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Updated: May 19, 2025
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.
"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.
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.
When they reached the first cluster of tents Jerkline Jo discovered that they represented the largest of the subcontractors to whom her freight had been consigned. The next one was situated five miles farther up the line, and the third six miles beyond that. None of them had been there when she made her horseback trip.
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.
"Stop the leak some way," she replied. "If we can destroy Filer's paper and the copy Hooker's got, then we'll be the only ones who know the dope. We'll have the only copy in existence, in other words; and even if we fail to get at Jerkline Jo and learn the rest of it, we can hold her to our terms. She won't be able to do a thing without knowing what her father wrote on the paper that Filer has."
Hiram rode with Jerkline Jo in their movable schoolroom, and left Tweet to his own thoughts behind the blacks. They camped on the desert that night, at a ranch conveniently situated between Julia and the mountains, where was an abundance of artesian water. Next day at one o'clock they left the flat, hot sweeps and ascended steadily into firs and pines on the old mines road.
For several months she hung on desperately, hoping against hope, with everything going out and nothing coming in, then one bright and long-to-be-remembered day came news of the new railroad which was to cross the desert a hundred miles from Palada. Jerkline Jo made inquiry and found out the work was to begin at once, and that the project was a large one, involving difficult construction feats.
Tweet glanced at Hiram and whispered: "I'm 'fraid this is where we separate, Hooker. Still, I don't know. Maybe I'm a jerkline skinner, after all. I'll never know till I try." In front of the stable Tweet came to an abrupt halt and studiously regarded one of the huge freight wagons. "Just a moment," he began quaintly.
I'd druther see ye plumb bad ern so all-fired no-good all round. Ye had jobs a number o' times drivin' eight an' ten on jerkline, freightin' tanbark from Longport. Ye're a good jerkline skinner, Hiram no better in the country but ye won't stick no more'n a month or two outa each year. "But I'm makin' allowances fer ye I always have I'm th' only one that ever has.
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