The She Boss: A Western Story

by Arthur Preston Hankins

  CHAPTER XV

  MR. TWEET NEGOTIATES A LOAN

  Oblivious to the staring eyes of the little desert town of Julia,Jerkline Jo, after pitching camp near water on the edge of the village,began hurrying about on her business.

  She was directed to the man who owned the land on which the teams andmen were now resting, and found that she could make a deal to lease theproperty at a reasonable figure. She made a freckle-faced boy happywith a bright new dime, and sent him back to her men with instructionsfor them to pitch the tents permanently and proceed to make the spotthe Julia headquarters of the outfit.

  She wired her thanks to Demarest and assured him that the order wouldgo forward next day, if the dealers had it ready. Next she hunted upthe Mulligan Supply Company and found that it was a new concern inJulia, having just moved in with a large stock of goods from LosAngeles. It was a branch of a big Los Angeles jobbing firm, and thenew railroad across the mountains had brought it here.

  The manager greeted her warmly, and told her that he had heard of herthrough Mr. Demarest. The entire order was ready for immediateshipment, he said, so Jo hurried back to camp and had her men hook twohorses on each of six wagons, now empty, and drive to the store, wherethey were backed in to the loading platform.

  They ate their supper then, and afterward worked far into the nightloading case goods, baled hay, grain, new tools, and innumerable likecommodities. When the wagons were loaded and the great tarpaulinshauled down over everything but the hay and grain, it was necessary forJo to appoint a watchman for the night. She had no more than broachedthe subject when Playmate Tweet, who had helped manfully with theloading, offered his services.

  "I been just ridin' all day," he said, "and tryin' to convince Petethat I'm a reg'lar fella. I'll squat on the goods till mornin', comewhat may."

  In truth Jo did not just like to trust him. The goods, amounting invalue far up into the thousands, were now under her complete control,and she was accountable for every penny to the purchasers of them. Butshe had not the heart to refuse Tweet's offer, and she wanted herskinners to rest for the remainder of the night, in view of the hardwork that lay before them. So she accepted, and Mr. Tweet took hispost.

  He was there like the boy on the burning deck when they came with theteams early next morning, walking about briskly to keep warm throughthe cold desert dawn, whistling merrily. Jo had brought his breakfaston a plate, and hot coffee in a bottle.

  Carter Potts, the blacksmith, was left behind to set up his shop andcare for the extra mules and horses.

  Quickly the teams were hooked on, and with complaining groans and heavywagons, each now weighing with its load upward of six and a third tons,moved through the sleepy town toward the distant mountains.

  "Hooker," said Tweet, as he sat beside his friend behind the laboringblacks, "this is a man's life. This is doin' somethin'! This isgettin' somewhere! This is livin'! I envy you, Hiram. I envy youthat big body of yours and the way you can handle ten big horses as ifyou were drivin' a trick donkey hitched to a clown's cart. Wild Cat,you're a lucky man. And what a glorious woman, Hooker, to throw themagic over it all! You're the man for her, my boy--the only man I evermet that oughta have the nerve to try to win her. And she fell foryou, you big buffalo with the voice of a turtle-dove! Play hercarefully, boy, and you can win. Don't go at it like you did withCream Puffs, up there in Frisco. But you'll win her, Hiram--it's inyou to do it. Now, Hooker, can you slip me a five-spot when we get tothe camps?"

  "I haven't much more than that, Playmate," Hiram averred.

  "Well, you got a job, ain't you? I haven't. Money didn't seem toworry you much when you were puttin' on your Follies o' Nineteen-twentywith Lucy, up there where the white lights gleam."

  "What are you going to do with it?" asked Hiram.

  "This is your foolish day, ain't it? I'll tell you what I'm _not_goin' to do with it. I'm not goin' to hire an automobile at fourdollars an hour and take a lassie out for a ride over the desert."

  "I'll try and let you have it."

  "Just how much jack you got on you yet, Hooker, old friend from WildCat?"

  "Seven dollars."

  "That's a mint, man! Say, try to slip me all of it, will you, Hiram?I got a scheme. You won't need it--you got a job. And remember whowas the means o' gettin' it, Hiram. Why, it's worth seven bucks forthe privilege of just lookin' once into those eyes o' Jerkline Jo."

  "Can't you go to work over at the camps and earn some money?" Hiramwanted to know.

  "I _could_--yes. But I don't earn my jack that way, Hiram. I'm apromoter."

  "Jo told me she thought she might be able to give you something to do,after all."

  "Don't want it. Tender her my heartfelt thanks just the same, Hiram.All I wanted in the first place was to get down here and look thingsover, then go to work and get a toehold and start the fireworks. Ifthings are like I think--say, I'll be givin' you people jobs in a weekor so. B'lieve it, Hiram?"

  "No," replied Hiram bluntly. "Buck, step up a little! Molly! Pete!"

  Playmate Tweet sighed heavily. "Hardest folks to convince I everstruck," he complained. "Listen, Hooker: last night while I wasguardin' the loads the night watchman at Julia strolled around, and wehad a little talk. He's an old-timer in this country, and he told meall about it from there to Ellangone. I got some dope from him aboutthis country we're makin' for; and puttin' what I heard from him withwhat Jerkline Jo has told me, I gets a grand scheme. It'll put me inon the ground floor, if things break right and then----' Oh, boy!Richard will be himself again!"

  "Tell me about it!"

  "Too deep for you, my son. You'd never savvy the ins and outs.Besides, when Twitter-or-Tweet Tweet gets his nose to a trail, he's oneold hound that don't bark his head off--see? There'll be other brightyoung promoters lookin' for the secret, and I've learned to keep mymouth shut.

  "Now," he went on, "when I get over there and have a little look-see, Imay decide to beat it out pronto and start the clockworks. If I do,I'll need your seven dollars to get me back into the land o' thelivin', where I can start the performance. If I give you the word,Hooker, slip me that jack. If I don't tell you to, I'll go to work atsome o' the camps and make a stake and beat it for more promisin'pastures. You'll never regret it, Hooker. It'll be bread cast on thewaters, and she'll come back chocolate cake."

  "I'll think about it," Hiram promised.

  "Do that! And in the event that I say things look extra good, you'dbetter slip Jerkline Jo a little sob story, and get her to let you dragdown what you got comin' on your wages--and slip that to me, too. Bygolly, Hooker, once I get a toehold, Millions is my middle name."

  Hiram smiled wryly.

  On through the day the teams plodded toward the mountain pass. Hiramrode with Jerkline Jo in their movable schoolroom, and left Tweet tohis own thoughts behind the blacks. They camped on the desert thatnight, at a ranch conveniently situated between Julia and themountains, where was an abundance of artesian water. Next day at oneo'clock they left the flat, hot sweeps and ascended steadily into firsand pines on the old mines road.

  They were obliged to stop frequently and make repairs in the road andto clear away brush that for years had been overgrowing the course oftheir steep climb.

  Often as they ascended laboriously they followed shelves hacked inmountainsides, with the desert they had left thousands of feet belowthem. There were places where a solid wall of rock upreared itself onone side of the narrow road, while on the other side a precipicedropped straight down, and tall pines at its base looked liketoothpicks. There were hair-pin curves which taxed the skinners'ingenuity, where the one or the other of their pointers would cross thechain to pull the wagons away from the banks, and often both pointerswere obliged to leave the road entirely and pull along the sides ofprecipices.

  However, they topped the highest point in the pass before darkness hadovertaken them completely. They camped for the night beside apicturesque and cold mountain lake, at
an altitude of six thousand fivehundred feet.

  Morning showed them the desert, sweeping away again on the other sideof the range. There still remained twenty-five miles to be traveled,eight of them comprising the descent through the pass.

  Once down on the level again, Hiram turned his team over to the care ofTweet, and boarded Jo's wagon for the continuation of his education.

  So they crawled on persistently, and eventually, ahead of them over thedesert, white tents glowed pink in the sunlight like toadstools in agreat timberless pasture, and their first trip was nearing its end.

  When they reached the first cluster of tents Jerkline Jo discoveredthat they represented the largest of the subcontractors to whom herfreight had been consigned. The next one was situated five milesfarther up the line, and the third six miles beyond that. None of themhad been there when she made her horseback trip. Close to the firstcamp that they reached, that of the Washburn-Stokes ConstructionCompany's, the inevitable rag town had sprung up.

  Already there were a dozen or more tents, most of them housing saloons,dance halls, and gamblers' layouts, and here and there a board orcorrugated iron structure was under process of building. Only thethree construction camps, as yet, had arrived on this portion of thework; the next camp beyond this group was fifty miles to the north.

  Jerkline Jo knew, however, that before many days had passed camps largeand small would be dotted along the right of way, and that all must besupplied by some one.

  She stood talking to Mr. Washburn, the head of the firm, while hisfreight was being stacked before the huge commissary tent, when Mr.Tweet approached her.

  "I'd like a word with you, Miss Modock, when you're at liberty," hesaid politely.

  "Why, I'm just loafing with Mr. Washburn now," she said lightly, andturned away with him.

  "Will you please tell me again what you did a few days back about thecamp at Demarest, Spruce & Tillou?" he asked. "Explain it all,please--just why you think the tent town will eventually be located ina different place than it is now."

  "Why, it's simple," she told him. "It's this way: Demarest, Spruce &Tillou have the main contract here--a hundred miles, I've heard. Whena big company like that contracts to build a hundred miles of grade,they at once begin to sublet portions to smaller contractors. Sometake a mile; some two miles, some five--according to the nature of thework and the respective capacities of their outfits. Understand?"

  "Yes--I got that."

  "Well, it's natural, then, that the most difficult pieces--the biggestwork--will be the most difficult to sublet. Consequently when the maincontractors can sublet no more, they move in and get at the difficultpieces that remain on their hands.

  "Now, I've seen a good bit of this line, and I've talked with theengineers. Also I know the names of most of the subcontractors whohave figured on the job. I know that none of them have adequateequipment to tackle the big rock cut that will be necessary throughthat chain of buttes, twelve miles to the south of here."

  She pointed to the buttes, blue and hazy in the evening light of thedesert.

  "So, my friend, it follows as the night the day that Demarest, Spruce &Tillou will eventually move in with their heaviest-hitting outfit torun that cut, which certainly will be left on their hands. It followsas the night the day, again, that the leeches who always drift in toget the stiff's pay day away from them will settle near the biggestcamp, if there's sufficient water.

  "Down near those buttes, where the big camp is bound to be, there'splenty of water, and before many days have passed Ragtown in all itsglory will be erected right there.

  "These supplies that we're hauling now are charged to the account ofDemarest, Spruce & Tillou," she further explained. "You see, theyfurnish their subs with everything they need. Now when Demarest,Spruce & Tillou move in there will be little or no freighting for us toany camp but theirs. All goods will be concentrated in theircommissary then, and the subs will buy direct from them and do theirown hauling to the various camps. Of course, Ragtown will have to besupplied--but Ragtown and Demarest, Spruce & Tillou's Camp Number Onewill be virtually the same as regards our freight terminus."

  "And how long before the main contractors will get here?" he asked,working his twisted nose from side to side as if in the hope ofeventually persuading it to point dead ahead.

  "That all depends on whether they have given up trying to sublet anymore work or not. If they think they won't be able to load any oneelse up with a job, they'll be in directly--almost any day. But ifthey still think there's a chance to get rid of the hard pieces,they'll hold off until the matter is settled, of course."

  "Thank you," said Mr. Tweet abruptly, and was turning briskly away whenshe remarked:

  "I've decided that perhaps I can use you after all, if----"

  "Sorry," he interrupted, "but I can't accept your offer, even though Iappreciate it and thank you from the bottom of my heart. Truth is, Igotta get busy. I've heard there's a stage goin' out to the northto-night, and I gotta make it. By the way, did Hiram speak to youabout advancin' him what pay was comin' to him?"

  Jo's eyes narrowed. "No," she said coldly, "he didn't mention such amatter."

  Twitter-or-Tweet came back to her. "Listen," he said, "you owe himabout twenty bucks. I want it. I'll need it. You slip it to Hiram,and I'll borrow it off o' him. You see----"

  "Why, I'll do nothing of the sort!" she cried vehemently. "Do I looklike a sucker to you, Mr. Tweet?"

  "Oh, dear, dear, dear!" he cried. "You don't understand. I'm gontaswing somethin' big. I need that and what Hiram's already got to floatme along till I can hit the ball. For Heaven's sake, put a littleconfidence in me, ma'am, can't you? I'm gonta send the Gentle Wild Catto you. He'll tell you. He trusts me."

  "He trusts everybody," she remarked evenly. "Besides," she added, "youseem to forget, too, that you owe me for your railroad fare down here."

  "Oh, that! Why, I'll pay you that in no time now. But wait--I'llunload freight in Hiram's place, and send him to you."

  Sure enough, Hiram came presently and asked her, as a special favor tohim, to let him have what money was owing to him.

  "Hiram," she said, "you're going to lend it to Tweet, and he's goingout in the auto stage to-night."

  "I know it," said Hiram. "I got to help him. He's been a pretty goodfriend to me, Jo, and--and--I just like him. Why, if it hadn't beenfor him I'd never met you."

  Jo colored and looked away. "You big, simple-hearted boy!" she cried."Do you know what he is going to do?"

  "No--he won't talk."

  She was thoughtful a little, then took out a purse and handed him atwenty-dollar bill.

  "Kiss it good-by," she said; "but I suppose the experience will beworth something to you."

  "Thank you," said Hiram, very red of face. "I'm sorry for what I saidabout you meetin' me through Tweet, Jo. I meant to say, o' course,that if it hadn't been for Tweet I'd never got the job."

  "Oh," said Jo, straight-lipped, "I understand."

  Tweet was not with the outfit when it pitched camp close by for thenight. He sat in the automobile stage instead, and waved a friendlygood-by to them. "Bread on the water, Hiram, comes back chocolatecake!" he cried. "That is, Tweet bread does. Ha-ha, Hiram! You beenmighty good to me, folks. So long for a time!"