FALCON OF SQUAWTOOTH

Falcon, of Squawtooth

A Western Story

BY
ARTHUR PRESTON HANKINS
Author of “The She Boss”

CHELSEA HOUSE
79 Seventh Avenue New York City

Copyright, 1923
By CHELSEA HOUSE
Falcon, of Squawtooth
(Printed in the United States of America)
All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign
languages, including the Scandinavian.

CONTENTS

FALCON OF SQUAWTOOTH

CHAPTER I
THE FALCON FINDS A FRIEND

A LONG freight train, westward bound, came to a stop in a little California mountain town with a shriek of brakes and a hiss of air. At once a brakeman clambered agilely down the steel ladder of a box car in the middle of the train, and sent the side door of the car creaking along its rusty track. He thrust his head inside and peered about through the darkness of the interior.

Then he cried raucously:

“Come outa that, now! Make it snappy, Jack!”

In a dark corner of the box car a man arose and stepped slowly toward the square of sunlight that represented the door. As the light of day shone in upon him the brakeman looked him up and down, and did not seem so displeased.

The tramp was dressed in overalls, fairly decent shoes, and a cap. Though he was grimy and stained from hours of travel on a freight, he was no dirtier than the brakeman and was dressed as well. His hair was close-cropped, and no stubble of beard showed on his rather boyish face. His eyes were dark and twinkling. His figure was straight and strong. There was nothing hangdog about this tramp.

The brakeman’s tones were mollified as he asked:

“Where you goin’, Jack?”

“West.”

“Uh-huh. I know that. What’re you ridin’ on?”

“I’m broke.”

“Yeah? You don’t look it. You look like a workin’man.”

“I am.”

“What d’ye follow?”

“Railroad-construction work.”

“Huh! A stiff, eh?”

“Yes—a stiff.”

The “shack” was silent a little. Then seeming to have decided the point under contemplation:

“Well, slide out. Guess it’s time for you to eat anyway. But I’ll let you ride out the division for a dollar.”

“Sorry, but I haven’t a dollar. Thanks, though.”

“Four bits, then.”

“Simply haven’t a cent.”

“Well, then unload—and beat it!”

The tramp sat down in the door, dangled his feet, and dropped lightly to the ground.

“So long!” he said, and strode away beside the train, his hands in his trouser pockets.

“Humph!” snorted the brakeman, and gave the door a vicious shove that forced a protesting scream from the track and rollers.

The little town was six thousand five hundred feet above the sea, in the high Sierras. The breath of pines came to the vagabond’s nostrils as he trudged along. A dynamic trout stream plunged over and around huge boulders on its frenzied race to the blue Pacific, two hundred miles away. The rare air of the high altitude, to which the traveler was unaccustomed, sent the blood pounding through his veins; and despite the beginning of hunger pangs his spirits were elated and his step elastic as he walked on toward the village.

Before he reached even its outskirts he saw five men—tramps like himself, no doubt—in camp beside the rushing stream. The odor of cooking came to his sensitive nostrils. He had only to climb down a twenty-foot fill, crawl through the right-of-way fence, and try his luck. He had fed dozens of fellow wanderers, while his money lasted, since he had left the State of Kansas. He had been penniless, now, only since the day before. He realized that he might not be welcome in this hobo camp, for he had long since learned that the so-called tramp fraternity is a figment of the imagination. But the mountain air had made him desperately hungry—his money had fed many of the class down there in camp—it was time for at least a part of his bread cast upon the waters to drift into an eddy and start floating back.

He scrambled down, forked himself between the strands of barbed wire, and boldly approached the source of those savory odors.

That this was a permanent hobo camp was evident from the many blackened cans that lay about, the cold ashes of ancient camp fires, and the carvings on the trees that shaded the rendezvous.

One man stooped over the fire and stirred a large can of boiling Mexican beans. Another was cutting into slices a loaf of bread with his pocketknife, hacking to the center on one side, then turning the loaf to complete the cuts, by reason of the shortness of the blade. Three others lounged on the ground, smoked and whittled, and eyed the newcomer with disapproval.

“How are you, fellows?” the “buttinsky” said, smiling and seating himself on a moss-covered stone.

No one replied, but the man who was cutting the bread looked up and grinned.

He was about the newcomer’s age, and had a clean, lean face with distinct freckles on it and on his neck. His hair was sandy and kinky, and a comb and brush would have made no change whatever in its wiry appearance. His eyes were blue and friendly.

The stranger at once sensed that this man was of a different type from his four companions. Though a tramp, there were about him no marks of the confirmed John Yegg. The others were old-timers of the oldest known school.

“Going to have a little feed, eh?” innocently remarked the new arrival. “I smelled those beans cooking a hundred yards away.”

The old-timers looked from one to another in blank amazement. “Can you beat it?” was the question their looks expressed. Then with a great sigh as of resignation to the demands of a stern duty, one of them rose and fumbled in a pocket of his grease-salvaged vest.

He extracted a dirty match, looked it over with owl-like wisdom, and, stepping around the fire, silently passed it to the newcomer.

At least four pairs of cold eyes watched this pantomime. The man who had been offered the match took it mechanically, and looked up into the donor’s face.

“Seems to me I get you,” he said, a trifle embarrassed. “I’ve heard of a tramp’s being given the match in a camp where he’s not wanted. It’s a subtle suggestion, I believe, for him to go elsewhere and build a camp fire of his own, isn’t it?”

“Ol’-timer,” the donor of the match said sneeringly, “youse’re right. Dat means ‘Beat it!’—and dis means ‘Beat it quick!’—see?”

He lifted a clenched fist for the other’s inspection.

“Oh, I get you,” the unwelcome visitor replied, rising from the stone. “I’ll beat it, of course. But don’t labor under the delusion that what you’ve just held up has anything to do with it.”

He turned, thrust his hands into his pockets again, and started back toward the right of way.

“Wait a minnit, Jack!”

The ejected one turned. It was the bread slicer who had spoken.

“C’mon back here an’ dig in on the bread an’ beans, ol’-timer,” he invited. “You’re as welcome as the flowers in May. I happen to know, for the simple reason that I’m the Jasper that bungled up for the pinks and the punk myself. I’m entertainin’ to-day.”

The man who had passed the match turned on him with a snarl.

“Wot’s de idear, ‘Halfaman’? Do youse want every farmer on de line to come buttin’ in on yer scoffin’s? Youse gi’me a pain, Jack!”

“Aw, go get in yer kennel and gnaw yer bone, ‘Blister’!” retorted the bread-and-beans magnate. “You ole fuzzy tails get my goat. You wouldn’t give a man a crumb o’ tobacco; but I notice you’re always the first one to butt in yerself when anybody else has scoffin’s. I buys them pinks and I buys this punk; and all that any o’ you stiffs furnished for this little picnic was the salt ‘Monk o’ the Rum’ swiped from the grocer while I was gettin’ the beans. I’ll do the sayin’ who’s to scoff in this camp. C’mon back here, ol’-timer, and dig in!”

“Sinful Blister,” which was the weird moniker of the dissenter, slouched back to his seat on the ground, muttering discontentedly. The other John Yeggs shrugged indifferently, in full sympathy with the Blister, but diplomatically acceding to the wishes of him who had bought the beans.

The now invited guest returned, and the cook poured out the beans into smaller tin cans and silently passed one to him. The one designated as Halfaman thrust two slices of bread into the other’s hands, and into other cans poured black coffee.

For a space the six ate in silence, the stranger from time to time glancing at his benefactor as if he wished to thank him, but could not find the words.

“Where you headin’ for, Jack?” Halfaman presently asked, his freckled cheeks shuttling over jaw-bones that oversaw the mastication of huge portions of food.

“West,” was the short reply.

“What d’ye follow when ye’re followin’?”

“I’m hunting construction work.”

“Dirt or rock?”

“Either.”

“That’s me; I’m a stiff. Was you beatin’ it down to the desert? There’s a big job openin’ up down there.”

“Yes, I heard about that. The Gold Belt Cut-off, eh?”

“That’s her, I’m makin’ it down there. I know lots o’ contractors that’ll have jobs on the road.”

The other ate in silence for a space, as if thinking deeply. “I don’t know but I’ll try to get down there, too,” he said presently. “I wasn’t exactly headed for any particular place.”

“She oughta be a good job. There’s good men’ll be down there. First thing I c’n ketch goin’ west takes me.”

“Do—do you mind if I go along with you?” hesitatingly asked the other.

“I should say not! I don’t like ramblin’ alone. Never did. I get to talkin’ to meself. Sure—we’ll make it out together. What’s yer moniker, Jack?”

Again the stranger hesitated. Then a little red crept into his face as he replied: “They call me ‘The Falcon.’”

One of the John Yeggs snorted softly and winked at a companion. It was quite plain to him that the speaker knew little about hobos’ monikers and such things.

“Been followin’ construction work long?” asked Halfaman.

“Virtually all my life,” returned the other.

At this another of the listeners sighed wearily, and whispered to one near him:

“Get dat, will youse? Been follyin’ de big camps all his life! C’n youse beat it? I’m bettin’ he never seen a railroad camp—hey? No foolin’!”

His friend nodded with a grimace that showed agreement.

When he had finished eating, the new friend of The Falcon rose, and, lying flat, took a long drink from the cold mountain stream.

“Well,” he announced, “I’m beatin’ ’er up to the tracks. C’mon, if you’re goin’ with me, Jack. There’s a westbound freight due before so very long, if the switchman didn’t lie—and he didn’t look like he had brains enough to lie.”

“Much obliged for de scoffin’s, Halfaman,” volunteered one of the tramps as The Falcon followed the freckled youth through the fence.

“Keep the change!” called Halfaman. “But next time I’m settin’ up the eats, le’ me do the invitin’.”

There was no answer; and the two struggled up the hill, and walked along the track toward a water tank to hide and wait the coming of the next westbound freight.

They reached the tank and sat down on the ground behind it, resting their backs against the pedestals. Halfaman removed a greasy cap with a broken visor, and laid it in his lap, allowing the cool mountain breeze to play with the kinks of his sandy hair. He had a way of talking out of one corner of his good-natured and rather wide mouth which amused the reticent Falcon.

“You ain’t been on the road long, have you, kid?” he said kindly.

“Why do you say that?”

“You might just as well be wearin’ a card on yer breast, like a blind man does, tellin’ the world about it,” said Halfaman. “Le’ me tell you sumpin. You don’t wanta go buttin’ into hobo camps like you did back there. Them old Jaspers hate themselves. They got no use fer the likes o’ you.”

“But you’re not like them.”

“I should say I ain’t! I’m a construction stiff. They’re just stiff. I’m a tramp, but I work. They don’t unless they have to—see? I was buyin’ some pinks and punk to cook up for myself—see?—and they butts in on me and gets me for a feed. I never turn a stiff down if I got anything, so I told ’em to come on an’ bust ’emselves. I know two of ’em—‘Sinful Blister’ and ‘Monk o’ the Rum.’ The other two’s pals o’ theirs. I’ll feed anybody—gaycat, yegg, bindle-stiff, skinner, mucker, or dyno. But I want ’em to feed me when I’m broke, too. I got no use for the likes o’ them back there. I’m a decent tramp—get me?”

“Yes,” replied The Falcon. “I try to be that myself. That’s why I approached the camp. I thought maybe I’d be treated like I’ve treated dozens of others since I started West.”

“And wasn’t you?”

“Yes—by you. And I’ll not forget it. Stay by me—if you like me—and you’ll never regret what you did for me to-day.”

The other studied him openly. “I don’t quite get your number,” he stated. “Your hands ain’t the hands of a workin’ stiff, and you talk kinda like you knew how. You say you been followin’ construction camps all yer life?”

“That’s what I said.”

“But you was lyin’.”

“Well, the way you say that, I can’t resent it, of course. Anyway, I call myself a railroad stiff. Accept it as truth, or don’t—it makes little difference to me. I may be raw—I guess I am—but you stick with me and I’ll pay you for that dinner.”

“Don’t do it till I ask for it,” retorted the other, cupping a hand back of one of his prominent ears and listening up the track.

He arose and went to the two lines of steel, sprawling flat and holding an ear to a rail.

“I hear her singin’ to me,” he announced, returning. “She’ll be here in a minnit. Now that moniker of yours.” He stood before the tank looking at the many carvings thereon. “I don’t see it here, f’r instance. Get up an’ I’ll show you mine. Cut ’er there three years ago, when I was ramblin’ east, ridin’ through the snowsheds, stretched out on the backs of a car o’ sheep to keep warm. Some bed if it don’t lay down under you!”

The Falcon had risen and stood looking up to where the other pointed. In neat carving, on one of the wooden pedestals, he saw:

HALFAWAY DAISY
1917, BOUND EAST
PHINEHAS BEGAT ABISHUA

“That’s an odd name,” remarked The Falcon. “And the quotation?”

“Well, by golly, it ain’t any odder’n my real one, ol’-timer! Daisy’s me right name; and as if that wasn’t funny enough the old folks slipped me a Bible name—Phinehas. Phinehas Daisy—c’n you beat it? I’m one o’ the begatters.”

“What’s that?” asked The Falcon, the lips of his grave mouth twitching in amusement.

“Ain’t you never read the Bible?”

“Not as much as I ought, perhaps.”

“Well, the begatters, as I call ’em are in the Bible. I learned that part by heart till it got down to me. It goes like this: ‘And the children of Amram; Aaron, and Moses, and Miriam. The sons also of Aaron; Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar. Eleazar begat Phinehas. Phinehas begat Abishua.’ Didn’t you ever read that?”

“Yes, I suppose so. Rather dry in there, I thought.”

“Well, I’m Phinehas. I’m one o’ the begatters—see? But the bos they call me Halfaman. That’s pretty raw, too. See how they got it on me? I gotta be square all the time, or folks will think I’m only half a man because they call me that. I used to have a pal, and his right name was Holman Rose. Wasn’t that funny?—Rose and Daisy! Sometimes they called us ‘The Bouquet.’ And then, seein’ his name was Holman, they called me Halfaman. Maybe they’re right, but I never refused a guy a feed when I had it. Here she comes, Falcon. Now you do just what I tell you to, and we’ll make ’er out easy, and ride ’er clean to the desert—if we’re lucky. Believe me, ole Falcon, I’m a ramblin’ yegg when I get started!”

CHAPTER II
“SQUAWTOOTH” CANBY

THE village of Opaco, on the fringe of the big California desert, never in all its day had seen such frenzied activity. Ninety miles to the east over the wastes of sand, yuccas, greasewood, and cacti, the engineers of a railroad company had made the preliminary survey of the proposed Gold Belt Cut-off, and every indication pointed to the fact that Opaco would be the natural source of supply for the big camps that would come to build the road.

Even now one of the construction companies was temporarily in their midst, while they unloaded their outfit of tents and tools and horses and wagons innumerable from the sidetracked freight train that had brought it to Opaco. The local livery stable and its accompanying corrals were taxed to the limit to minister to the stock. More than fifty strange men, who spoke in the argot of tramps, labored at unloading the train and piling which they removed in big mountain wagons against the ninety-mile trip to Squawtooth Ranch, the outfit’s camping place. The two hotels were filled to overflowing with the nomadic laborers. Opaco stood about open-mouthed and watched. It was as good as a circus come to town. And the outfit—the Mangan-Hatton Construction Company, from Texas—was the first of many to arrive. Others came from Utah, Colorado, and Washington—and it was rumored that eventually the biggest of them all would come from Minneapolis—the main contract company, Demarest, Spruce & Tillou, a concern that handled millions.

Furthermore, every train that came into Opaco brought tramps and tramps and tramps. Some of them were shipped in; others just came. For the first time Opaco learned that tramps really hunt for work; because all that arrived went shambling to the temporary office which Mr. Hunter Mangan had set up, and came away examining meal tickets and speculating with one another on the job-to-be, somewhere out there in the land of the horned toad and the venomous sidewinder, and the little desert owl called tecolote.

A long-bearded man on a magnificent black horse rode into Opaco, with jingling silver spurs, flapping chaps, and brush-scarred tapaderos. The rider “packed a six,” and rode in an elaborate silver-mounted saddle. The West was written all over him.

“There’s Squawtooth Canby,” Opaco whispered to itself. “He ain’t been in town for three months or more. Say, I guess he should worry, eh? Railroad buildin’ right through Squawtooth Ranch! Where he had to drive his cows from ninety to a hundred an’ fifty miles to ship ’em, and run all the fat off ’em, he’ll shoot ’em in the cars right on his own ranch when the railroad’s built. It’ll make a millionaire out o’ Squawtooth Canby!”

The old man with the flowing gray beard rode direct to the City Hotel, and dismounted as gracefully as a youth of twenty-one. He lowered the plaited, tasseled reins from the black’s neck, and, with the beautiful animal biting at him playfully, stalked into the hotel, spur rowels whirring.

Half of the hotel office had been given over to the needs of Mr. Hunter Mangan, senior partner of the construction company of Mangan & Hatton, and toward this part Squawtooth Canby strode. A dark, good-looking, businesslike young man arose from a desk and held out a cordial hand to the cowman.

“Well, well, Mr. Canby, it’s good to see you again,” was “Hunt” Mangan’s greeting. “This is an unexpected pleasure. We got in only two nights ago, and I have been so busy since that I neglected dropping you a line to notify you that we are on our way. Sit down; sit down! How’s everything out at Squawtooth?”

Their hands gripped—strong hands, both of them—the hands of men who rule and are not afraid of work.

“I heard ye was in, Mr. Mangan,” said Squawtooth. “I hadta ride in on a matter o’ business to within fifteen mile of Opaco; so I just says to myself I’ll fog it on down and shake hands with Mangan while I’m about it. This town looks like a gold rush was on.”

“Oh, we’re a tiny concern compared with some you’ll see before the job’s completed,” Mangan replied. “But how is the ranch?—and—and Miss Canby?”

“Oh, ranch is there yet,” and Squawtooth grinned through his patriarchal beard. “And Manzanita’s flip as ever. Gettin’ purtier every day, by golly! Don’t know where she’ll stop. She was talkin’ about ye only t’other day, and wishin’ ye’d hurry up an’ move out on the desert.”

“Good! And I assure you we’re anxious enough to get there, too. But this represents only about three fourths of our outfit. The rest is coming in to-morrow from a little clean-up job in Utah. So we’re waiting for them, and will all move out together. Let me see—it’s two months since I was at Squawtooth, isn’t it?” Mangan laughed. “I’ll never forget the first day when I drove up with the engineers in the buckboard, and Miss Canby told me what she thought of railroads and railroad builders. At first, you know, she didn’t realize that I was one of the contractors who were coming to desecrate her beloved desert. Did she tell you about it?”

“Oh, yes. She told the world about it. Manzanita’s funny that way. She was born at Squawtooth—in a saddle, she says—and she don’t like any other place on earth. She don’t like railroads ner autos ner flyin’ machines, ner any o’ the modern tricks. And she don’t like neighbors, either. Just wants to ride and ride forever over the desert, and the furder she c’n look without seein’ anything but what the Almighty put there the better she likes it. And as for your railroad runnin’ right through Squawtooth—say, she was wild as a loco Indian. But she’s calmed down now. She took a likin’ to ye, Mr. Mangan, and I guess that’s what made her change her mind.”

“I’m certainly glad to hear you say that last, Mr. Canby.” Hunt Mangan’s face was a little red. “I—I formed a high opinion of your daughter during the few days in which you folks at Squawtooth showed us such royal hospitality. I hated to have her so sore at me for being a party to the desecration of her adored solitudes. I consider her a remarkable young woman.”

“She’s worse than that!” Squawtooth replied, with a slight frown of abstraction.

Outside, across the street, a freight train stopped before the depot. Cautiously the door of a box car slid open, and two hobos looked out, and up and down the track, then dropped to the ground and hurried away.

Squawtooth Canby, who had observed through the fly-specked hotel window, chuckled.

“See them tramps get outa that box car?” he asked Mangan. “Purty slick, some o’ them fellas.”

“Stay here a day and you’ll see hundreds of them,” laughingly replied Hunt Mangan. “They’re drifting in by dozens and twenties. The train crews are not hard on them, for they know they’re beating it in here to work. Tramps—stiffs, as we call ’em—form the backbone of railroad construction, you know.”

“I didn’t know tramps worked at all,” said Canby.

“You’ll know more about them before the steel is laid across Squawtooth,” observed Mangan. “There are tramps and tramps.”

“Here comes them two into the hotel,” remarked the cowman.

“They’re coming to see me about jobs, no doubt. Well, they’ve struck the right place. If they’re old-timers I can use them. But I hate to break new men in. And there’s little need to just now—there are plenty of stiffs all up and down the line.”

He swiveled toward the two, who had entered and now approached the desk.

“Well, fellows,” he said lightly, “what’s the good word from up the line?”

“Hello, Mr. Mangan,” returned one of the tramps, speaking out of the corner of his mouth and grinning good-humoredly.

Mangan rose to his feet “Well, if it isn’t Halfaman Daisy!” he ejaculated, and strode around Canby to grip the hobo’s hand. “Tickled to death to see you, old-timer! Where did you blow from?”

“Aw, I was over in Nebrasky with a little gypo outfit,” Halfaman said bashfully. “I heard some o’ the gaycats talkin’ about the Gold Belt Cut-off, out here in Cal, and when they slipped it that you folks had a piece of ’er I hit the blinds straight out. How’s chances, Mr. Mangan?”

“Best in the world, old-timer—best in the world,” Hunt Mangan assured him. “I’d fire a man to put you behind one of our teams. Let’s see—you drove Jack and Ned on snap down on that little Arkansas job last time you were with us, eh?”

“That’s right, Mr. Mangan.”

“Well, by George, you can have a snap team on this job, if you want it! I’ve got three big white Percherons just breaking into snap work. Under five years old, all three of ’em. Want to take a shot?”

“Sure do, bossman. She listens good to me. When you say a horse is a horse he’s a horse. But say, Mr. Mangan, I—I got a pal that wants a job, too.”

“This man here?”

“Yes, bossman. And take it from me, he’s one good scout.”

“Good skinner, did you say?” queried Hunter Mangan.

“Well—I said ‘good scout;’ but I’ll bet he’s a good skinner, too. If he ain’t, I’ll make him one.”

“I’ll say he’d have a good instructor, Halfaman. But you know me. I’m a crank about good men. I pay well and I feed the best, and I treat a man white from the word go. Therefore I expect—and always get—the best stiffs on the line. So if your side kick is there, he’s on.”

Both Mangan and Canby had been keenly watching the man who accompanied Halfaman Daisy. While he was strong and well-built and bronzed, and had a fearless but kindly eye, he looked anything but a railroad stiff.

“Well, Mr. Mangan,” Halfaman was saying, “he’s an educated plug, this Ike; and I’ll bet he could do lots o’ things better’n chasin’ Jack an’ Ned.”

“That may be true, but it happens that we don’t need anything but skinners. Let him speak for himself, Halfaman. Step out here, old-timer. Can you knock Jack and Ned in the collar to suit the worst crank in the business?”

The prospective teamster smiled. “I can’t truthfully say that I’m an expert skinner,” he admitted. Halfaman, greatly disturbed, was nudging him with an elbow. “I’ve had quite a little to do with horses and mules, but I can’t say that I can handle them as I’ve seen some men do it.”

“Uh-huh. Well, that’s a frank confession, anyway. Most men don’t admit their shortcomings so readily when applying for a job. Well, I’m sorry—but we’ve got a fine lot of railroad stock—all young—and I hate to risk ruining them by breaking in new men on them. It doesn’t take long for a green skinner to put the fixings to a young team—you know that, Halfaman. Sorry, old-timer, but——”

“Now, looky here, Mr. Mangan,” put in Halfaman. “You ’n’ me’s good friends. This Jasper is me pal; and if he can’t get on with me, stuff’s off. Now you c’n give um somethin’ to do, I know. Come on, Mr. Mangan.”

“You old beggar!” Mangan laughed; then he wrinkled his brow. “Wait a minute,” he said. “I’ve just thought of something.”

He went to the old-fashioned telephone back of the hotel counter and whirled the crank in a signal ring. Presently he spoke to somebody, then returned and said:

“I’ve got a job for your pal, Halfaman. The cooks can use another flunky. If he wants to tackle that, at thirty-five and, he’s got a job.”

Halfaman looked inquiringly at his friend.

“I’ll try anything once,” said the other.

“You’ve both got jobs, then,” Hunter Mangan concluded, turning briskly to his desk. “Let’s see—what’s that impossible name of yours, Halfaman?”

“Rub it in!” grinned the new snap driver. “Make me spill it before everybody! You know it’s Phinehas.”

Hunter Mangan, in high good nature, chuckled and wrote the name.

“And yours?” He turned to the other.

“I call myself The Falcon,” came the quiet reply.

“Moniker, eh? But I can’t make out checks to ‘The Falcon,’ can I? What does your mother call you?”

There was a little space of silence. “I don’t use my right name, Mr. Mangan,” said the tramp. “Even Halfaman here doesn’t know it yet. He calls me Falcon.”

Mangan shrugged. “All right,” he said. “I know stiffs. None of my business. I’ll put it ‘Falcon the Flunky’—that do?”

“Good enough.”

Hunter Mangan wrote a little, then handed a card to each man. “Those’ll let you in the dining room here at the hotel,” he informed them. “I guess you can do the rest. And now you’d better get out and help with the loading up.”

Halfaman looked at his card, then at his employer, then up at the solemn-faced clock on the dirty wall. To the clock he spoke.

“It’s three o’clock,” he said. “And this rube dining room will be closed. But I saw a little short-order joint right around the corner, and—ahem!”

Hunter Mangan reached into his pocket and passed him a dollar.

“Get out o’ here!” he ordered.

Grinning, Halfaman pocketed the dollar and hastened out ahead of Falcon the Flunky.

The cattleman had been a silent listener, his blue eyes growing wider and wider as the conversation progressed. Now he looked in puzzlement at the contractor.

“So that’s the way ye treat ’em, eh?” he said in a tone of wonderment. “That’s kinda funny. You’re a college man, Mr. Mangan—I thought ye’d be kinda stuck up with common tramps.”

Mangan laughed heartily. “I see you know nothing about construction camps, Mr. Canby,” he said. “We’re one of the biggest democracies on earth, I guess. Can’t run ’em any other way. The stiff is as independent as a hog on ice. Get uppish with him, and you’ll see your mules standing idle in your corrals. Wait till we get established out there. You’ll change your mind about the men you are pleased to call tramps.”

“What’s a ‘flunky?’” asked Squawtooth.

“Cook’s helper—pot-walloper—roustabout waiter—dishwasher.”

“Oh, I see. Falcon the Flunky! Funny! Kind of a smart-lookin’ Jasper.”

“He’s seen better days,” remarked Mangan briefly.

“D’ye shell out many dollars like that right along?” was Canby’s next question.

“Hundreds of them—between jobs, like this.”

“Humph! Charge it up to ’em?”

“I should say not!”

“Jest put ’er down on the wrong side o’ the profit-an’-loss account, eh?”

“No—on the other side. You’ve got to be a good fellow in the railroad-construction game, Mr. Canby. It pays in the end.”

“I’ll punch cows,” observed Canby dryly.

The cattleman took his leave of the senior partner of the Mangan-Hatton Construction Company within the hour. He was to spend the night at a small ranch eight miles from Opaco, and ride to Squawtooth next day. He mounted the black, swung him around with a slight cant in the saddle, and galloped out of town, seeing little, thinking deeply.

The brooding mood held him until he had crossed the river and passed through a rocky defile in a chain of buttes. Then the yellow desert opened its arms to him, and he and the black horse became a moving atom in the vast waste.

He had ridden the fifteen miles of which he had told Mangan for the sole purpose of seeing that gentleman for a few minutes once more. He had met Mangan during the earlier part of the preliminary survey of the proposed railroad. A month previous to that meeting two of the main contractors had called at Squawtooth—Messrs. Demarest and Tillou, of the big firm of Demarest, Spruce & Tillou, of Minneapolis. It was Mr. Demarest who had told Squawtooth that Mangan very likely would decide to subcontract the piece of work nearest to Squawtooth, and that they would be neighbors. Demarest had spoken of the subcontractors as young, energetic men of means, and Squawtooth had become doubly interested.

Then Hunter Mangan himself had come, and at once old Squawtooth took a liking to him—not forgetting that descriptive phrase of Demarest, “young, energetic men of means.”

For be it known that Webster Canby, more commonly known as Squawtooth, the cattle king of the desert country, was an incorrigible snob. Aside from this he was pretty decent.

Squawtooth Canby’s wife had been dead ten years. The mistress of Squawtooth Ranch, then, was his daughter, Miss Manzanita Canby—a thorn in his flesh, the sting of which he both loved and deplored.

Manzanita Canby was nineteen; and if Squawtooth Canby was an incorrigible snob, she was an incorrigible roughneck. Three years of her young life had been spent away from Squawtooth while she was at school in Los Angeles. These three years had made no appreciable dent in her. She seemed to care for nothing in life beyond her “pa,” her brother Martin, a good saddle and saddle horse, and the illimitable sweep of desert and mountains; and on this rock all of her father’s hopes and ambitions for her had grounded.

She attended country dances and permitted fatuously grinning cow-punchers to swing her lithe figure in their arms. Of this her father highly disapproved. She spoke Mexican Spanish like a native, but beyond this her interest in the languages died. She cared nothing for well-to-do and good-looking young men whom her father coerced out from the cities under the pretext of a bear hunt in the mountains or a deer hunt through the foothill chaparral. To marry her to a man of means—now that this future was assured along these same lines—was the consuming ambition of Squawtooth Canby, an ambition that bade fair to be forever fruitless.

So the old cowman had jumped at the chance of having a young, energetic man of means—one Hunter Mangan—camped on Squawtooth Ranch with his big construction company. Surely this offered the chance of a lifetime to make his daughter see the error of her ways. And at the very beginning Manzanita had voiced her disapproval of a railroad being built over her beloved desert, and particularly through her beloved Squawtooth Ranch, and accordingly was averse to the man who had a hand in the desecration.

Old Squawtooth left no stone unturned to interest Manzanita in Hunter Mangan, and he was quite certain that to interest the young contractor in his wild and willful daughter was the least difficult part of his task.

Squawtooth was considered wealthy. Up at Piñon, in the chain of mountains that fringed the desert on the south, was his summer range—many thousand acres in the National Forest. In the winter the cows fed over a ninety-mile desert range, from Little Woman Butte to Squawtooth and beyond. Thus grass was practically assured for all seasons of the year, and for all time to come, unless the railroad should bring a flock of homesteaders down upon him. But if it did this it would automatically increase the value of his own holdings. It also would give him wonderful shipping facilities, both at Squawtooth and Little Woman Butte.

Yes, Squawtooth Canby was to become a big man, and Manzanita Canby must be thrown into the company of big men, so that she might pick the biggest of them and marry him. And Hunter Mangan seemed to be the man.

Everything was planned carefully, but still, as he rode along, the brow of Squawtooth Canby was corrugated. He could not shake off the presentiment that all of his strategic plans might fail because of the willingness of a slip of a girl called Manzanita.

CHAPTER III
THE DESERT

“LET’S go!” cried Hunter Mangan, seated in the saddle, and cupping his lean, strong hands about his mouth.

At the cry a four-mule team moved off with a load of tents and took to the road that wound through Opaco, across the bridge, and through the rocky defile to the desert. A six-up team of horses followed with a load of lumber. Teams pulling strings of six-wheeled scrapers fell in line. Two-mule teams, four-mule teams, six and eight-mule teams swung into the impressive procession and followed. And soon a parade a mile and a half long was trailing in a cloud of dust through open-mouthed Opaco.

Midway in the procession Halfaman Daisy draped himself over a high spring seat and looked indolently down on the slick backs of six young mules. A cigarette hung from his lip at the corner of his sagging good-natured mouth. Halfaman’s load consisted of ranges and commissary stores, and just behind him, on a huge bundle of canvas lay Falcon the Flunky, flat on his back, gazing serenely up into the dusty desert sky.

“‘And the children of Amram; Aaron and Moses and Miriam,’” quoted Halfaman drowsily. “‘The sons also of Aaron; Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar. Eleazar begat Phinehas’—that’s me—‘Phinehas begat Abishua.’ Abishua—that’s him! And I’m huntin’ him down—I’m on my way. I’m on the trail o’ the ‘Wing o’ the Crow’——

“Oh, I been a-down on-a the gumbo line,

A-skinnin’ mules when the weather’s fine,

A-shootin’ craps when the sun don’t shine,

An’ now I’m a-ramblin’ to that baby mine!

With the pay day—for me ba-bay!

With the pay day of that gumbo line!”

As a vocalist there was room for improvement in Mr. Halfaman Daisy, but he sang the old skinner’s song with a swing and gusto that entertained his lolling passenger.

“A-hikin’ through a camp on the ole S. P.,

A gypo queen she a-throwed a kiss at me!

The pay was a dollar, and the board cost three,

But I stuck till she beat it with the cook, Hop Lee—

And me pay day—oh, ba-bay!

And me pay day on the ole S. P.!

“How d’ye like that song, ol’-timer?” he drawlingly asked his friend.

“It’s interpretive, to say the least,” Falcon the Flunky vouchsafed.

“They’s a hundred and fifteen verses that I remember,” observed Halfaway, “but I’ll only spring ’em on you two or three at a time. Know what a gypo queen is?”

“Yes, I’ve heard of gypo queens, or shanty queens. A gypo man, or shanty man, as I understand it, is one who owns a very small, dilapidated construction outfit, and takes subcontracts in light work from a bigger subcontractor. His daughter—if he has a daughter—is usually in camp with him, and she flirts with the stiffs to keep ’em on the job, despite the poor grub and poor pay and long hours. Am I right?”

“Right as a fox,” Halfaman replied. “Say, you have been about the camps a little, ain’t you? Now, then—did you get an earful o’ my recent begattin’ remarks—pertickelerly the last, where I says: ‘Eleazar begat Phinehas. Phinehas begat Abishua?’”

“Yes, I heard.”

“And now another question, ol’-timer: You’re such an old head at the railroadin’ game, did you ever know anybody named Abishua?”

“I think not.”

“Uh-huh—I guess you’re right. It ain’t known generally that the bird I’m thinkin’ about is named Abishua. Only the members of his family and a few close friends—sounds like a newspaper tellin’ about a weddin’ or a funeral—only them know he’s got a Bible name like that. But his right front name is Abishua. And don’t forget that Phinehas begat Abishua. Phinehas—that’s me. And if I begat Abishua I’m a bigger Jasper than Abishua, ain’t I? Well, what I say goes. How ’bout it?”

“I am hoping,” remarked The Falcon dryly, “that if you keep on you you may tell me something.”

“Gi’me time, Jack—gi’me time,” retorted Halfaman. “Stick yer neck in th’ collar, there, ole tassel-tail! Gi’me time. So you’ve heard tell of gypo men and gypo queens, but you never heard of an Ike called Abishua. Well, then, did you ever hear of a gypo queen called Wing o’ the Crow?”

The Falcon turned on his side and looked down at Halfaman. “Wing o’ the Crow,” he said thoughtfully. “That’s picturesque. What about her?”

“Her is right. And Abishua begat Wing o’ the Crow. Believe me, ole Falcon, that was some begattin’!”

“Yes—go on.”

“Well, his name’s Jeddo—Abishua Jeddo. He’s a tall, bony shanty man with only one arm. And his eyes and his hair are black as a crow. So the stiffs monikered ’im ‘Jeddo the Crow.’ And what Jeddo the Crow begat is called Joy. She’s twenty-one years old, as dark as her dad; and say—you c’n look at her just as easy!

“Her ma’s dead. The girl was born in her dad’s gypo outfit, and she’s a gypo queen. But not like the rest of ’em. Oh, no! She don’t slip none of ’em a kiss on the side to keep ’em followin’ Jack and Ned for Jeddo the Crow. No, no! Get fresh with her, and she’ll bend a pick handle over your frontispiece. She works in the cook shack, waits table, washes the dishes, and then goes out and hitches up a team and moves dirt till mealtime again. Or she c’n stick pigs”—load scrapers without wheels, commonly called “slips”—“swing a drillin’ hammer, skin four-up or six-up or jerkline—do anything on a railroad grade, by golly! And purty! Say, am I gettin’ talkative?

“Well, anyway, she’s her dad’s right-hand man. Bein’ one-armed, he couldn’t run the outfit without Wing o’ the Crow. And now d’ye savvy where she gets that moniker! Ole Jeddo the Crow is shy a wing, but he’s got the girl. So she’s Wing o’ the Crow to the stiffs. And purty—— But now I know I’m gettin’ talkative!”

“You’re very entertaining,” admitted Falcon the Flunky. “But I’m curious to know what brought Jeddo the Crow and Wing o’ the Crow to your mind just now.”

“Huh! That’s easy! ‘Phinehas begat Abishua,’ and Abishua gotta do what Phinehas says. An’ ole Phinehas he says: ‘Jeddo the Crow he’s so reckless with giant powder and things he’s likely to lose his other wing. And he’d better prepare for it by gettin’ another wing in the family beforehand.’ That’s what Jeddo the Crow’s begatter says.”

“Oh-ho! I think I begin to understand. It may be that out over the desert there Wing o’ the Crow is in camp, waiting for her Phinehas.”

“Well, if she ain’t there now she’s gonta be soon. Say, mule, poke yer neck furder into that, will you? Gonta be soon, ole Falcon. And Phinehas crossed four States like a ramblin’ kid to be there, too.

“Oh, when I’m a-ramblin’ down to rest,

Just ramble me out into the Golden West,

On a ramblin’ train, on a ramblin’ quest.

To die like a rambler on the tramp queen’s breast!

On pay day—oh, ba-bay!

On a pay day lay me down to rest!”

“Is it all settled between you and the young lady of the picturesque moniker, Halfaman?”

“Settled! I’ve chased them crows from coast to coast! Worked for half wages and et two suppers in one night! Beans? I hate the sight o’ beans—unless Wing o’ the Crow boils ’em! Settled! I’ve lost weight and ambition and everything to get things settled. But on this job, boy, I’m gonta make one big effort to nail the Wing o’ the Crow to a convenient tree. I won’t be with Mangan long after Jeddo the Crow gets perched out there, ’cause I gotta get that gypo queen this time or lose me reason. I’m what you might call distraught right now.

“Oh, a-Jeddo the Crow he’s a gypo man,

Gotta sling-bloke harness and a movin’ van,

Gotta three ole mules and a wheeler pan,

But I’ll stick around forever if I can-can-can!

Without a pay day—oh, ba-bay!

Without a pay day from that gypo man!

“I didn’t just make that up. Whoever did I don’t savvy. But I guess he was nuts about Wing o’ the Crow like I am. And, say, when a plug tells the truth right out like I do, he sure is nuts, ain’t he? Oh, well, at the worst I’m a ramblin’ kid. Now, I’ll say this is some desert—what, ol’-timer?”

The Falcon looked and gloried in the sight.

Away to the east appeared a hazy line of irregular calico buttes. To the south and west the pine-studded ridges of the mountains rose. Between them, level as a dance floor and covered sparsely with yucca palms, bronze greasewood, sage, and innumerable dry lakes, lay the colorful desert baking in the sun. Now and then a lone coyote stood staring, then slunk away mysteriously through the low growth. Tecolote, the wise-eyed little desert owl, perched himself on the dirt heap beside his hole in the ground and scolded at them, brave as a lion. Lean jack rabbits hopped away indifferently through the avenues of the greasewood. Halfaman pointed ahead with the long whip that he never seemed to need for another purpose.

“I think we’re makin’ for the saddle in that range o’ buttes,” he said. “That’s where the ole road comes through and hits the desert—our old road, boy. I think Squawtooth Ranch is about in there. That’s where we’re gonta camp, I hear. Boy, boy! Pass me that ole water bag. Make haste or I die! ‘And Phinehas begat Abishua!’”

Higher and higher mounted the yellow dust cloud. On and on into the mocking desert forged the wagon train, a long, winding snake whose joints were men and teams and vehicles—a mere worm wriggling slowly over a yellow carpet in the banquet hall of the gods.

Evening on the desert, with the mountains casting their long shadows athwart the rapidly cooling land. Three black specks, far apart, but drawing together slowly at a converging point between them and the squat adobe house at Squawtooth, with its sheltering cottonwoods and its oasis of green alfalfa set like an emerald in a sheet of yellow brass.

The three black specks grow larger and larger—two galloping horses, the one a pinto, the other a bay, and a mouse-colored pack burro—the California chuck wagon. A girl rides the pinto, a boy the bay, the burro trotting ahead of the latter. The boy and girl wave their hands at each other and gallop on. The ponies neigh greetings; the burro adds his mournful “Aw-ee-aw!” Two of the specks now become one. Side by side in the cow pony trot, Manzanita and Martin Canby ride home together from a day on the desert, the burro, with Martin’s camp outfit, trotting ahead.

Manzanita was colored almost as brown as the stumpy trunk of the beautiful shrub after which her mother had named her. Her hair was chestnut. She usually wore it in two girlish braids that reached to the bottom of her saddle skirts. Her eyes were hazel. With the possible exception of the waxen plume of the Spanish bayonet, there was nothing prettier nor more graceful on the desert; and the hill-billies and desert rats of the male persuasion would not have admitted the exception. One thing certain, the plume of the Spanish bayonet was far more dignified than its animate beauty rival. She rode with the ease of an amazon in her silver-mounted man’s saddle—a prize won at a rodeo for horsewomanship—and carried a holstered Colt .38 on a .45 frame for company. She wore a man’s hat with a rattlesnake band, an olive drab shirt, fringed leather chaps, and riding boots.

Martin Canby was just a freckle-faced, chapped, spurred, sombreroed kid of the desert—live as an eel, all grins, good nature, and backwardness. He was three years younger than Manzanita.

“Well, kid, did you find those strays?” asked the girl.

“Yes—a dozen of ’em. That old breechy bunch with them calves. They’d wandered down the mountainside and was makin’ it for Caldron Cañon. Ask me why? I dunno. No grass down there like’s up on top. Cows don’t know nothin’.”

“Your speech is artistic, mi hermano. Say ‘Cows don’t know anything.’”

“‘Cows don’t know anything,’” repeated Mart dutifully. “Has pa got back from Opaco?”

“Quién sabe! Hadn’t when I left home. I don’t expect him before to-night.”

“What’d he go for, anyway? Said he wanted to see ‘Flip’ Globe. What’d he wanta see Flip for?”

“I haven’t the remotest idea, Martie.”

“I have,” Mart declared. “Not what he wanted to see Flip about, but what took ’im to Opaco. I met ‘Splicer’ Kurtz this afternoon. He was comin’ down from the mountains for somethin’—I forget what. Said he heard yer friend Mangan had got into Opaco with his outfit. If that’s so, pa went to see Mangan. What’ll ye bet?”

“Nothing. I’m positive he rode in for the sole purpose of seeing Mr. Mangan and that the Flip Globe story was—well, just a story.”

“Pa Squawtooth sure took to that Mangan, didn’t he, Nita?”

“Si, señor. Yo penso.”

“And I know why! I know why!” Mart sang boyishly, wrinkling his snubbed and peeling nose at his sister.

“Oh, you do! Well, let me tell you something, old kid—he’s on a wild-goose chase. This Hunter Mangan seems to be a pretty square sort of a fellow. But that ends it so far as I’m concerned. Between you and me, podhead, I don’t dislike Mr. Mangan nearly so much as I pretended I do to Pa Squawtooth. That is, personally, you understand. But I do detest what he represents—the railroad through Squawtooth. I don’t want it there; and if I had my way it would never be there. Pa Squawtooth, old money snob that he is, thinks it the finest thing on earth, of course. It’s a wonder he didn’t try to have it through the front yard, with a depot before the door! It’ll ruin my desert—that’s what it’ll do! Soon folks will be moving in and taking up land, and—oh, dear!—it makes me sick to think of it!”

“Aw, what d’you care? We’ll have lots fun when the camps get here.”

“You will, maybe, but I won’t. And furthermore, Mr. Wiseman Pod, you don’t know whether even you will have fun, as you so youthfully express it. What do you know about camps like that? You know nothing of the world that you haven’t seen between a cow’s horns, muchacho. Maybe you’ll have fun, and maybe you won’t.”

Mart grasped his saddle horn and leaned toward the ground, hooking the counter of one of his high-heeled cowboy boots about the cantle. Mart had been still entirely too long. With ease he grasped a bunch of the plant called squawtooth, which gave the district its name, and five spears of which, shaped like the ribs of a fan, was the Squawtooth brand. Mart held on for dear life while his pony polled. The slender, fluted, rushlike spears were tough and held tenaciously; and next instant Mart was unhorsed and standing on his head in the sand.

His sister shouted with derisive laughter. “You’re a goose!” she cried. “Watch me!”

Leaning low in the saddle, she set her mare at a gallop toward a bunch of squawtooth that upreared itself from a bed of fine desert sand. As the pinto neared it Manzanita swung toward the earth, hooked a heel about her cantle, and grasped the plant as the mare sped by.

This was an old game of the two. The squawtooth was tenacious; sometimes they were able to snap it off, sometimes otherwise. If not, and they refused to loose their hold——

Well, in this instance, too, there was a flutter of leather chaps, a girl spinning head down in air, and a smothered plup in the sand bed.

A hundred yards apart brother and sister sat on the ground and watched their horses and the burro, the latter with his shaggy head down and playfully kicking to right and left, racing off toward home without them.

“Le’s walk!” shouted Mart. “Darn that burro! There goes my fryin’ pan!”

The girl brushed the sand from her hair and ears and eyebrows.

“All right!” she sputtered. “And there goes your bacon, too! And that last looked like a loaf of bread. As I was saying,” she continued serenely when he came up to her, “you know nothing whatever about railroad-construction camps. Neither do I, and I’m content in my ignorance. I know just what pa means to do. He’ll invite Mr. Mangan and any of the rest of the bosses that he thinks are big bugs to the house; and he’ll do everything in his power to make me interested in one of them—Mangan, of course, since he’s supposed to be the wealthiest of all of them. Oh, he makes me sick! Say—wait a minute; my boot’s full of sand.”

She sat down, removed her elaborately stitched tampico-top riding boot, shook the sand from it, and dusted her stocking. Mart waited, chewing absently on a spear of squawtooth. Mart had been told by the Indians that to chew squawtooth was good for kidney trouble. Mart did not know that he had kidney trouble, and he did not like the bitter taste of squawtooth. But considering that an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure, he chewed it all day long when riding the desert and mountains after cows.

“There! That feels better.”

Manzanita had slipped her boot on again and removed her silver spurs. Side by side they plodded on through the clinging sand.

“Darn them caballos!” muttered Mart.

“You should say, ‘Darn those caballos,’ brother mine.”

“‘Darn those caballos,’” seriously repeated Mart, chewing his squawtooth and stooping to recover his frying pan.

“But I’ll fix Pa Squawtooth,” Manzanita went on. “I’ve got it all planned out. He can’t sell me like one of his beef stock to any moneyed man. I’m going to revolt.”

“What d’ye mean revolt?”

“Can you keep your young face closed?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, then, I’m going to make monkeys out of Pa Squawtooth and any one who contemplates aiding and abetting him in the crime of making a lady out of me. I’m going to pretend to fall right in with the big scheme of getting friendly with the men in the camps. I’m going to pick me a railroader and make up to him. Listen, kid brother—I’m going to pick out the least prominent person in the whole shooting match—the man who gets the lowest pay of all of them, the scum of the camps. And I’ll at least give him the time of his young life. Say, won’t they be sick, podhead! Try to make a monkey out of me! We’ll see who’s a monkey by the time I’m through. Mart, I’m going to be a regular little devil! You watch!”

“That’ll be fun,” Mart observed sagely. “Who you gonta make out like you’re stuck on, Nita? Say, that was my side o’ bacon! Here she is half covered with sand. That ole skate o’ yours stepped on her!”

“It’s all right. Dust it off, and it’ll be good as ever. Sand’s good for your craw. It’s a wonder you wouldn’t learn how to throw a diamond hitch on a pack, Mart. But listen: Mr. Mangan told me all about the camps, and the different kinds of work the men do. I’m going to make friends with the man who wallops the pots in the Mangan-Hatton cook tent. I don’t care who he is or what he’s like. Pa says I’m a roughneck, and I’ll at least show him he’s right about that. I’m going to get stuck—as you so vulgarly put it—on the helper of Mangan’s cook. They call him a flunky, Mr. Mangan said. Now you keep that under your hat, will you?”

“Sure,” Mart promised, still taking his kidney treatment.

Then suddenly he stopped in his tracks and pointed across the darkening desert toward Opaco. “What’s that big dust cloud?” he wondered. “Can’t be a whirlwind—she’s too big. Say, Nita! That’s Mangan’s outfit a-comin’. What’ll ye bet?”

CHAPTER IV
CAMPED

NIGHT had cast its black poncho over the desert when the Mangan-Hatton outfit completed its ninety-mile journey from Opaco. Up close to the chain of calico buttes that upreared from the level land as if a giant child had piled them there in play, the wagon train was halted.

It was two hours beyond their regular feeding time, and the disappointed mules brayed ceaselessly. One minute’s delay in this important matter is sufficient to cause a railroad mule to tell the world about it, and two hours of infraction of the rules brought forth a protest proportionately heartrending. The vehicles were drawn up in a hollow square, and teams were unharnessed and fed inside the barrier, which served as a corral. There was necessarily a great hubbub, for there was no moon and nobody seemed to know where anything was. Orders were bawled right and left, amended, countermanded, and disregarded. Men swore intermittently, especially when they came in contact with a nest of desert cacti, unseen in the dark, but quite able to make its presence known. Teams stamped and eagerly crunched their feed. Men fell over piles of harness and kicked things—sometimes to their regret.

A calmer crew presided over a range set up temporarily in the sand. Here was little confusion, for all had seen to it that the cooks and their flunkies were supplied with provisions and the necessary tools.

Falcon the Flunky was greatly in evidence, slicing loaf after loaf of baker’s bread by the flickering light of gasoline torches, cutting ham into what he tried to convince himself were thin slices, carrying bucket after bucket of water from the tank wagon, conveniently backed up to the scene of these culinary activities, and staking the range with greasewood roots foraged from the desert which had heaved them up. It is said of the desert that there one digs his wood and climbs for his water; which is quite true, since the roots of the greasewood make better fuel than the branches, and springs are invariably in the foothills, on higher land.

Already Falcon the Flunky was becoming familiar with his task. The outfit had camped several times since leaving Opaco, and he had learned much.

The head cook—or chef, as he is dignified by the stiffs—was an old-time camp cook, and one of the best in railroad-construction circles. “Lardo the Cook” was a hard worker and a whirlwind for speed—tall, bony-faced, and paste-skinned—and, furthermore, he was a good fellow. There was a second cook called “Baldy,” and two more flunkies called “Rambo the Bouncer” and “Strip.”

Not long after the stock had been fed and watered Falcon the Flunky, at Lardo’s command, beat upon a dishpan with his knuckles and shouted: “Come get it!” And like a pack of hungry wolves the strangers on the desert swooped down upon ham and eggs and cottage-fried potatoes, for the unaccustomed coldness of the desert night and the delay had made them ravenous.

They sat on the ground about the range and held plates and coffee cups, while Falcon the Flunky and the other two piled victuals in the plates and poured steaming coffee in the cups. Over the range the cooks worked speedily, frying more and more and more.

Hunter Mangan, with his walking boss and his bookkeeper, sat with the rest on the ground and ate as greedily as anybody. Mangan’s eyes followed Falcon the Flunky as he hustled about supplying the hungry men, always ready, always willing, silent when asking some one if he wanted anything more, patiently efficient.

“That’s quite a flunky you’ve got, Hunt,” remarked the walking boss, a big, fat, red-faced giant named Reynolds. “Now, that’s the way I like to see a man act. He savvies that these stiffs are half starved and that most of ’em have been drivin’ teams all day, while he’s been only ridin’ and lookin’ at the scenery. He can’t do enough for ’em. Where’d that bird blow from?”

“He blew into Opaco with Halfaman Daisy,” replied Hunt Mangan. “That’s all I know about him—except that he’s not a stiff.”

Reynolds chuckled in his fat, rollicking way and held out his coffee cup toward Falcon the Flunky, who reached him promptly with his big copper coffeepot.

“What else, now?” asked the flunky, when the coffee was poured. “Better have another egg. No? And how about you, Mr. Mangan?”

“That ain’t so bad,” observed Reynolds, “and he ain’t handshakin’ either. He says the same thing to the stiffs. I like the feller’s face, Hunt. He savvies a lot, that bird.”

“I’ve got my eye on him,” Hunt Mangan said; “I like to see a man put his heart into what he doesn’t consider a very good job. That’s the boy I’m going to watch. Mangan & Hatton can usually find a place for men like that.”

“I’ll say so,” Steve agreed. “Where’d Halfaman blow from, did he say?”

“Yes, I was talking with him last night. He’s been over in Nebraska on the G. & N. M. job. Said he heard we were going to have a piece out here, and he hit the road west. He thinks I swallowed it, I suppose. Why should he leave the G. & N. M. job to come out here? There are some good old contractors on that job, and he knows all of them and can get about what he wants there. But he blew, and beat it all the way out here for the love of Mangan-Hatton. Huh!”

“Then why did he come. Hunt?”

“Remember when he was with us on the T. P. in Texas?”

“Yes.”

“And remember who was subbing off us on the south—camped right next to us?”

“Sure—Jeddo the Crow. Oh, I get you now! Jeddo’ll be on this job soon, hey? And with him will be Wing o’ the Crow! So that’s the big idea. You can’t hold Halfaman when Jeddo gets out here.”

“I thought I might if I give him a snap team,” said Hunt. “Jeddo the Crow will probably camp right next door to us. Halfaman can have a good job, and not be a mile away from the girl at that. I’d like to hold him. He’s a bear with a team.”

“Good man, all right. Popular with the rest o’ the stiffs, too. And that means a lot. How ’bout that black-haired little kid of Jeddo’s, Hunt? Is she a regular shanty queen of the old school?”

“No, Steve. She’s mighty pretty, too. And work! She’s as good as a man. If that fellow Jeddo had any pep and would cut the booze he’d make good. But he’s a thorough gypo man—doesn’t care, I guess. Just loves the life and is content to drag along with a few old skates and a collection of junk for tools. But Wing o’ the Crow is different. She takes after her mother, I suppose. Mrs. Jeddo was a pretty nice little woman, mild and ladylike and uncomplaining. Say, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for all concerned if Halfaman could horn in there. He and that girl would move dirt.”

“Uh-huh,” agreed Steve.

Soon the camp was rolled in blankets after the meal, and only the flunkies worked under the gasoline torches. Later they, too, lay on the hard ground, looking up at the desert stars, speculating on their future in this wilderness before they dropped asleep.

The mules and horses crunched their alfalfa hay, or rested their weary bodies in the white sand. The night wind of the desert blew softly through the chevaux-de-frise of the yuccas, which moaned dismally. Over on the summit of a rocky butte a coyote laughed at his mate, who laughed derisively back from another eminence. Falcon the Flunky lay under a wagon, wrapped in a quilt, his head on his rolled-up coat. If there was a mystery in the line of Falcon the Flunky it was now in the background of his mind; for he was dreaming that Lardo the Cook had ordered him to slice a thousand hams, with no slice a hair’s breadth thicker than the rest. The task kept him rather busy.

At six o’clock the following morning Webster Canby and his brood of five were at breakfast. Besides Mart and Manzanita, the brood for the present consisted of “Crip” Richey and “Limpy” Pardoe—gentlemen of the saddle—and Mrs. Ehrhart, the housekeeper. The cows were on summer pasture at this time of year, up on the mountain meadows, and the remainder of the vaqueros were with them at the camp called Piñon—Ed Chazzy, “Lucky” Gilfoyle, Splicer Kurtz, and “Toddlebike” Todd. Pardoe and Richey belonged up there, and were at the home ranch for only twenty-four hours. Mart Canby, too, belonged up there; but for the present Mart was interested in the new railroad camps and had decided, with the consent of a lenient father, to “get an eyeful” before returning to the altitudes. Miss Manzanita Canby was always anywhere she wished to be at any time she wished, so long as the pinto could get her there in conformance with these wishes.

“Did you see ’em, Manzy?” Mart asked his sister, who had just taken her seat at the foot of the table, for Mrs. Ehrhart occupied the head.

“Yes,” Manzanita replied. “And goodness knows they all but cover the desert! Did you ever see so many wagons and horses and mules and things?”

“By the way, Crip,” said Squawtooth to one of the vaqueros, “you want to have Ed kill a couple o’ steers and get ’em down to Mr. Mangan by to-night. I don’t know how often he’ll want beef after that, and I guess he don’t know himself just yet. But find out if you can when you deliver this, and try and not disappoint ’em.”

Manzanita winked at Mart. “That’s right, Pa Squawtooth,” she cut in. “Take care of ’em the best you know how. We don’t have such close neighbors often. Muy bueno!”

Squawtooth gravely stroked his long beard and eyed his beloved daughter speculatively.

“Still sore about us havin’ a railroad?” he asked.

“Us? That’s about right, Pa Squawtooth! Oh, I don’t know. I guess not. Mart says he and I are going to have lots of fun at the camps.”

“Oh, is that so! Well, Mr. Mart will be foggin’ it for Piñon when he’s had what fun his dad thinks is good for him. There’s drift fence needs buildin’ up there, ain’t they, Limpy?”

Limpy could not answer immediately, for Mrs. Ehrhart’s biscuits were large, and Limpy was of that school of epicureans who hold that half a biscuit constitutes a bite, regardless of the biscuit’s over-all dimensions. But he could nod—and did so, glancing guiltily at Manzanita, for he knew she was not of his school. Anyway, her little mouth, which always looked as if she had just kissed that brilliant desert flower called Indian paint brush, would have excluded her from the half-a-biscuit-at-a-bite cult.

“I don’t like to build drift fence, pa,” Mart told his father. “Can’t I go on herd when I go back, and let some one that likes to build drift fence do it?”

By this time Limpy had proved the efficacy of his school, and was able to remark:

“They ain’t no such animal.”

At which Manzanita laughed—whereupon Limpy and his dining chair were transported to the edge of a silver-tipped cloud, which is a giddy perch indeed.

“What are you going to do to-day, Mart?” asked the girl.

“Go over to Mangan’s camp, o’ course, and see the stiffs.”

“What do you know about stiffs, I’d like to know!”

“I’d like to know what he knows about them mulies and their calves that drifted down toward Caldron Cañon,” dryly put in Squawtooth.

“I got ’em,” Mart proclaimed. “I headed ’em onto the Canterbury grade and drifted ’em up as far as Shirttail Bend.”

“Wonderful! And they told ye they’d go on back up to Piñon then, did they?”

“Aw, they will! You know they will, pa. They always do that.”

“Nice cows, son—dootiful cows. Like my son and daughter. Well, if they don’t you can throw the diamond hitch on Mono and get in yer little saddle and stay out till they do. An’ in the meantime, I reckon the stiffs can take care of ’emselves.”

“All right! That’s a go. You le’ me stick around here till I see what’s to be seen, an’ if Crip or Limpy says them cows ain’t back when they bring down Mangan’s meat, I’ll go shoot ’em back.”

“I’d say Mr. Mangan, if I was you, son,” complacently corrected his father.

“Mr. Mangan,” dutifully parroted Mart. He had learned that to correct himself when corrected by his so-called betters was to forestall unpleasant argument.

“When are you going over to the railroad camp, muchacho?” Mart’s sister wanted to know.

“Just as soon as I eat this biscuit and Mis’ Ehrhart clears her throat like she does when she thinks everybody’s et enough.”

Everybody laughed at this.

“You little nut!” cried Manzanita, and, throwing her arms about her wriggling brother, kissed him on his blistered nose.

Limpy thoughtfully studied his own nose and no doubt wished that it were blistered. Crip looked at the bottom of his coffee cup and sighed.

“Well, clear your throat, Mrs. Ehrhart!” cried the girl. “Everybody’s through. I’m going with Mart.”

“Who said you was?”

“Were, hermano.”

“Were.”

“I did. Can’t I, pa?”

“Certainly, Nita. Mr. Mangan’ll be more than glad to have you. He told me as much.”

Limpy decided to kill Mangan on sight, if his look meant anything.

“Tell Mr. Mangan I’ll be over pretty soon,” said Squawtooth.

They rose from the table together.

“Now don’t bother Mr. Mangan, Mart,” cautioned his father.

“Huh! How ’bout Manzanita?” retorted Mart. Whereupon Manzanita punished him by pinching his arm.

“Your sister’s older than you, Mart, and she’s a lady,” said Squawtooth Canby.

“Huh! I don’t want no ladies in mine if she’s one,” said Mart.

“If I thought you meant that,” said his dad, “there wouldn’t be enough quirts on the rancho to last out what I’d do to you. But seein’ you’re a Canby, I reckon you just slipped a little. Go on now before the both of you get my goat.”

“Not till I’ve kissed you where your mouth ought to be!” cried his daughter, parting his heavy mustache and planting a kiss on his lips.

Then Manzanita and Mart raced from the old one-story adobe to the stables to saddle up. They raced in the saddling, mounted, and raced to the corral gate, and out of the yard to the desert, where they continued to race over the yellow stretches toward the big dirty-white tents that were rising one by one against the background of the calico buttes.

Although nineteen and sixteen respectively, these children of the desert were not so sophisticated as are young persons of the same age born and reared in cities, and they acted like sixteen and thirteen, which they were perhaps in worldly experience. It seemed to their doting, gray-headed father that neither ever would grow up. And he did not know that he wished it to occur too soon, in Mart’s case, anyway. But Manzanita was growing altogether too pretty and susceptible to be allowed to dance with cow-punchers and penniless prospectors much longer, for Squawtooth knew the way of a man and a maid, and the girl showed a marked preference for the chapped and ragged-shirted man of the plains. She was of age and her own mistress—and girls married young in the cattle country.

“I’m going to do it to-day, Martie!” came his sister’s shout on the morning wind. “I’m going to snub Mangan and make friends with the dirtiest flunky in the bunch! You watch, old kid!”

“Mr. Mangan!” shrilly corrected Mart from behind, for his snip-nosed bay was no match for Manzanita’s pinto mare.

CHAPTER V
VISITORS

THE stock of the Mangan-Hatton Company were soft from the trip by train from Utah, and the pull through the desert sand on top of that had worn them out. Therefore Hunter Mangan decided to let them rest out their first day in the new camp, while the men devoted themselves to making their coming sojourn at the foot of the buttes as comforting as possible.

Early they went to work and before the two young Canbys swooped down upon them, the large dining tent and the cook tent were up, together with several bunk tents and the commissary, which last was as big and as round as a good-sized circus tent. Now the men were at work on the stable tent—a mere “top” of huge proportions. At their portable forges the smiths were busy shoeing horses, sharpening drills, and mending broken implements. Freighters and axmen had gone to the distant mountains for piñon pine fir, and mountain mahogany for fuel, as the desert greasewood supply soon would prove insufficient for the big camp’s needs. In the commissary tent the clerks arranged their stock of goods. In the office tent the bookkeeper, his assistant, and the timekeeper fussed with their appliances and books. In the cook tent and dining tent the cooks and flunkies worked, setting up the long oilcloth-covered tables, mending benches broken by travel, building shelves, and sorting out provisions.

“Look who’s here!” remarked Lardo the Cook to Falcon the Flunky, as the former came in from the tank wagon. “Couple o’ Alkali Ikes just made it in on de Jack-an’-Ned Short Line. A Ike an’ a Ikerooess. Couple o’ splinters offen sumpin—a he one an’ a goil. Some Moll, I’ll say—only she wears leadder pants. Lamp de bot’ of ’em, Jade. Scenery—no foolin’!”

Falcon the Flunky stepped to the cook-tent door and saw the new arrivals shaking hands with Hunter Mangan, fresh and immaculate in neat khaki and leather puttees.

“Wot about her, ol’-timer? There—wot?”

“She’s certainly pretty,” agreed The Falcon in his perpetually grave manner. “Brother and sister, I should say. They seem to be acquainted with Mangan.”

“Guess dey b’long to dat ranch over dere in dem cottonwoods an’ jungles—hey? Ain’t dat wot dey call Squawtoot’?”

“I believe so.”

“An ancient hick wid w’iskers—hey? I seen um in dat Opacko boig talkin’ to de squeeze.”

“Oh, is that he?” observed The Falcon. “I believe I saw him, too, when I applied for my job. Wore silver-mounted spurs and chaps—quite a picturesque old Westerner.”

“Say, kid, youse sure c’n spill de lingo,” Lardo commented. “Now if I’d ’a’ been a-tellin’ ’bout dat ole Ezekiel I’d ’a’ said: ‘An ole mattress robber wid his pins in leadder stovepipes an’ one geed lamp.’ Pictur-es-que, was he? I’ll say he was worse’n dat. But wot about dis jane—give us de dope on her, Jack! Like’s not she’s dis ole cocklebur’s dawter.”

“She’s pretty,” repeated The Falcon, his eyes on the girl.

“Any ole snipe shooter could say dat!” retorted Lardo the Cook. “I done it meself—easy. Youse’re a disappointment on dat deal, Jack. Well, I guess youse’ve contrackted an eyeful, now. I didn’t tell youse to make a telescope outa yerself. Find me dose drip pans I was huntin’, and den fasten yerself to de crank o’ dat meat grinder. We’ll shoot ’em hash fer dinner, ketch-as-ketch-can, an’ if dey don’t like it dey c’n tell Lardo de Cook. And dat’s sudden deat’! I killed more gaycats for kickin’ about hash dan fer any udder reason, Jack.”

Falcon the Flunky returned to his work, but the girl that he had seen had aroused his interest. She was as pretty as the little desert flowers he had enjoyed so much on the trip across the wastes. She looked like a wild-West moving picture actress as she sat there in her elaborate saddle, chapped and booted and spurred, talking to Mangan, except that—well, Falcon the Flunky did not particularly care for actresses. The girlish freshness of her appealed to him most.

He hunted for and found the dripping pans, made sure that the cold meat they had brought along had not spoiled, and began grinding it into one of the pans for hash. It requires a great deal of grinding to make hash for a construction camp, and Falcon the Flunky was still engaged in turning the crank three quarters of an hour later when, at the cook-tent door, he heard Mangan say:

“And this is the cook tent, Miss Canby. Go right in. Lardo is a wild man, but we’ll watch him while you’re around.”

The flaps of the tent were pulled aside to frame a picture of a girl in chaps and boots and Stetson. Then said the picture, to whoever was outside at her back:

“Oh, I want to see the flunky first,” said the girl. “I’ve never seen a flunky.”

She was looking directly at the patient grinder of cooked beef. And in that instant the grinder wished fervently that he was anything but a flunky.

Now a boy with wide eyes and a blistered snub nose joined the picture. It moved forward a step or two, and Hunter Mangan became a part of its composition. He pointed laughingly at the man who ground meat.

“That is a flunky,” he said.

There came a devilish twinkle into the girl’s hazel eyes. With quick, rustling strides she left the doorway and whirled her spur rowels straight toward the object under discussion. She held out a strong hand, browned to the color of her chestnut hair by desert winds.

“How do you do, Mr. Flunky!” she cried, her eyes as friendly as a baby’s.

Lardo the Cook, Baldy, Strip, and Rambo the Bouncer were all eyes and ears. Mangan was laughing a little forcedly. The snub-nosed cow-puncher was grinning.

Then The Falcon’s hand left the crank of the food chopper and grasped the girl’s.

“I’m happy to meet you,” he said easily. “I’m called Falcon the Flunky.”

Almost a giggle came from the Indian paint-brush lips.

“I’m Manzanita Canby,” the girl exchanged, with a roguish twinkle in her eyes. “And this is my brother, Martin—better known as Podhead. It’s a wonder Mr. Mangan wouldn’t introduce us.”

“Mr. Canby, I’m happy to know you,” Falcon the Flunky said, offering his hand to the boy and making a friend for life by calling him mister. “And Mr. Mangan is excusable, Miss Canby,” he continued, smiling easily, “for he doesn’t know me by any other name than Falcon the Flunky. It would have seemed awkward to introduce me to you as that.”

Her hazel eyes grew round. “Is—is that a—— What is it, Mr. Mangan? A moniker?”

“That’s my moniker,” said Falcon the Flunky. “You see, most tramps have monikers, and some of them are quite unique. I called myself The Falcon; and when Mr. Mangan took me on as a cook’s helper he labeled me Falcon the Flunky. It’s alliterative, and not unpicturesque, and suits me to a T.”

“But I want to know you by your real name!” she protested.

“Sorry,” he replied, “but I’m not traveling under my real name just now.”

“And won’t you tell even me? Whisper it?” There was a pout on her red lips. Miss Manzanita Canby could be a wretched little flirt when she wished. Ask Crip or Limpy or Lucky or Ed or Toddlebike—gentlemen riders of well-known integrity.

“Sorry to seem rude,” The Falcon held out, “but I must refuse even you.” To whisper into that little pink ear a secret kept from all others in the world was a temptation indeed, but the flunky held to his rule.

“Falcon the Flunky is our mystery man, Miss Canby,” put in Hunter Mangan in tones that showed he was not quite sure whether he liked the unexpected situation or not.

“Oh, that’s delightful!” she cried. “I’ve always wanted to know a mystery man! And now I don’t want to know your name. If you ever begin to tell me I’ll stick my fingers in my ears. Because—I’ll tell you why—I’m going to be a detective and find out what the mystery is about you!”

“Ha-ha!” and Mangan laughed. “Quite an idea. And now let’s go back to the commissary tent, Miss Canby. I’ll show you——”

“No! No! Not yet. Please! I want Falcon the Flunky to show me around the culinary department first. You and Mart go see whatever you had in mind, Mr. Mangan. I want to begin on my solution of the mystery.”

“But—er—that is, Miss Canby——”

“Go on, please—I’ll be over directly. Mart wants to see the stable tent, I know. He’s crazy about horses. I’ll be over soon—really, truly!”

Martin thereupon braced up and took his cue. “Aw, come on, Mr. Mangan, an’ let ’er alone. You don’t know ’er like I do. She always gets whatever she wants.”

“And, Mr. Mangan,” added Manzanita, “please ask the cook to have somebody else grind the meat, won’t you? Really, I want to find out about Falcon the Flunky. I’ll solve your mystery for you.”

There was nothing else for the contractor to do but to comply with this seeming whim of an irresponsible and adorable girl. He shrugged, glanced a little shamefacedly at Lardo the Cook in a request for him to bow as he had bowed and led the way out ahead of the grinning Martin.

“Now,” said Manzanita Canby, “introduce me to the cook and everybody. Mr. Mangan’s too stuck up for me. They call me a roughneck around here. Anyway, I like to know just folks, and I’m wild about stiffs.”

“Cu-can youse beat it!” Lardo the Cook whispered to Baldy, hastily rubbing dough from hands and bare arms to be ready for the presentation.

When the rest of the cook-tent’s crew had stammeringly responded to The Falcon’s introduction of them to Miss Canby, that young person immediately lost interest in them and the cook tent.

“I want to see the dining tent,” she informed The Falcon. “Show me that, won’t you?”

The Falcon would, and Lardo the Cook nodded acquiescence.

The back entrance of the dining tent was only two steps from the cook tent—the separation making for coolness in the former. Both entrances were screened. Falcon the Flunky held the door open for the camp’s guest, and she passed in under the big top.

“The stiffs eat here,” explained her self-chosen guide, indicating two long oilcloth-covered tables that extended the length of the tent. “And that smaller table over there is for the royal family.”

“What’s that? But let’s go on out in front before you tell me. Then I want to know—oh, everything about construction camps and stiffs.”

He led the way between the long tables to the front entrance, and she passed out into the morning sunlight.

“Let’s sit down on the ground here by the door,” she suggested.

“I’ll get a chair——”

“No, I prefer sitting on the ground. I sit in chairs only at mealtime.”

Accordingly she sat herself down in the desert sand, and The Falcon sat beside her. The commissary tent and the stable tent were in plain view, both fronting them. At the door of the commissary stood Hunter Mangan and Mart, the latter pretending that he was enjoying the big cigar that mated the contractor’s and looking very important indeed. Mangan looked toward the dining tent, and then suddenly turned his eyes elsewhere.

“Look at that kid brother of mine smoking that big cigar!” Manzanita said with a laugh. “If Pa Squawtooth should see that! I ought to tell on him, but I never do. That boy’s a great care to me.” She sighed pensively. “Well, now, Mr. Falcon the Flunky, what is the royal family?”

The Falcon was watching her closely. While she scooped up sand and allowed it to trickle through her brown fingers, and seemed to be idly intent on it, she now and then shot a quick glance from under her long chestnut lashes toward the commissary. The flunky was nonplused. Quite apparently she had been little interested in the culinary department. That she had made him come straight through to where she could see Mangan and her brother was as evident. What had she in mind? Not a sudden interest in Falcon the Flunky and the mild mystery suggested—of that he was disappointedly certain. It piqued him a trifle. Somehow he found that he wanted her to be interested in him. How old was she—sixteen or twenty-two or three? The long heavy braids of glimmering chestnut hair said “sixteen.” Her developed womanly figure, for all its strength and litheness, proclaimed that she was in her twenties.

“Well?”

“I beg your pardon. Why, the royal family of a construction camp consists of the white-collar brigade—men who don’t work with their hands to any appreciable degree—together with the women of the camp, if there are any about. The contractors and their families, the bosses, the bookkeepers, timekeepers, commissary men, and sometimes an engineer’s party, if one happens to be boarding with a contractor. In most camps these eat at a separate table, and in some cases in a separate dining tent—smaller. That’s the royal family.”

“Snobs, eh?”

“We-ell—perhaps. I don’t know, though. When you know the camps better you’ll realize that democracy is pretty prevalent in big construction work. I don’t exactly think that snobbish. The stiffs don’t seem to resent it, anyway. And that’s the test, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so. Are you a stiff?”

“Oh, yes.”

“You don’t talk out of one corner of your mouth and say, ‘De bot’ o’ youse togedder.’ Oh, I think that’s so funny! They’re regular clowns.”

The Falcon cleared his throat. “How old are you?” he asked bluntly.

“Nineteen,” she readily told him, sifting sand over her chaps.

“Mum! You’re deceptive. It’s the way you wear your hair, I suppose.”

“I fall down in the sand so much,” she said, “it’s easier to keep it out of my hair this way.”

“I didn’t ask out of mere curiosity,” he told her, chuckling at her confession. “I—well, I hardly know how to say it, Miss Canby. But if you were my sister, for instance, I’d warn you not to be too familiar with the stiffs. Now please don’t be offended. You see, I realize that you know nothing about the tramps or near tramps that make up a construction camp. They’re all right in their way—I’m not condemning stiffs in general—but some might misinterpret your democratic manner. You’ve had lots to do with cow-punchers, I suppose, and that might prove misleading. There’s hardly the chivalry among stiffs that you have found in the cow camps, I imagine.”

“But you’re a stiff!”

“Of course; of course. But there are stiffs and stiffs—while it might be said that all cow-punchers are gentlemanly. You must understand that your cowmen are always in virtually the same environment, and are not nearly so nomadic as these men. But perhaps I shouldn’t have spoken as I did—especially on such short acquaintance. I meant well, though.”

“Oh, I can take care of myself pretty well. I’ve always managed to do so. I pack a six usually.” Her look implied that life had cheated her in never having offered an opportunity for her to shoot a villain or two. “Now you mustn’t censure me. I get enough of that at home. I’m frightfully crude, I know; but I do hate to be told about it every day. But don’t apologize. Go on and tell me about monikers and getting sloued in the hoosegow, and the main squeeze and gypo camps, and skinners and muckers and dynos and things. Mr. Mangan told me a lot before ever I’d seen a camp and fired my imagination. Who’s the main squeeze?”

The Falcon laughed until he caught her peeking from under her lashes at the stable tent, where Mangan and the struggling cigar smoker had gone. Then he stopped laughing suddenly. Was this a subtle little flirtation? Was Mangan interested in this girl? Was she trying to make him jealous? But if so, why had she picked on the recruit flunky as a pawn in her game? The Falcon was mystified. Mangan, it seemed, never had even looked toward the dining tent since the two had come out and sat down.

“The main squeeze,” he informed her, “is hobo slang for anybody in high authority. Mr. Mangan there is the main squeeze about this camp. But ordinarily when a construction stiff speaks of the main squeeze he means the head contractor, or main contractor, as he is more often called.”

“And who is the main squeeze on this road?”

“The main contractors are the firm of Demarest, Spruce & Tillou, of Minneapolis. They are a large concern.”

“Oh, I’ve met Mr. Demarest! I like him. He’s my kind—bluff, rough-and-ready, and cross and kind at the same time. He pulled my queues and kidded me something fierce, and said if I was his daughter he’d spank me. Pa had just caught Mart and me smoking corn-silk cigarettes behind the stable, you know. But at the same time Mr. Demarest aided and abetted me in my meanness. He bet me a dollar I couldn’t jump from one stack of alfalfa to another that we had on the ranch then, in three trials. I took him up; and the first two times I slid off to the ground. But the third time I stuck, and held there clawing at the hay for pretty nearly a minute. Then he laughed like thunder in the mountains and paid up like a sport, and his face got red with little purple jiggers all over it, and veins and things. He’s a sport. But go on—explain about main contractors.”

“Well,” complied The Falcon, “the main contractors take the entire contract for, say, fifty or maybe a hundred miles—or sometimes maybe for the entire work—if they’re big enough to swing it. Then they sublet portions to smaller contractors for a smaller figure per yard than they have agreed upon with the company.

“For instance, there’ll be rock work here on Mangan & Hatton’s piece. There’ll be a deep cut through the saddle of those two big buttes. The main contractors probably figured that they could run that cut and build the accompanying fill for, say, seventy cents a yard. Then they probably sublet the job to the Mangan-Hatton Company for sixty-five cents.

“Dirt work pays far less per yard, according to the nature of it.

“Now, after contracting, the main squeeze will sublet every mile that he can to smaller men. Then the parts that no one wants to tackle, perhaps because of the inadequacy of the outfits on the job, must be attended to by the main contractors themselves. Naturally to them are left the roughest, most difficult pieces of the work. They usually move in last, then, and not only do their own work but keep a weather eye on what the subs are doing.”

“And Demarest, Spruce & Tillou are to come here later on?”

“Very likely—unless they sublet all of it. And there will be dozens of other outfits, large and small, and ragtowns and——”

“What’s a ragtown?”

“Well, the less you know about a ragtown the better. They’re tent towns that move around with big construction work—composed of saloons, dance halls, gambling games, and such things designed to get the stiff’s money away from them.”

“Oh, I want to see a ragtown! I was in a saloon once. There was one up at the gold mine near our mountain ranch. I put my foot on the rail and bought drinks for the house. But I drank red pop. Beer’s bitter. And I can shoot craps, too. Listen: The kid and I were shooting craps back of a stable one day, and I threw seven or ’leven six times straight; and I’d just won his neckerchief and clasp and one of his spurs when old Pa Squawtooth came snooping around a haystack and nailed us. That is, he got the kid. I beat it! When will a ragtown come, do you think?”

“I think I’ll have a word with your father when one does come,” he told her.

“No, don’t! I won’t get hurt or do anything wicked. Pa’ll spoil everything. He wants me to sit around the house all day and play the piano and crochet. Then, besides, the kid will be sticking his peeled nose into things, and I’ll have to go along to take care of him. Now you aren’t going to lecture any more, are you? What’s a gypo camp—and a gypo queen?”

Falcon the Flunky had started to tell her when from the dining-room door behind him he heard a fervent “Good night!” in familiar tones. Turning, he saw the drooping mouth and flaring pitcher-handle ears of Halfaman Daisy, who apparently had been seeking him.

“Come here, Halfaman,” he ordered. “I want to introduce you to Miss Canby. She wants to know about gypo queens, and you’re an authority on that subject.”

Halfaman’s freckled face went red to the ears, and he winked with one eye and then the other at his partner, pleading to be released.

“Miss Canby,” The Falcon went on, “this is my partner, Halfaman Daisy.”

The girl was holding out her ready hand, and Halfaman wriggled toward her and covered it with his own, removing his cap and promptly dropping it—stooping for it, stubbing his toe on a greasewood root buried in the sand, making a spectacle of himself, and realizing it painfully.

“Ma’am,” he said, straightening at last, “how’s each paltry division this mornin’? Please’ ta meet you, ma’am.” Then he stood as if he had been ordered to be shot at sunrise.

“Are you a stiff, Mr. Halfaman?” the girl asked, ingenuously.

“Oh, sure—worse’n that.”

“‘Halfaman’ sounds like a puncher name,” she informed him. “You look like all man to me. Why do they call you that?”

“Well, you see, ma’am, I’m one o’ the begatters. I’m Phinehas; and Phinehas begat Abishua. First Chronicles, sixth chapter—that’s where the begatters are. Now, you couldn’t call a bird Phinehas and look pleasant, could you, ma’am? So my old pardner, his name was Holman, and the stiffs they got to callin’ me Halfaman just for a kid.”

“Tell Miss Canby about the begatters, Halfaman,” suggested The Falcon. “Perhaps she doesn’t understand.”

With a look of seriousness Halfaman scraped his bedraggled cap to one side of his kinky head.

“Have you ever read the Bible, ma’am?” he asked.

“Oh, yes—lots. Every night before I go to bed I read a chapter.”

“That’s right, ma’am—that’s right,” approved Mr. Daisy. “Now next time you read First Chronicles, sixth chapter. Then you’ll know all about the begatters. Here’s the way she runs:

“‘And the children of Amram; Aaron and Moses and Miriam. The sons of Aaron; Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar. Eleazar begat Phinehas; Phinehas begat Abishua.’

“Phinehas—that’s me. Phinehas begat Abishua. Now, ma’am, did you ever hear tell o’ Wing o’ the Crow?”

“No, indeed. Tell me.”

“Well, she’s the daughter of a one-winged gypo man called Jeddo the Crow. She’s just about your age—maybe a leetle older—but black, ma’am—black as tar.”

“Oh! Mercy!”

“Whoa! Not all over! You don’t savvy. Just her hair and eyes. Well, now, you live over there, don’t you?”

He pointed over the shimmering desert to the low adobe ranch house, swimming hazily in a yellow mirage.

Manzanita nodded.

Halfaman raked his cap to the other side of his head.

“Well, now, when Wing o’ the Crow gets here with her dad—that’s Abishua—I want you to meet her—see? You ’n’ her oughta be good pals. She’s as pretty as you are—and I’ll tell the world that’s progressin’ some. So you meets her—see?—and you two gets nice and acquainted—see?—and then I wanta slip you an earful o’ somethin’ I got on my chest. Then all you gotta do, ma’am, is use your inflooence—see? Get me? Now I gotta beat it. I’m mendin’ harness. Please’ to meet you, ma’am!”

And he hurried away, whistling out of one corner of his mouth.

“Why, what a funny man!” remarked Manzanita laughingly. “What on earth was he talking about?”

“For a heart,” said The Falcon earnestly, “he has a big nugget of gold. He was talking about his sweetheart, Wing o’ the Crow, a shanty queen. But I’m afraid he didn’t explain very well.”

Falcon the Flunky did, however, and now it seemed that his listener was more interested. She looked less frequently toward the various places to which Mangan betook himself, trailed by Mart and the cigar, and watched The Falcon’s face.

It was a fine, frank face to watch; and more and more, as thoughts of her petty little game took to the background, she realized that here was a sincere, likable young man with brains that were anything but sluggish. She liked his eyes and their steady, brotherly look; she noticed that his hands were trim and clean and strong. His careful articulation, effortless though it seemed, told volumes about his upbringing. She had sought out Falcon the Flunky to use as a tool in her willful game of thwarting her scheming father and Hunter Mangan; and now she realized that she had picked the wrong man for her purpose. She actually was going to like the flunky.

This would never do! She despised herself now. Suppose the flunky had proved to be an uncouth, uninteresting, ignorant person, and that she had tried to use him in the furtherance of her own silly ends! Her confidence in her own desirability was great, spoiled as she had been by adoring vaqueros. Would it not have been terrible if she had caused a poor, unfortunate flunky to fall in love with her? She blushed for shame at her unthinking selfishness.

But this man was different He was well knit and muscular, good to look upon, refined, and mysteriously interesting. If he wanted to fall in love with her, he should be perfectly able to take care of his own interests in such a matter. So if he wanted to go and fall in love with her—why, he could just go ahead and do it!

In the midst of these musings Manzanita suddenly straightened apprehensively. A familiar figure had ridden in on a magnificent black horse. Over near the stable tent a half-smoked cigar dropped in the sand and was stealthily covered by a booted foot.

“Goodness!” breathed the girl. “There’s pa. I—I guess I’d better be going.”

Youth plans and plans, but youth’s actualities are ofttimes disconcerting—nay, appalling!

CHAPTER VI
PREACHMENTS

A MONTH passed, and where had been only yucca palms, sand, and cactus, now stood many tent cities, and hundreds of toilers worked incessantly. For a hundred miles on the other side of the chain of calico buttes one might walk and pass through several camps a day. On the inner side of the buttes the situation was the same. There were four rather large camps on Squawtooth Ranch, including that of the Mangan-Hatton Company; but the piece of work allotted to Jeddo the Crow was still without its camp.

Just beyond the buttes a mushroom town had sprung into being, where were bars and restaurants and dance halls and gambling devices. Such towns usually are named as are the Indian boys—on the spur of the moment. The first settler in this one was a saloonman from San Francisco. As he and his workmen were setting up the tent saloon, which was to become the nucleus for the town, a desert twister came along, grabbed the tent by its four corners, and whirled it round and round at lightning speed, flattening the men or enveloping them in numerous whipping folds of canvas and snarls of guy ropes. One man looked up from the bed of cactus into which he had been sent sprawling, and shouted in pidgin: “Whassa malla? Stling bloke?” So the town became “Stlingbloke.”

From Stlingbloke’s single street late one afternoon rode two on horseback, and set their horses’ faces toward the desert.

“Manzanita,” said Hunt Mangan, “I asked Mart to ride on ahead of us because I wanted to have a few words with you. I don’t want you to feel offended, now. I am quite a little older than you, and think more of you than perhaps you understand. For these reasons I am going to risk presumptuousness and try to show you where you’re wrong. Girl, you have no business in Stlingbloke.”

“Why not? Mart was with me.”

“A mere slip of a boy,” expostulated Hunt. “You don’t understand at all, and I consider it my duty to tell you. That’s a wretched hole. Nothing but saloons and gambling dens.”

Manzanita looked away from him. “No one spoke to me. Only one man stared at me—a fellow with a silk vest and a waxed black mustache. But I guess he only thought I was a freak. Mart wanted to go, and I went along to look out for him. He’s such a kid, that little podhead!”

“Heavens and earth!” the contractor replied. “And what are you? Now listen here: Would your father approve of your going to Stlingbloke?”

“He was keen enough for the camps to come, and for the road to be built, I notice. Stlingbloke’s a part of it, isn’t it?”

“It is—a necessary evil, I suppose. But stay away from it, Nita. If I’m not too bold what were you doing there, anyway? I nearly fell from my saddle when I saw you poking around and peering through doors.”

“Speaking of dropping from your saddle,” said the girl, “do you see that bunch of squawtooth ahead there? Well, lope your old skate at it, and grab your saddle horn, and lean out, and le’s see if you can pull it up. Bet I can!”

“I won’t be diverted,” he told her gravely. “Anyway, I’m not up to you in fancy stunts in the saddle. What were you up to at Stlingbloke?”

“I wanted to buck roulette,” she confessed. “Mart said there were roulette wheels there. Ed Chazzy has got a big picture up in the mountains, all framed and colored and everything, of a lot of men playing roulette in a gambling house in Arizona. It’s a dandy. The gamblers have on green eye-shades, and there’s one fellow just walks about with a big cigar in his mouth and his hands behind his back. The lookout, Ed said he was. And big, big stacks of chips—all colors. And stiffs and buckaroos and Mexicanos bucking the game. So I—Mart said there was roulette at Stlingbloke, and I wanted to try it just once. So Mart and I sneaked off and rode over, but there were so many men in the places that we both lost our nerve—and then you came along and bawled us out!”

“Does your brother drink, Manzanita?”

“About a gallon and a half a day.”

“Wh-what!”

“Milk. He wants to get fat, like a traveling man he saw in Opaco once. And when we have boiled beef he eats the marrow, too. Now he goes to your camp and makes Lardo the Cook let him dig the marrow out of the beef bones, because you folks have lots of it. But he’ll never get fat—he eats too much squawtooth for his kidneys. It counteracts the milk and marrow.”

A man who thinks it his duty to be serious and cannot is a pitiable sight. Hunter Mangan was such.

“So Mart doesn’t drink intoxicants?”

“That little podhead? I should say not! He likes red pop too well, like I do. We both tasted beer once. Pa Squawtooth gave it to us. No more for us—squawtooth is bitter enough. Come on, now—there’s another bush. Try it once!”

“No, I’m no fancy rider. Something would crack if I were to lean very far from the saddle. So you didn’t play roulette?”

“No—we backed out. Mart’s going to make a roulette wheel out of an old wheelbarrow wheel we’ve got. He says he can make a wheel of fortune out of it, anyway. Did you ever buck a wheel of fortune, Hunt?”

“I’m not on the confessional carpet to-day,” he replied evasively. “I guess I’ve been as big a sucker as the next man in my time, though. Where do you get such weird ideas, Manzanita?”

“Quién sabe!” She shrugged. “Hearing the boys talk around cow camps, I guess. I’m going to be a moving picture actress. I can ride and shoot, and I’m pretty. How about that last?”

“You are,” he assured her fervently.

“Well, that’s what I want to be. Mart’s going to be my manager. We were going to run away several times, but something always prevented us. In the pictures cowgirls go into saloons and buck the games and all. I’m a cowgirl; but this country’s always been so tame. Do you think I have the screen face?”

Hunter Mangan clenched his big tanned fists. He knew what kind of a face she had, and he was trembling to take her in his arms and kiss every inch of it, from the piquant chin to the chestnut hair. “Cradle robber!” he growled to himself; then remembering that this girl was nineteen, he marveled the more.

“You won’t go to Stlingbloke again, will you?” he pleaded. “Not with just Martin, anyway. Go with your father or with me, if your curiosity won’t let you keep away.”

“Oh, I suppose not. Unless Mart persists in going. Then I’ll have to go for his sake, I suppose. I like the color of it, though.”

“Humph! It seems that for the manager-to-be of a moving picture star Mart plays second fiddle to the managed,” he observed dryly.

“Oh, that would be just a convenient business arrangement,” she explained. “I’d be the boss, of course. Stars really are, aren’t they? But I’d want Mart along—I couldn’t live without the little nut!—and he’d be my manager—a mere figure-head, of course.”

Gravity gave way to the inevitable, and Hunter Mangan was lost.

“And now,” he said finally, “I have a more intimate matter still that I wish to discuss with you. I certainly hope I’ll be forgiven. I’m usually pretty blunt, though. So here I go with my head down and both eyes shut:

“Why have you courted the friendship of Falcon the Flunky?”

“Why, I like him,” was the swift reply. “What’s the matter with The Falcon?”

“I am glad to be able to say that, so far as I know, there is nothing the matter with him. However, it strikes me—and all the rest of us, I suppose—as a strange comradeship.”

“He’s a nice young man—a perfect gentleman.”

“I haven’t the slightest doubt in the world as to that. And still it’s strange. Were you interested in him from the first day?”

“Perhaps I was. It’s hard to tell.”

“And you really like him?”

“Immensely.”

“Does your father approve of the friendship?”

“Well, he—he doesn’t know anything about it, I suspect. I’ve never had occasion to mention Falcon the Flunky to him, as it were.”

“I think you should have left off that ‘as it were,’ Manzanita. It leads me to believe that you purposely have refrained from mentioning him to Mr. Canby.”

“You’re using some dandy words, Hunt,” she said admiringly.

“You’re not offended, then?”

“Not in the least, amigo!”

“Have you learned Falcon the Flunky’s name?”

“No, he hasn’t told me; and I haven’t pressed him to tell what he doesn’t wish to.”

Mangan cleared his throat uncomfortably. “The stiffs, as we call them, Manzanita, come from every place,” he said. “Nobody knows anything of their various pasts, and they’re nobody’s business. There are many bright, intelligent, capable men in trampdom—far more than is realized by the general public. But can’t you see that this fact in itself should make you cautious about picking a friend from among them? Bright, capable men have taken to tramp life in many cases because polite society has for some reason ostracized them. They may be bank defaulters, forgers, or even worse. Surely your reason will tell you that no educated, refined man need be a tramp laborer these days; and that, since he is educated and refined, ambition can’t be lacking. So, such a man must be a renegade, a fugitive from justice, an ostracized member of good society to explain his adherence to the slip-along life of the construction stiff. Now, I haven’t said a word against Falcon the Flunky, have I?”

“No, you haven’t. You wouldn’t. You’re a gentleman and a good sport.”

“Thank you. Despite your many tomboy pranks, I always find you so reasonable. There’s just one thing you need, Manzanita, and that is a little worldly experience. You must grow up.”

“And yet when I want to buck roulette for worldly experience you kick!”

“I consider that as hardly necessary to your education,” he said. “But I’m glad you don’t resent my effort to be friendly. I’ve told you how matters stand, or may stand. It’s merely a friendly warning from an old-timer—for even your father doesn’t understand our life. And of course, anyway, I wouldn’t go to him with your case.”

“Of course not, Hunt. You’re all right. But I like The Falcon now; and I just couldn’t think bad about anybody I like. It’s a Canby trait. We imagine that anybody we happen to like must be all right or we wouldn’t like ’em.”

“It’s a lovable trait, too,” he told her warmly. “And from your unsophisticated viewpoint, it’s a pretty practical one. But for general purposes in the complicated life beyond Squawtooth and the desert, I don’t know that it will fill the bill.”

“I like to hear you talk. Please go on.”

“Are you serious?”

“Sure, Mike! I wish you’d talk lots to Mart. He certainly can murder the English language.”

“It’s not my theme, then, that interests you—merely my stilted words.”

“No, no! Not that. I like to hear people say pretty things. I read lots of poetry. Did you ever write poetry, Hunt?”

“You’re bound to make me confess, aren’t you?” he questioned with a laugh. “I’m through lecturing now. Think over what I have said.”

“Sure. Thank you very much. And now how about a bunch of squawtooth?”

“You do it. I like to see you, even though I realize that it is dangerous.”

“When I miss, I suppose, and wave my feet in air?”

She touched her mare’s ribs, and guided her toward a bunch of squawtooth, leaning low from the saddle as she neared it. Then the mare raced past, and she grasped it. And this time it plopped from the sand, and, with her saddle slipped halfway to the mare’s belly, she righted it and herself and waved the plant triumphantly.

Hunter Mangan breathed again.

“You tell Mart you saw me do it!” she cried, circling back to him. “He won’t take my word in a thing like this. Oh, look! What’s coming?”

They had neared the road, and now coming along it they saw a little cavalcade that heretofore had been hidden by particularly tall greasewood.

In the lead moved a camp wagon, the cover made of wood, as is a gypsy’s migratory home. Six lean mules heaved in the collars to pull the chariot through the heavy sand. Driving them was a girl, with hair and eyes as black as night. Behind the camp wagon trailed other teams, hitched to other wagons and wheeled implements of the grade.

“Jeddo the Crow at last!” cried Mangan. “You’ve heard of him, Manzanita—you told me so. That’s Wing o’ the Crow driving six-up. If it were thirty-six it would make no difference to her. I must see them. Let’s ride over.”

“Oh, I want to meet Wing o’ the Crow! I’ve heard so much about her. Come on—beat you there ten lengths!”

CHAPTER VII
WING O’ THE CROW

HUNTER MANGAN was the senior member of the rather large firm of contractors from which the Jeddos had taken their subjob; so Hunt’s dignity would not permit a dash with Manzanita to the moving van. They rode forward, then, at a sedate walk, and when she saw them coming the young driver of the van pulled her six disconsolate mules to a stop.

Mangan lifted his broad-brimmed Stetson.

“Hello, there, Miss Jeddo!” he greeted her. “So you’re here at last. Pretty tough pull, isn’t it?”

Wing o’ the Crow was a beauty—there was no denying that. She was twenty-two and strong and lithe as an Indian girl. On her cheeks was that mahogany-red coloring so attractive in decided brunettes. Her skin was smooth and flawless as the skin of an olive, and her great black eyes, made darker still by the long, black lashes that shadowed them, were fascinating. Her masses of black hair showed no more careful attention than does a wind-blown straw stack, but it lost no picturesqueness because of this.

“My stars!” gasped Manzanita under her breath.

Wing o’ the Crow smiled bashfully at Hunter Mangan, then her big eyes settled a curious look on his companion.

“Pa’s back at th’ tail end, Mr. Mangan,” she said. “How fur ’re we from th’ job?”

“Oh, not more than two miles now. I want you to meet Miss Canby, Miss Jeddo. She lives at that adobe house over there in the cottonwoods, where we get our water. You’ll be camping on the ranch.”

Wing o’ the Crow shyly smiled at Manzanita.

“Well, I guess I’ll have to be movin’ ahead,” she said.

“Wait,” Manzanita told her. “Hunt, you ride back and see her father, if you want to. I’m going to ride in the van, if you’ll lead my mare.”

“Good!” said Hunt. “You two get acquainted.”

Manzanita swung to the ground and handed the contractor her bridle reins. Then she clambered up over the hub to the seat beside Wing o’ the Crow, who divided the seat pad with her.

“Hojup!” she exhorted the mules; and they leaned to the collars and heaved the wagon into motion again.

For a little neither girl spoke, and both watched the mules as if a great deal depended on careful attention to their efforts in the clinging sand. Both were men’s women, and knew less about other members of their own sex than of their opposites. Neither knew how to begin the conversation.

Manzanita, out of the corners of her eyes, took note of the unlaced, run-over shoes and the negligently held-up black stockings of Jeddo’s daughter, also the cheap ring on a workworn finger, and the unstarched gingham dress, over which had been slipped a man’s shirt, the tail hanging to her knees. Wing o’ the Crow observed, when chance offered, the worn leather chaps, the tampico-top boots, the flannel shirt, and the big-roweled Mexican spurs of the daughter of Canby.

Then Manzanita thought of something brilliant.

“How long have you been coming?” she asked.

“Jest from Opaco, or all th’ way?” asked the black-haired girl.

“Both,” said Manzanita.

“We was more’n a week on the railroad,” replied Wing o’ the Crow. “An’ three days drivin’ outa that Opaco. Stock’s wore out, purty near. The railroad trip always does ’em up.”

“Uh-huh—they don’t get any exercise, do they?”

“No.”

“Do you like building railroads?”

“I got to. I don’t know anything else. Sometimes I think I don’t like it; but I guess I do most o’ the time, any way you look at it.”

“Your mother’s dead, isn’t she? So is mine. I was only nine when mine died.”

“I was fifteen,” said Wing o’ the Crow. “How old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

“I’m twenty-two. Do you ride lots?”

“All the time.”

“I’d like to, but we ain’t got any decent saddle hoss. Herd cows?”

“Sometimes. Mostly just ride, though. I could get you a saddle horse, and we could ride together and have lots of fun. Mart—that’s my kid brother—he’d be along whenever he’s down from the mountains. Our cows are all up there in summer. That’s where Mart is supposed to be, building drift fence and things. He was keen enough to be with the cows until the camps came. Now he wants to hang around them all the time. We could shake him, though, now and then, if we wanted to be alone.”

“I couldn’t go with you,” said Jeddo’s daughter. “I gotta work.”

“All the time?”

“Yep.”

“Does your father make you?”

“Not exactly. I like to, I guess. Pa and me never have trouble. He’s easy-goin’—too easy-goin’, some folks say. He’s good to me, though. He’s only got one arm, and I have to do more’n I would if he wasn’t like that, I guess. That’s why they call me Wing o’ the Crow—an’ because I’m black. But I guess you’ve heard.”

“Oh, yes—lots about you. I’ve wanted you to come. I don’t see many girls out here. I thought it would be nice for both of us. I’m sorry you can’t ride with me. We could go up to Little Woman Butte, and—oh, everywhere.”

“I wisht I could, but I ain’t got the time. I got lots an’ lots to do every day.”

“What all?”

“Cookin’ an’ washin’ dishes an’ things like that, an’ stickin’ pigs or skinnin’ Jack an’ Ned—whatever’s to be done.”

“What is sticking pigs?”

“Settin’ slips. You know—loadin’ them little scrapers that ain’t got wheels.”

“Is it hard?”

“Purty. ’Long about three in the afternoon, anyway. It gets you in the back. Then I kinda got to run things—especially when pa’s cuckooed.”

“When pa’s what?”

“Cuckooed—drunk. Takes him four days to get enough, an’ five days to get over his jag. That’s nine days I gotta be bossman.”

No words came to Manzanita now. Brought face to face suddenly with a tragedy, so matter-of-factly introduced into the conversation, she did not know what to say.

“How long have you been a gypo queen?” she asked presently, still thinking of that naïve reference to Jeddo the Crow’s shortcomings.

“Born in a gypo camp.”

“Have you been to school?”

“No. Ma used to teach me, but she died. I c’n read an’ write an’ figger a little. I’m keen about learnin’ things. I read a lot when I ain’t too tired. You see, we’re poor. Somehow we jest about break even on every job we tackle. Pa’d like me to quit th’ road an’ go to school somewheres, but him with his one arm, he couldn’t get along. You been to school a lot, ain’t you? I know by th’ way you say ‘ing’ at th’ end o’ words. Do you read lots?”

“Not so very much,” Manzanita confessed. “I’m usually pretty busy.”

“Doin’ what?”

“Well—now—riding, mostly.”

Manzanita could not read the message of the inscrutable black eyes now turned upon her. Somehow, though, she felt uncomfortable, and hastened to ask:

“Do you live in this van?”

“Yes, I do. I sleep in here. We back it up to th’ cook tent. Hejupah, ole Ned! Ain’t this here sand fierce? Guess I’ll let ’em blow a mite.”

She pulled in gradually on the six lines, and the mules stood heaving.

“I guess I ought to walk,” observed Manzanita.

“Oh, your weight don’t add nothin’ much. They’ll be all right when we get outa this sand an’ hit that dry lake over there. Do you like this country?”

“I love it! Don’t you think it’s pretty?”

“Purty dry an’ purty sandy. How’s Mangan-Hatton gettin’ on with their job?”

“Why, all right, I suppose.”

“Got a cut an’ a fill in rock, ain’t they?”

“I—I think so.”

“This sand’ll make a mighty poor roadbed. Guess they’ll be lots o’ borrowin’ for th’ crown.”

“Ye-yes, I should imagine so.”

“Mangan-Hatton got any Holligans in the rock?”

“I—I never noticed any. This is just common rock, I guess.”

“Common rock! What’s that got to do with Holligans?”

“I thought perhaps Holligans were fissures of some sort.”

“No, they ain’t much on fishin’, I guess. Unless they’re ginnies. Most of ’em are Greeks or Austrians, though. Mostly Mangan-Hatton works stiffs. Any ragtowns on th’ job?”

“One—quite close. Stlingbloke, they call it.”

“Purty raw?”

“I—I suppose so.”

“How close to where we’re gonta camp will it be?”

“About four miles off, I should think.”

“Huh! Jest our luck! They’s always a ragtown right near us, it seems. An’ poor pa he jest can’t keep away from booze. An’ when he’s pifflercated then I gotta keep jumpin’.”

“He isn’t mean to you, is he?” asked Manzanita, in an awed little voice.

“Oh, no. I wouldn’t stand for that. I’m of age. He jest can’t do nothin’ but lay ’round an’ groan—so I gotta cook an’ be bossman, too. Hejupah, Ned! Hejup, Jack!”

“It seems that every mule on railroad work is named either Ned or Jack,” remarked Manzanita, anxious to change the topic.

“Them’s jest railroad names,” explained Wing o’ the Crow. “Railroaders always call tassel tails Ned an’ Jack. D’ye know any o’ th’ stiffs yet?”

“Oh, yes—lots of them.”

“Who all’s at Mangan-Hatton’s? Any ole-timers, did you hear?”

“You bet. I know all the old-timers’ names. There’s Lardo the Cook and Laflin the Goblin, Tombstone, Totaljohn, and Demijohn, Gus the Finn, Bung the B-B—I think that’s just too funny!—Davie the Child,—and, let’s see—Grimes o’ the Coffins, Raddle the Swamper, Dippy-Dip, The Parasite, Lobbygow, Markle, and Spot o’ the Outcasts. Laflin the Goblin is a strange creature. They say his name will be put up at the next hobo convention for king of the tramps. Isn’t that too ridiculous?”

“What d’ye mean, redickilous?”

“Why, tramps having a king.”

Wing o’ the Crow was thoughtful. “I guess maybe it is,” she admitted at length. “I never thought about it. I know purty near all them stiffs—knew most of ’em all my life. I wish we could get stiffs—they work so much better, somehow. But stiffs won’t stay in a gypo camp long, if they stop there at all. We get hicks—farmers, and bindle stiffs. They don’t know no better.”

“Why won’t the stiffs work for you?”

“Well, we can’t feed like th’ big bugs do. An’ we can’t afford to furnish blankets. All our men are bindle stiffs—not regular stiffs, you know—but th’ fellas that carry bundles on their backs—their own beddin’. Then our stock is old and rundown, an’ stiffs want good stock to work with. If I was like a gypo queen’s supposed to be I reckon I’m good lookin’ enough to hold the stiffs. But I ain’t like that. I wouldn’t kid any man along to get ’im to stick in our camp. I’m a lady, if I do skin Jack an’ Ned an’ pull a lot o’ rough stuff. Did you tell me all th’ stiffs’ names that’s at Mangan-Hatton’s?”

“There’s—now—Falcon the Flunky.”

“Never heard o’ him. Who’s skinnin’ th’ plow teams on th’ dirt work?”

“I don’t believe I can tell you that. I haven’t paid a great deal of attention to the work.”

“Don’t know who’s on snap, either?”

“Yes, I believe I do know one snap skinner. I was going to tell you his name. Halfaman Daisy. Know him?”

Again there was silence. Then, “I know ’im,” said Wing o’ the Crow. “How long’s he been out here?”

“I think he came with the outfit.”

“Uh-huh—how close to Mangan-Hatton is our campin’ place?”

“Less than a mile away, I think.”

Silence once more. Then, “Does Halfaman Daisy go to this ragtown very much?”

“I don’t think so. I’ve been there only once, though—to-day, for the first time.”

“Have Mangan-Hatton had a pay day?”

“One, I think.”

“Uh-huh. I guess Halfaman’s been to that ragtown then—what d’ye call it? Stlingbloke? Huh—they’re all stlingbloke, I’ll say.”

Here a tall, ruggedly handsome man, with coal-black hair and mustache, and with one shirt sleeve pinned up, rode past on a mule, with Mangan at his side. They galloped ahead, Mangan leading Manzanita’s mare.

“Guess we’re purty near there,” observed Wing o’ the Crow. “I’ll sleep to-night! Don’t suppose you know what Mangan-Hatton ’re payin’ th’ snap?”

“I haven’t the remotest idea,” replied Manzanita.

Wing o’ the Crow looked at her curiously. “Funny!” she said. “That outfit’s been here a month, I hear, an’ you don’t know nothin’ about ’em but a few stiffs’ names.”

Manzanita looked uncomfortable, and felt as she looked. There was a strange tone of accusation in the large black eyes of the girl of the van. It caused the girl of the desert to feel inferior—insignificant.

“A bunch o’ dance-hall girls at this Stlingbloke, I guess—huh?”

“Yes,” replied Manzanita.

“Did you see a girl with very light hair—bleached, I guess?” questioned the gypo queen.

“I didn’t see her when I was there.”

“Well, I’ll find out from somebody purty soon, I s’pose. So the begatter’s drivin’ snap for Mangan-Hatton, eh? Thinks he’s some skinner, that plug! All right, pa!”

Ahead of them was the man motioning for the van to circle around him and Mangan and come to a stop.

“Home, again!” and Wing o’ the Crow sighed. “Some home, I’ll say! Nice shady spot under that flower there! Does this country ever get so hot it smokes?”

CHAPTER VIII
A TRADE AND NEW RESOLUTIONS

IN the “borrow pit” to the left of the long dirt fill that was slowly creeping across the desert one Phinehas Daisy was at work with his snap team. The expert skinners in dirt work drive either the snap team or the plow team. Halfaman’s three white Percherons were beauties, willing workers, and it was a pleasure and an honor to handle them. To see their great muscles at work when he had hooked the trio to the pole of a loaded wheeler, to help out the two mules already pulling to the limit of their strength, was a pleasing sight.

The long line of wheelers and slips moved through the borrow pit, were loaded, and traveled on to the evergrowing fill and the dump—an endless chain. Mr. Daisy rested while a wheeler team was working up to the snap with the earth, previously loosened by the plow, billowing into the pan. During these brief intervals he was thoughtful. Then nonchalantly he would swing the heavy eveners by their chain, hook on to the wheeler pole, and drawl: “Le’s go!”

Then the five animals, with the three proud Percherons abreast in the lead, would heave into their collars and make life hugely enjoyable for Mr. Daisy. “High!” would come the yell of the wheeler holders. The five would stop in their tracks, and Halfaman would quickly disconnect the snap. Then, swinging sharply to one side, the mule skinner with his loaded wheeler would laze away toward the fill. Behind him another wheeler would be moving up to the wheeler holders, and again for a brief interval Halfaman would rest, an elbow on the expansive rump of one of his whites, and grow pensive.

From Squawtooth Ranch came a big tank wagon, drawn by six mules that labored ploddingly in the desert sand. Demijohn drove the tank-wagon team. The work was not difficult, but monotonous, consisting as it did of trip after trip between the pipe that spouted artesian water at Squawtooth and the Mangan-Hatton camp. Demijohn was an active man and loved to be moving about. Furthermore, he was considered an excellent snap driver, and he cast a look of envy at Mr. Daisy and his magnificent three white Percherons. Demijohn was a horse lover; he merely tolerated mules. Again, six mules required more “cuffing” and harnessing and collar scraping than did three horses—a child might figure that! Also the snap team got through work fifteen minutes earlier than the other teams, and at times the water wagon was out so late that the driver was obliged to eat alone, after everybody else had finished. And above all, Demijohn was human; and what human does not wish that he had the other fellow’s job and that the other fellow had his?

Just what was running through Mr. Daisy’s thoughts which caused him to wish that he were driving the tank wagon, and that Demijohn had the snap, would require more space to depict than in the case of the tank-wagon skinner. But if the statement he made that the Mangan-Hatton water wagon was now supplying the comparatively slight wants of the tiny camp of Jeddo the Crow, Jeddo having lost his own tank wagon by reason of careless chocking on the gondola which was to have brought it west, and not being financially able to buy a new one.

“Hey, Demi, how’ll you trade jobs?”

“Nuttin’ doin’, ol’-timer! Dis suits me.”

Demijohn lolled on the high seat to show just how thoroughly it did suit him and how comfortable were the accommodations of the water wagon.

“I ain’t talkin’ through me hat, ol’ settler!”

“Me neider, Jack. Kinda doity in dat borry pit, ain’t she? Dat looks like doity doit to me.”

“You oughta know. You got half o’ Squawtooth on yer face. This here’s the same dirt.”

“Wot’ll youse gi’me to trade jobs?”

“What’ll I give you! Say, this is gonta be good!”

“Gi’me ten?”

“Ten swift kicks!”

“Hejup, Ned!”

“Le’s go, white folks!”

But for half an hour that night in their bunk tent each dwelt at length on the superior advantages of his particular job and scorned the task of the other. Then they traded.

Halfaman Daisy sang as he drove from camp next morning with the empty tank wagon—sang thusly, out of one corner of his drooping mouth:

“Oh, a-workin’ on the levee outa New Orleans,

A-livin’ on-a bananas and-a wormy beans,

Mosquitoes a-bit me through a-nineteen screens,

And an alligator gobbled up me ramblin’ jeans!—

And me pay day—for me ba-bay!

And me pay day outa New Orleans!”

He did not pass near the camp of Jeddo the Crow on his first trip; but from a distance he saw that the small, ragged, dirty tents were up, saw the familiar van backed to the cook-tent door, saw the teamsters already at work at moving dirt. He made out the well-known figure of Abishua Jeddo, but he saw nothing of his daughter.

“Some speed! She’s cleanin’ up after breakfast, I guess. ‘The sons of Levi; Jershon and Kohath and Murari. And the sons of Kohath; Amram, Ishar, and Hebron, and Uzziel. And the children of Amram——’

“Oh, a king snipe’s wife on the Rio Grand’,

She fried a Gila monster for a section hand.

She put it on the track to make it tender—and

It ditched the train that hit it in the desert sand!—

On a pay day—oh, ba-bay!

Oh, pay day on the Rio Grand’!

“Ho-hum! ‘The sons also af Aaron; Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar. Eleazar begat Phinehas; Phinehas begat Abishua.’ Hejup, Ned! Hejup, Jack!

“Oh, a-ridin’ the rods outa Kankakee,

A rail flopped up and-a hit-a me knee;

I took it along to the old Pedee,

And I sold it for a dollar down in Tennessee!

It was pay day—oh, me ba-bay!

It was pay day down in Tennessee!

“Huh! Nothin’ doin’! Still washin’ dishes, I guess. It was pay day down in Tennessee! Hejupah!”

Two hours later Mr. Daisy dexterously backed to the watering trough at the stable tent of the Mangan-Hatton camp and emptied his tank. Then he made another trip to Squawtooth Ranch, and on the return stopped his wagon abreast a small galvanized tank beside the cook-tent door of Jeddo the Crow.

“Hey, in there! In the cook tent! Wake up and hear the horned toads sing! Ship ahoy! Want water in this ole tin can this mornin’?

“Oh, I been a-down on-a the gumbo line,

A-skinnin’ mules when the weather’s fine,

A-shootin’ craps——

“Oh! Why, howdy do, Miss Wing o’ the Crow Jeddo! This is a surprise, as the fella says. Welcome to our city! Nice mornin’, I’ll say!”

Breast heaving, Wing o’ the Crow stood in the cook-tent door, black eyes wide but narrowing. Dough and flour covered her brown bare arms.

“Well, for Heaven’s sake! Was all the jails full in Nebrasky?”

Halfaman clambered lightly down over the wide-tired wheels. A painful grin creased his freckled face as he sidled toward the door.

“Hello, honey,” he said. “How’s every little insignificant item?”

“Well, you got a nerve!” said Wing o’ the Crow. “Who put you on that water wagon?”

“I did, Wing-o. And I rode the rods all the way here from that little State called Nebrasky to get on ’er and haul water to you. Slip us a kiss, Wing-o!”

“I’ll slip you a poke in that rubber jaw! Go kiss Lil o’ the Lobbies!”

“Now, lissen here, sweetheart! Ain’t you ever gonta ferget that? Here I rambled over four States to say hello to you, and you slip me a line o’ begone-sir patter like that! Didn’t I say I was sorry? I ain’t seen Lil for six months.”

“Ain’t she here?”

“Search me! I ain’t been to Stlingbloke once.”

“Tell it to the marines, Halfaman!”

He pulled forth a roll of bills. “There’s me pay day,” he said. “Every cent, ’ceptin’ for a shirt and tobacco and things. I’m off that stuff. I just slipped that time, anyway.”

“I heard you was drivin’ snap.”

“I was—till last night. Then I traded with Demijohn and got the water wagon. I’m on it, too.”

“Why’d you want the tank? Snap’s better.”

“D’ye really wanta to know, now?”

“Uh-huh! Why’d ye s’pose I ast?”

“Well, now maybe I heard Mangan-Hatton’s tank was supplyin’ Jeddo the Crow. What would you say if I was to tell you that, Wing-o?”

“I’d say you was a nut!”

“That’s the right answer. Nuts about you, kiddo. Say, I’m savin’ me jack these days. Everything’s gonta be jake with me. No more booze—no more slips. Now what d’ye say you an’ me——”

“Tell it to Lil o’ the Lobbies—she’d like to hear it, I guess.”

“Aw, cut that old stuff! Be reasonable, now. Slip us a kiss. Wing-o, and le’s ferget the bitter past. Le’s you an’ me get married whether The Crow cares or not. Then I c’n get in here and help move things along. I c’n get some stiffs, I’ll bet. You an’ me c’n keep yer dad away from the booze—and we’ll make some jack. Leave it to us, kid, hey?”

She looked him over. “I’m sore on you, I’ll admit,” she said at last. “I liked you a little—once, but now it’s all off. That’s all’s to it. You might jes’ as well trade back with Demijohn and drive snap. ’Cause I ain’t gonta see you any more. I can’t trust you. If you keep on haulin’ water, you c’n find out fer yerself if the tank’s empty. I won’t come out. So you better go back to yer snap. I’m off you for life!”

“Now, lissen, honey—lissen——”

“On yer way! I’m busy. I’m gettin’ dinner. You deceived me once, and you got my goat. Find Lil o’ the Lobbies; she’ll listen to you!”

“Now, lissen—lissen!”

But the flaps of the tent had dropped, and from inside came a hummed tune as Wing o’ the Crow went on with her work.

Mr. Daisy sighed wearily, examined the galvanized tank and filled it, then drove to the watering trough at the stable tent, all unaware that a black eye was peering at him through a tiny hole in the cook tent.

“Can you beat it! I rambles across four States, eatin’ once every two days whether I felt it or not, and trades the best snap job on the line for—what I got! ‘I’m off you fer life,’ she says—just like that. Slipped once—just once! Good night! Hejupah, ole Ned!—can’t keep a good man down!

“Oh, a-stickin’ pigs in that Lone Star State,

Ate corn bread and-a molasses straight,

On a dime’s worth o’ snuff I gets an awful skate—

And I saw St. Peter in the Golden Gate!

It was pay day—for me ba-bay!

It was pay day in that Texas State!”

“Now, you hold both handles tight, and kinda jiggle the slip up an’ down, see? You gotta hold ’er jest right, er you’ll take on too much dirt to begin with. Not too straight up and down at first, and not too slow. Now try it.”

Miss Manzanita Canby, with a line in each hand and also the handle of a scraper in each hand, looked doubtfully at the two scrawny mules before her.

“Start ’em up,” urged Wing o’ the Crow.

Manzanita flipped the lines and started the mules, stooping over the slip, following it in the attitude of a sprinter who starts with fingers touching the ground.

“Now set yer slip.”

Manzanita lifted the handles slightly and set the point of the pan in the ground. The fine dirt began entering.

“Now keep liftin’ it—a little higher—a leetle higher—but not too high, or——”

Bam!

The mules, suddenly relieved of their load lurched forward. The pan of the slip had flopped over, the handles striking the doubletrees with force almost enough to snap them off. Manzanita lay sprawled on the ground, her mouth full of sand.

“You let ’em go too fast, and you raised the pan too high,” said Wing o’ the Crow gravely. “Did it hurt you?”

“I never get hurt much,” Manzanita said cheerfully. “I’m down half the time, for one reason or another. Don’t mind me.”

“Now watch me,” suggested Wing o’ the Crow.

She picked up the lines, and with a deft flip righted the slip. She laid hold of the handles.

“Hehup, Ned!” she chirruped.

And in almost no time the pan was full and running over, and the team was moving off with it toward the fill.

“It looks so easy when you do it,” Manzanita complained. “Dump it and I’ll try again.”

“You jest watch a little,” advised Wing o’ the Crow.

Manzanita felt humiliated by the words. She thought that her efforts to become a dirt mover were hampering the work. She had tried six times to load a slip, always with the same result, except that now and then she had managed to keep her feet.

Jeddo the Crow was driving the snap team, which is used only in loading the scrapers with wheels. In “sticking pigs” the skinner himself loads and drives and dumps. As Wing o’ the Crow came down the dump with her empty slip Jeddo called to her. Manzanita saw him hurry to camp for something, and while he was away his daughter let her slip team stand and drove the trio on the snap.

Manzanita watched her enviously. She swung the cumbersome eveners as easily as had her one-armed father. Earlier in the afternoon the desert girl had seen her driving six mules hitched to a huge railroad plow. In the saddle Manzanita was at home, but as a railroad builder she had shown many shortcomings. Mart had been driven to the mountains to build drift fence by his father. Manzanita was lonesome. She envied this girl who could do things that really counted. She had forgotten her aversion to the railroad. Suddenly she had grown ambitious to be doing something in life besides riding over the desert on a pinto, wandering aimlessly. She even did not wish to become a moving picture actress now. “Life is real and life is earnest,” she had quoted to Mrs. Ehrhart, apropos of nothing at all, that morning, greatly to the kindly housekeeper’s surprise.

She sighed pensively now; and when Jeddo returned and Wing o’ the Crow drove into the borrow pit with the slip team again, she arose from her seat on a felled yucca.

“I guess I’d better be riding home, Wing-o,” she said. “I’ve lots to do. I’ll see you to-morrow maybe, if I can find the time.”

Whereupon she mounted her mare and galloped toward Squawtooth.

At the ranch she threw off the big saddle and corralled the mare. It was four o’clock in the afternoon. She hurried to the low adobe house and entered the kitchen.

“Mrs. Ehrhart,” she said, “is there anything for me to do toward getting supper?”

The housekeeper turned from her glossy range and gazed at her in consternation.

“Child, are you sick?” she asked.

“Oh, no,” returned Manzanita “I’m quite well, thank you. I just thought if there was nothing I could do here right now, I’d get at that alfalfa.”

“Get at the alfalfa! What alfalfa?”

“Why, our alfalfa. It needs irrigating badly. I heard Pa Squawtooth say so.”

At which she left the kitchen and the speechless housekeeper.

A little later Squawtooth Canby rode in on his big black and found his rubber hip boots walking around and carrying a shovel. So he expressed it, anyway. But in reality the boots had a motive power not their own, for Manzanita, with her skirt tucked into the tops of them, was responsible for their sluggish progress.

Canby stopped his horse and gazed at the apparition.

“Nita, what in th’ name o’ Heaven are you doin’ in them boots?”

“Irrigatin’.”

“Is the water runnin’ on the ’falfy?”

“Yep. I turned her on. It needed it pretty badly, pa.”

“Why, that patch was irrigated only last week, girl!” he cried. “It’s the tent north o’ the house that’s dry.”

“Oh!” said Manzanita. “I didn’t know. I heard you say—— I haven’t hurt anything, have I, pa?”

He dismounted deliberately and walked toward her, chuckling as he thought of the size of the feet within his number eleven boots.

“What’s the matter with ye, daughter?” he asked, kissing her.

“I have awakened,” said Manzanita. “I realize that my life has been wasted. I’ve been a useless creature—a drone—a millstone about the neck of progress.”

“Wait a minute! How’s that?”

“But it’s not too late,” she went on. “It is never too late. From now on I mean to accomplish things before undreamed of. I am not only going to help about the housework, but during my spare moments I mean to work outside and develop this ranch. I’m sorry I got the wrong alfalfa patch. I’ll shut off the water here and start it over there. Go on and do whatever is necessary, pa, and don’t worry about the alfalfa. I feel like a new being already. My coma is over.”

“Your which?”

“My coma. I’ve been asleep—stunned—dazed. But thank goodness I see myself in the true light at last.”

“How d’ye keep them boots on?”

“I don’t. They stick every now and then, and I can’t pull ’em out of the mud. Then I have to step out and lift them free with my hands. I’m barefooted inside the boots.”

“And d’ye wash yer feet before ye put ’em in the boots ag’in?”

“Well—no. I can’t very well. They get all muddy again if I do. I’ll have to have smaller boots.”

“And how d’ye think I’m to get the mud outa the inside o’ them boots? Don’t they hurt yer feet, Nita?”

“Terribly. Little rocks get in. But I can stand it.”

Here her father’s weakening gravity forsook him entirely, and with his long arms he swept up boots, shovel, and girl and carried them to the house.

“I guess we got men enough round here to irrigate the ’falfy,” he said as he set her down on the old Mexican doorstep, a foot thick and a foot high. “Now I’m gonta put up the black, and time I get back here you have them boots off an’ washed out, and yer feet washed and all, and then we’ll find out about this new ambition o’ yours. I’m interested, I’ll admit. Get busy, now!”

CHAPTER IX
DUSK ON THE DESERT

LARDO the Cook and The Falcon’s fellow flunkies had left the cook tent for the day. Falcon the Flunky poured boiling water over the knives and forks and spoons in a gigantic dishpan and hurriedly dried them. Then he removed his apron and scoured the kitchen odors from his hands, combed his brown hair, and called it a day.

Outside he tied the flaps of the tent against erratic winds of the night, and, turning away, strolled off over the desert.

The red glow of the summer sun still hung over the mountains to the west, making a host of speared warriors of the pines that lived on the ridges and lighting the desert. Between hummocks of sand blown up about greasewood bushes Falcon the Flunky wound his way, with lizards that had lingered for the last rays of sunlight scampering to cover before his feet.

He wandered north, smoking a cigarette, his hands locked behind him, deeply brooding. To the west a black speck took form in contrast with the sable dusk colors of the desert. The Falcon saw it; his pulse quickened. At the same time he frowned and sighed as if all were not well with his soul.

On toward him moved the black speck, growing larger as it came. He thought of a fly fallen in Lardo’s big bowl of flapjack batter, swimming desperately toward solid footing. Lardo’s long white forefinger might scoop up the bedraggled insect and hurl it with a battery spat against the tent wall. But to think of Lardo the Cook as fate or destiny or any other of the forces that control nature brought a smile to the flunky’s lips. But the desert was big and flat and awe-inspiring, and the human speck moving over its vast expanse seemed as helpless and insignificant as the ill-fated fly.

Presently Falcon the Flunky waved his hat. Before long Manzanita Canby reined in the blowing pinto mare beside him and dismounted.

“Hello!” she greeted, her face lighted with color, her hazel eyes half hidden by long lashes.

Falcon the Flunky silently took the mare’s reins, and she trailed the pair as they walked on into the north.

“Doesn’t the desert seem big to-night,” remarked the girl. “When the sun goes down it seems to expand, and then as darkness comes on it contracts more and more, till finally you’re all shut in.”

“Yes,” he said simply; and for a time they walked on silently.

“Why are you so still this evening?” asked Manzanita. “Is there something the matter?”

Falcon the Flunky cleared his throat. “I’ve been thinking,” he told her, “that we oughtn’t to meet like this, Manzanita.”

“Why?”

“For one thing, your father wouldn’t approve. And back there at camp they can’t help knowing about it.”

“Well? I’m of age. I can do as I choose. If I want to be with you, it’s nobody’s business, is it?”

“That’s the old, old, commonplace defense,” he said. “But they’re wondering and chuckling in their sleeves back there in camp. And that won’t do where you’re concerned. They can’t understand, of course. If you have a friend in camp, he should be Hunter Mangan or the walking boss, or perhaps one of the bookkeepers—not one of the stiffs, a flunky.”

“Oh, you know you’re not a flunky, so far as that goes! And so does every one, I guess.”

“Perhaps. But that doesn’t help matters. It’s a rather difficult subject for a man to talk upon. You’re used to men—accustomed to being comradely with them. So you don’t exactly see the difference, now that the camps have come. And to save my soul I can’t exactly explain it myself. Somehow or other, I should think it right and proper for you to be friendly and democratic with your cowmen, but it’s different with the stiffs. And I can’t tell you why or how, but I feel it.”

“What old hens all men are!” and Manzanita sighed. “Pa Squawtooth and Hunt Mangan, and now even you! Nobody ever takes the time to insult me. No man ever has insulted me.”

“Not to your face, perhaps,” said The Falcon significantly.

“Well, if you don’t want me to come and walk with you——” Manzanita’s chin was a trifle elevated.

“Can’t I go to the ranch sometimes of evenings instead?”

For quite a time she withheld her reply.

“I—I hardly think so,” she told him finally.

“Your father wouldn’t approve, of course.”

“I—I’m afraid that’s it.”

“All the more reason, then, why we should not meet out here on the desert. Listen: I’m going to ask you what may seem to be an unfair question—from a man. Why did you make friends with me so readily in the cook tent the first day you came to the camp?”

“Perhaps I liked you,” she suggested in a low tone.

“No, you didn’t. You knew nothing about me then. I was no more to you than Lardo the Cook or Baldy or Rambo the Bouncer.”

“Does a person have to know all about another before she can like his looks—and—and other things about him? I’m rather an instinctive person.”

“Yes, but you don’t trust to instinct altogether. I think you had a reason for offering me friendship.”

“Perhaps I had—then,” she admitted after a little. “But it’s been different since. It was silly, I suppose—stupid. But I liked you almost at once; and when I like a person I’m not slow to show it.”

“I believe you,” he said. “Otherwise I’d not be here with you now. But tell me what was the beginning of it all.”

Another pause. Then: “I’d rather not—just yet.”

“All right. I’ll not press you for an answer. But I imagine it’s hardly necessary. I think I know.”

“But you can’t!”

“Oh, yes, I can. I think I almost knew even that first day. But now about seeing you in the future. I want to, of course, and I think you want me to. I believe I’ll walk over to the ranch to-morrow evening and call on you. Would there be a great upheaval?”

“I’m afraid there would be—afterward. You see, Pa Squawtooth is pretty much of a snob. I have to admit it. He’s been getting pretty well off the last few years; and now this railroad will make him rich, he thinks. For my part, I have no desire to be wealthy—but that has nothing to do with the situation. Pa’s only a money snob, though. He’s democratic enough other ways, and has always encouraged me to be the same. That is, up until lately. Since I’ve grown up I notice he doesn’t approve of many of the things I do. We have dances around here sometimes. I used always to go with Ed Chazzy or ‘Lucky’ Gilfoyle or Splicer Kurtz, or some other desert rat, and he’d say nothing. But now he takes me himself, or tags along; and if I’m with any particular vaquero two minutes longer than I’m with any of the others he nearly strokes his whispers out. In fact, he’s told me outright that, since he’s becoming rich, I mustn’t be too free with the cow-punchers and all that. Now, if ‘Limpy’ Pardoe, for instance, were to strike it rich in a gold claim that he does assessment work on every year, why, I’ll bet pa would let me dance with him. So you see what kind of a snob he is—just a money snob, not a folks snob. And it’s so new I haven’t got used to it. It came on him all of a sudden when beef sold so high, and the railroad began to boom up. He’ll get over it. I hope so, anyway. So you see—well, I don’t know whether he’d like you or not. That is, admit he liked you. And he’d probably ask me not to invite you to come again. Then I’d have to meet you like this, if I saw you at all, while now I just do it.”

“Suppose we try it, anyway,” he suggested. “Maybe he’ll like me despite himself. Do I sound egotistical—too confident? But maybe we can break him of this newly formed habit.”

“I don’t know,” she said skeptically. “He and I had a long talk last night. He came home and found me irrigating the alfalfa. You see, I’d begun to realize what a useless life I’ve been living. I think I grew up in a day when I saw Wing o’ the Crow sticking pigs and driving a team, then hurrying to camp to get a meal for the stiffs. So I decided to remodel my life. I went home, and as there was nothing I could do in the house, I put on rubber boots and went to irrigating. I had tried to help Wing-o, but I proved a failure at sticking pigs. I was hopeless for a time, then suddenly I realized that I was trying to do something out of my sphere, and that that was the trouble. So I went home and began in my own sphere to make amends. And then pa took me to the house; it was then that we had our talk.”

“And do you wish to tell me about it?”

“Well, he said irrigating wasn’t my sphere, either. He wants me to practice more on the piano and study more and do housework—if I must work—and not run around so much, and—and——”

“Yes?”

“Well, grow up a little more, he said—and think about getting married and settling down.”

“Good advice, I should say.”

“And he said I ought to take more interest in the men he brings to the ranch from Los Angeles sometimes, and in—in Hunter Mangan.”

“Oh!”

“Mangan has lots of money, pa says; and he’s not so terribly old—twenty-nine. Of course, you know he comes over to Squawtooth often. Pa invites him. And, by the way, he’s to be there for supper to-morrow night. So you wouldn’t want to come then.”

“Wouldn’t I? I’ll come if you invite me.”

“I would, of course—you know. But I’m afraid it might spoil everything.”

“I’ll risk it. Suppose I go and try to make your father like me, even though I’m only a flunky.”

“If you want to try it——”

“Do you invite me?”

“Certainly. But—but——”

“It’s settled then. We’ll see what can be done to cure your father of this sudden complaint. Now let’s talk of something else.”

While these two walked slowly over the soft carpet of sand Mr. Halfaman Daisy was repairing to the camp of Jeddo the Crow, swinging along with an exalted stride. As he strode along he lifted his voice in song, or, rather, dropped it out of one corner of his mouth, to convince himself that his head was still unbowed. And thus he sang the ninety-seventh and the hundred-and-sixth stanzas of his favorite lay:

“Chi to the Kerry Woman’s out in Sac

I rides the rods—ain’t a-comin’ back.

She slips me a dollar and I buys a stack,

And I holds four aces on a lumberjack—

For his pay day—for me ba-bay!

For the pay day of that lumberjack!

“Starts for Dallas on the M. K. and T.,

In a Memphis town I caught the ole I. C.

Tanked up in Chi on the M. and Saint P.,

And a-sobered up in Frisco on the Santa Fee—

Without me pay day—for me ba-bay!

Without me pay day from the M. K. and T!”

As he drew near to the blinking lights of Jeddo’s camp his song trailed off; and when he reached the front of the cook tent he was silent altogether.

The cook tent was dark, and its flaps tied together inhospitably, proving that its presiding angel had thriftily finished her work for the day. Mr. Daisy walked around it, stumbled over a guy rope, righted himself and the new pink tie which he fondly imagined went well with his sandy kinks, and continued his approach toward the van in the rear.

Mr. Daisy cleared his throat and knocked on the oaken doubletrees. Achieving nothing beyond a faint, unresounding tattoo and aching knuckle bones, he repeated the signal on the wagon box.

“Well? Who’s there?” came from within.

“Hello, Wing-o! It’s me. How’s each trivial detail this large evening?”

“The can’s three quarters full. You filled ’er this mornin’, you remember.”

“I did, at that I’d forgotten. I’m afoot now, though, Wing-o.”

“Keep that way.”

“You ain’t gone to bed?”

“How d’ye know I ain’t?”

Mr. Daisy pondered over this. “I don’t,” he finally confessed. “But lissen here, Wing-o: I got somethin’ to tell you.”

“Never saw you when you didn’t have somethin’ to tell somebody.”

“Ha-ha! You sure got on yer kid gloves to-night, sw-sweetheart.”

“I don’t need ’em to handle the likes o’ you. Peddle that ‘sw-sweetheart’ stuff where its welcome.”

“Aw, say now! I was afraid you wasn’t gonta think o’ that. Lissen, deary—honest I got somethin’ to tell you.”

“I can’t believe it!”

“Somethin’ big, too. It’ll make yer eyes stick out.”

“It would if I was to swallow it, I guess. But you never saw me have to push ’em in with a pick handle after listenin’ to you, did you?”

“Ain’t you the cuttin’ kid, though! But honest, pettie—this here’s great. Honest!”

“Pettie! Say, how’d you get that way?”

“Are you gonta ask me to climb up and set on the seat and talk to you?”

“Nobody ever had to ask you to talk to ’em. Trouble is to get you to break it off so’s a body c’n get a mite o’ sleep now an’ then. But go on—say what you got to say. I reckon it’s cruelty to animals to stop you.”

“Did you say climb up, Wing-o?”

“If I did I was talkin’ in my sleep. I been asleep for ten minutes. You always put me to sleep. Maybe it was me snorin’ you heard.”

“Aw, now le’s cut out the funny stuff! I’m comin’ up there. Shall I?”

“I thought you said you was comin’.”

“I don’t want to unless you want me to.”

“It’s a cinch you don’t want to, then!”

“H’m-m!” muttered the cornered Mr. Daisy. “Well, I’m comin’ up, anyway,” he added, and climbed on the wagon tongue.

“Shall I?”

“Shall you what?”

“Come on up? I’m standin’ on the tongue.”

“Not your own. I’d get a little rest if you was.”

“H’m-m!” Halfaman Daisy raised himself to his full height, though not in outraged dignity, and peered in over the seat. “Here I am,” he announced in doubtful triumph.

In one corner of the van was a cot, just large enough for the tired little body that slept on it night after night. About the walls hung the meager wardrobe of the queen of the van. There was a tiny homemade table with writing materials, a few books, and a kerosene lamp on it. Before it, in a camp chair, sat the girl of Mr. Daisy’s heart.

Her black hair was down and in a state of picturesque disorder. Someway, the more tumbled her hair, the more fascinating to mankind was the daughter of the one-armed Jeddo. She wore a straight, formless lightweight dress of brown and white plaid—a homely thing on any other woman.

“Heavens, you’re pretty!” Halfaman Daisy said fervently. “You start the joy bells ringin’ in me heart. What’re you doin’?”

“Studyin’.” The tones were more soothing. Mr. Daisy had said much in those last few words.

“’Rithmetic?”

“Yep—an’ hist’ry.”

“How much is two an’ a quarter times thirty?”

She figured with a pencil. “Sixty-seven-fifty,” she reported.

“Less two-fifty fer a shirt and a dollar fer tobacco, an’ fifty cents fer this here tie I’m wearin’?”

After a pause: “Sixty-three dollars and fifty cents.”

“That’s what’s right here in me jeans, kiddo. The way I’m hoardin’ it up these days is what’s makin’ hard times. I’m gonta set on the seat, Wing-o.”

As she did not dispute this he clambered to the seat and sat facing her, his legs draped over the low back uncomfortably. He took from his pocket the stub of a pencil and abstractedly wrote on the seat back between his long legs: “And the sons also of Aaron; Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar.”

“Don’t begat all over that there seat!” warned the girl. “Can’t you think of anything but ‘The sons also of Aaron?’ You talk it an’ dream it an’ write it everywhere you go. You’re a begatto-maniac, Jack!”

Mr. Daisy wet the rubber eraser and tried to obliterate the words. “Bring your chair over here by me,” he suggested.

“I’m doin’ well enough right here, thank you. Why don’t you get ye a rubber stamp with that Aaron business on it, an’ have it and a pad handy in your pocket?”

“Huh! But I got somethin’ to tell you.”

“I’ll begin to b’lieve that pretty soon. Or you might get you one o’ these little typewriters they carry in a case. ’Twouldn’t be heavy. You could keep it on yer tank wagon and begat all the way to Squawtooth an’ back.”

“Huh! Come on over closter. I oughtn’t to butt in there, an’ I gotta talk low. This here’s an important secret.”

She shrugged, rose, and carried her camp chair nearer to the wagon seat, setting it down so that she would be safely out of the reach of this obstinate male.

“They c’n hear me all over camp. This here’s sumpin just between you an’ me.”

With a pout Wing o’ the Crow rose again and moved the chair nearer. But as she started to sit down Halfaman reached out and moved it nearer still, so that she alighted on the bare edge of it and was saved from toppling off by his ready hand. Apparently she considered the near catastrophe as due to her own awkwardness, for she said nothing to show that she thought her lover responsible.

“Well, shoot!” she encouraged, demurely folding her hands in her lap.

Mr. Daisy leaned so that his lips were close to her little ear and shot.

“Kid, I’m crazy about you!” was the ammunition that he used.

“Aw, bunk! Is that all ye got to tell me?”

She made as if to rise immediately, but Halfaman grasped the chair, and of course she could not rise and leave the chair to withstand these indignities alone.

“Don’t you believe me? You know you do! Why’m I here?—tell me that. Why’d I ramble West?—tell me that!”

“Maybe Lil o’ the Lobbies could.”

“Aw, now, sweetheart, that ain’t fair! You know that’s all past. Listen: I got somethin’ to tell you.”

“Yeah? Where’ve I heard that before?”

“Now listen. You think I’m kiddin’ you. How ’bout that little Squawtooth girl?”

“Oh, it’s her now, is it? You big stiff—she wouldn’t use you for a doormat!”

“Maybe not; maybe not. Just the same, you’re all wrong again. She likes you. She slipped it to me that she did, to-day when I was at the ranch. Did she ever say anything to you ’bout me?”

“Her! About you! Say, this is good! Why, say, Halfaman—she can’t talk about anything else.”

Halfaman removed his broken-visored cap and scratched his head. “You’re kiddn’ me again,” he decided. “But did she?”

“You poor fish, she don’t know you’re on earth!”

“Maybe not; maybe not. Just the same, there’s one stiff she’s keen enough about. And I thought maybe she said sumpin about him—see? If she did, she mighta mentioned me. ’Cause this bird and me’s pals. They call um Falcon the Flunky. How ’bout it?”

“She said somethin’ about a stiff with a moniker like that first time I met her,” admitted Wing o’ the Crow, her curiosity aroused.

“What’d she say, apple blossoms?”

“Say, for Heaven’s sake. Apple blossoms! You’re kinda nutty, ain’t you? She just said he was at Mangan-Hatton’s.”

“Uh-huh—he’s s’posed to be a flunky there. Is, fer that matter. But everybody don’t know what I know about um. Him an’ me’s pals, and he slipped me the dope about umself last night. I’ll bet you’d open yer eyes if you savvied what I do, Wing-o. An’ lissen—you don’t wanta ferget about that guy. He’s strong for me, and I’ll bet if you knew what I do you wouldn’t be so placid, kinda.”

“You talk like a Hamburger sandwich! I heard you say you had somethin’ to tell me.”

“Ain’t I tellin’ you? But I can tell you more: This little Canby girl is nuts about Falcon the Flunky. First day she was in camp she was there to see Mangan. An’ Mangan he was showin’ her ’round—see—and when he takes ’er to the cook shack she sees Falcon the Flunky, and from then on she gives Mangan the begone sir. Lissen: Every night Falcon the Flunky beats it out over the desert, and pretty soon here she comes to meet um from the ranch. Everybody’s onto it—even Mangan.”

“I don’t believe it!”

“It’s the truth, so help me! But lissen: There’s a joker. If you knew this Falcon the Flunky an’ what I do about um you’d savvy. Nobody knows it but me—see?”

“I’ll bet he’s crooked. Well?”

“Well, I can’t tell you much, ’cause he tells me not to spill it. But Falcon the Flunky’s an educated guy, and—and he’s there, that’s all. Believe me, kiddo, that guy’s a go-getter!”

“You talk like a man up a tree! I thought ye had somethin’ to tell me. Just trying to horn in as usual?”

“There’s lots to tell, but I dassent spill it. No foolin’! And lissen: It’s got lots to do with you an’ me, kiddo.”

“I don’t know where I come in.”

“Why, this plug’s me pal—see? An’ you’re me little gypo queen that I rambled acrost four States to see again.”

“Is that so?”

“Sure. An’ one o’ these days you’ll say: ‘Gee! I never savvied that guy was the reg’lar feller he is. Say, I was rubber from the chin up when I slipped that Jasper them unkind words!’ No foolin’! You wait an’ see! Later on everything’ll be jake, and there’ll be some eye openin’ in this shanty camp. No foolin’! Gettin’ sleepy, honey?”

“Oh, no—not a-tall.”

“I guess you are. Well, I’ll beat it. Any chance fer a little kiss? Then I’ll go.”