tongue and working it from side to side, at the same time tossing her head about. At last it slipped off, and, by raising her head, she gazed about through the dark, wet trees.
She had heard the thud of horses' hoofs, but now not a horse was to be seen. Fifty feet from her, perhaps, lay the silent form of Hiram Hooker, flat on his back. No other human being save herself and Hiram seemed to be in all that dripping wilderness.
Time and again she called to the man to whom she had given her heart, but Hiram's lips remained motionless. A great fear clutched at her. Hiram was dead.
She fought down her terror, the horror of it all, and sought desperately for a way to release herself. She was bound round and round until she was so stiff that even to roll over and over on the ground was impossible, as she could get no purchase whatever for her strong, tough muscles. She began striving to bend her knees, and in this, as the bonds gradually changed position and gave a little, she was eventually successful. Once she had a start in this tiresome process, she gained more and more, and finally she could move her legs from their straight position.
She rested then, and when she began squirming again found that she was able to flop over on her side.
In this new position she looked about over the ground for something to help her, and close at hand she saw the dull gleam of steel.
As yet she had not the remotest idea of why she had been kidnaped; nor had she seen any of the persons who had perpetrated the act. Not a word had been spoken to her or in her presence before the fight. She had heard the man yelling about "the paper," though, toward the close of the battle, but no other words throughout the entire ordeal.
The blade that showed its dull steel against the soggy brown pine needles lay five feet beyond her reach. But now she could roll to it, and began to do so, flopping along like a fish in the bottom of a boat. She rested when her face was close to it, and began to study how she might make use of it.
She might be able to take it in her teeth, but doubted if she could reach that part of the rope about her shoulders, even then. If it was a dagger, she could not think how she could utilize it, as it probably would have no cutting edge. If it was a pocketknife, it doubtless would be dull, as pocketknives usually are, and therefore useless. With any pressure that she might be able to command, a keen cutting edge would be necessary to free her from the coils of the lariat.
By now she had regained her strength, and once more began wriggling and worming until her eyes were close to the blade, half hidden by pine needles. Then she realized with surprise and a thrill of hope that the object was a razor.
How such a tool came to be dropped by her assailants was more than she could fathom. She did not try. Working her face closer and closer to the razor she took the end of the handle between her teeth, and, twisting her head from side to side, finally managed to close the blade without cutting herself by pressing it against the ground.
Then she rolled so that her face was directly over it, and took both handle and blade in her mouth, by the middle. Her brain had been active through these clumsy maneuvers; she had a plan.
Now for a tree from which suckers were growing close to the ground. The pines were hopeless in this respect, but off a way she saw the naked branches of a black oak, and toward it she rolled, the closed razor in her mouth.
It was a long, tiresome trip, and when she reached the tree there was not a sucker growing from it. She saw another black oak close at hand, and continued her flopping, seallike progress, toward it.
Here, to her unbounded delight, slender suckers grew up from an exposed root. She released the razor and chewed upon one of them until she had browsed it down to a leafless stub four inches high.
Then, working with her teeth and tongue and straining every muscle in her neck, she contrived, at the risk of slashing her face, to insert the stump of the sucker between the two halves of the razor handle.
This pushed up the blade, and it remained in a half-closed position like a threatening guillotine. Knowing now that she would not be cut, she took the end of the handle in her teeth and pulled it down as far as it would go. Still the edge of the blade remained balanced against the top of the sucker. So she rolled about until she found a pine twig, which she took in her mouth, rolling with it back to the razor. With one end of the twig in her mouth, she was able to push the blade open with the other end, and it fell back against the root of the oak, edge uppermost.
She rested again, and then crawled over the root until a coil of the rope that bound her shoulders was pressing against the keen edge of the razor blade. Working her shoulders up and down, she saw the leather strands parting clean, and soon only one strand remained uncut. She rolled from the razor and scraped this last strand against another exposed root of the oak until it parted.
Two minutes more, and she was sitting up, unwinding the rawhide lariat from her legs with hands that were free.
She struggled to her feet, and though she ached in every bone and muscle, ran to Hiram and bent over him with a little cry of anguish on her lips.
His shirt front was stained crimson, and terror seized her. She fought it off and, bending down, listened with an ear to his heart. She breathed a little tremulous prayer of thankfulness as she heard his regular heartbeats, and then tore open his shirt to find that a bullet had entered his breast, high up on the right-hand side.
As best she could she stopped the bleeding and tried to revive Hiram. Into cold rain water, collected in a hollow of the ground, she plunged her handkerchief again and again, bathing the man's temples and chafing his wrists.
At last he opened his eyes, stared oddly at her a little, then, seeming to remember everything, strove to rise.
Probably one woman in all that country could have completed the gigantic task of getting this big, wounded man back to the wagons, but Jerkline Jo was fortunately that woman. With an arm of Hiram about her neck, and her arm about his waist, they staggered away through the rain, Hiram conscious enough to direct the way, for the girl was completely lost. It was early in the morning that their journey had been interrupted so ruthlessly, but it was afternoon before they came again to the road, and Hiram dropped exhausted in Jo's lead wagon.
Here she was able better to attend to his wound, and brandy, which she always carried, revived him greatly.
There was no course open now but to loose all the horses but four, leave three of the wagons where they stood, and drive as fast as she could with the four hitched to the head wagon, to get the wounded man to Artesian Ranch, about eighteen miles distant down on the Julia side of the desert.
Never before or afterward in the lives of the actors in this outland drama were the mountains that divided the desert to know such a drive as that. Jerkline Jo had a set of four-up checks which she carried in case of emergency, and by one o'clock four of her big whites were racing down the perilous grade, with Jo holding the four leather lines and operating the brake repeatedly, urging them to greater efforts continually. The huge wagon careened about hairpin curves, skirted precipices, rumbled from cañon to cañon, while the girl, always sure of herself, always sure of her horses, guided it skillfully and laughed at catastrophies that yawned at her every foot of the way.
In the middle of the afternoon they raced out on the desert and took up the long miles to the ranch. At dark they reached it, the horses badly spent, unaccustomed as they were to moving faster than a walk. There was an automobile at the ranch, and Hiram was hurried on to the doctor at Julia, while Jo worked far into the night rubbing down her trembling whites, crooning to them, and giving them short drinks of water until they were resting their weary bodies in the litter, content and quiet at last.