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Updated: June 13, 2025
At that time Peter Modock "Pickhandle" Modock had been what is known in railroad-construction circles as a gypo man, or shanty man.
Gypo Jo they called her, and she was known all over the West, where her foster father's operations were confined, and stories of her beauty and horsewomanship had gone East and North and South, for railroad-construction laborers are a nomadic brood and repeat their tales and traditions from coast to coast.
In the vernacular of the grade, a gypo man's daughter, if she follows the outfit, is known as a gypo queen. Josepha Modock, then, had grown up in the camp of Pickhandle Modock, and in time had been known as a gypo queen, or shanty queen, and the prettiest one in the business at that. It was when the Salt Lake Road was being built across the Mohave Desert that the baby girl had been found.
A gypo man is an impecunious construction contractor whose light, haphazard outfit of teams and tools makes it necessary for him to subcontract in the lightest dirt work from a slightly better equipped subcontractor, who in turn has taken a subcontract from the main contractors in a big piece of railroad building.
Slowly the rich color mounted to the cheeks Jerkline Jo. "I I know how it is," she said. "I was raised in a gypo camp, and had no chance until late in my teens. Knew nothing but mules and horses until I was eighteen or over cared for nothing else. And I love them still; but I've grown ambitious to get all that I can from life. I like you, Hiram Hooker.
But she had been through many discouragements as a gypo queen, and she did not flinch. She had known poverty even actual want had fought mud and sandstorms and cold and heat and rain that hampered work for weeks and months. In her was the indomitable spirit of the pioneer.
He preferred to sit and dwell on bygone days with the one-time queen of Pickhandle Modock's gypo camp, to listen to the account of her father's rise and fall and his subsequent untimely death, and of the girl's ambitions and life in the Middle Western school. They told many a story, these old-timers of the nomadic camps, and had many a laugh over quaint remembrances.
Demarest personally, and was fortunate in finding him in San Francisco upon her arrival there. "Well, well, well!" the big man cried jovially, as the girl was ushered into his private office. "Gypo Jo! Heavens to Betsy! Girl, I haven't seen you in five years. Put 'er there for old times' sake!" "It's Jerkline Jo nowadays, Mr. Demarest," and she laughed.
If you're jerkline skinners that have followed railroad work you ought to've heard o' Jerkline Jo. Usta be monakered 'Gypo Jo." "We're not railroaders," said Mr. Tweet glibly. "We're from Mendocino County the big woods you know. But we can skin 'em for Jerkline Jo or any other man." "I'll take a chance," said the clerk briskly.
"I'll try never to say it again," Hiram promised unblushingly. "But listen," she added. "Don't take me to task if you hear me saying things in the vernacular of the railroad grade. I have to. As Gypo Jo, I know thousands of the old-timers, and they expect certain things of me for old times' sake. As Jerkline Jo, the situation will be much the same. I am obliged to be a mixer.
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