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!”