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Updated: June 19, 2025
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.
Even as matters stood, she could have used one more jerkline skinner could she have found one good enough to handle her much-loved animals. They were loyal to her, a stanch little army, hard to defeat if their crude but forceful methods of fighting could be brought into play.
"I'll have to see Al before giving you an answer," she told him. "Can't you drop around after supper, Heine?" "Sure. I'm on the water wagon, though," he added blandly, with no suggestion of a deep meaning in his tones. An hour afterward Drummond met Heine on the street and handed him a sealed envelope. "Give that to Jerkline Jo," he commanded shortly.
"It's the hunt for it that keeps 'em goin'. They don't know what to do with it when they get it." The dark eyes of Jerkline Jo were full of dreams. "Yes, we're all like that, I imagine," she said. "And how bout you, Jo?" some one asked. "Now that you're rich and married and all?" Jo looked down the street at the nearly completed roundhouse and the track-laying engine working on below the town.
The world has not an oversupply of expert jerkline skinners, and the plucky girl's chances for success depended in great part on obtaining good men to handle her teams. She was able to trace some of the men, and her offer to pay their expenses to Palada brought replies favorable to the project in each case.
Now Brother Hank is out of it. If you can contrive some way to shake Hank's partner, Pete, there'll be no one but you and me to whack up. "Since Hank is numbered among the late lamented," she continued, "I can forgive you for bungling the Hooker end of your job. With Hank's finger out of the pot, I'm content to split with Jerkline Jo.
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.
"Well, boy," said Jerkline Jo, "it's all over, I guess. What an experience! I thought I knew the desert and the rough life before, but I wasn't out of my A B C's." "It was glorious, though," said Hiram. "I wouldn't have missed it, dear, for worlds." "Nor I, either. But I don't wish ever to return. Once is enough." After this they were silent.
Looking back, she saw nothing unusual, for in this place the road wound about U's and S's in the mountainside, and one could not see far along it, either ahead or behind. Deciding that a tree had fallen, she dismissed the matter from her thoughts, and gave her attention to manipulating the jerkline over an exacting piece of road.
It read: Employment office notifies two jerkline skinners applied re advertisement in paper and have been forwarded Palada. Arrive day after to-morrow. Jo showed the telegram to Heine Schultz when she went to the corrals this morning. "I'll bet you get a couple o' peaches, Jo," he laughed.
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