JO LOSES HER SUPPORT
Eight days later Jerkline Jo leaned on the ledge of the office window
in Huber's store at Ragtown and handed him the various papers which
accompanied a consignment of freight from Julia.
"There's no hay, Jo," he cried, looking up in perplexity and worriment.
"The Mulligan Supply Company was short of hay when we left," Jo
explained. "They hoped to have a trainload in by the time I got back."
"There's the dickens to pay!" he grumbled. "They know I have to have
hay right along. I've a standing order for at least half a load of hay
every trip. These settlers are buying it fast. I have only ten bales
on hand. Next fellow that comes along will probably want all ten of
them. A nice mess! What's the matter with those Ikes over there at
Julia? Are they asleep?"
"It seems they've had some difficulty in getting alfalfa here lately,"
the girl explained. "I'm sorry, Mr. Huber. The best I can do for you
is to promise to bring every bale I can next trip."
"Rush it," ordered the merchant. "If you can make it, let somebody
else's order ride, Jo, and bring me every pound you can."
"I'll see what can be done," was her promise as she left and went to
the little cabin that she had had built for her at the edge of town.
Here she cleansed herself of the stains of the trip, and substituted
for chaps and flannel shirt a new tailor-made suit which had just come
from Los Angeles. As she was about to go out again Twitter-or-Tweet
Orr Tweet knocked on her door.
"Jo," he said with his whimsical smile, "I'm showing a couple o' men
some property, and thought you might like to take a ride. You've never
seen much of the cultivated land, have you--except from a distance?
Come 'n' see what chances your money's got in Paloma Rancho, the
Homesteader's Promised Land of Milk and Honey. Won't be gone over an
hour."
His car was waiting, with his two prospective land purchasers in the
tonneau. Jo readily agreed, for she had nothing to occupy her, and
Tweet helped her in beside the driver's seat, after introducing the men
to her.
Tweet drove slowly and talked a great deal, steering the car with one
hand and directing his conversation at all three of his listeners. He
dwelt at length to the strangers on Jerkline Jo's great success in her
freighting enterprise, not neglecting to mention that she was investing
a great portion of her profits in Paloma Rancho. The men were
impressed.
Jo, too, was impressed with Tweet's abilities as a salesman. He
emanated confidence, and his enthusiasm seemed well-founded and
sincere. In fact, the new alfalfa ranches and the orchards of young
pear trees looked promising indeed, and the projects showed evidences
of thrift and capability on the part of the ranchers and near-ranchers
who had bought land on contract from the discoverer of Paloma Rancho's
dormant possibilities.
Tweet told of his idea of eventually tapping the mountain lake near
which Jo was wont to camp and bringing the water down to irrigate such
portions of desert land as might require it; for there were places
where three hundred feet of boring had not developed a drop of the
precious fluid. The promoter had an engineer's estimate of the cost of
the entire water system, and said that his original figures had been
pretty close.
It all seemed feasible, and things looked generally prosperous. Jo
enjoyed her ride and the opportunity to see what had been accomplished.
Returning, however, the complete enjoyment of the trip was marred by
tire trouble, and, with one thing and another, it was nine o'clock at
night before the party, reached Ragtown.
They were ravenously hungry, and Tweet invited the three to dinner in
the town's closest approach to a satisfactory restaurant. It was after
ten o'clock when they left the table. Tweet gallantly asked to
accompany Jo to her cabin, and both were laughing at the absurdity of a
girl like Jerkline Jo needing an escort, when Hiram Hooker hurried up
to them.
"Well, I c'n see who's cut out," said Tweet, assuming a mournful
expression. "So, if you don't mind, Jo, I'll get over to the hotel and
keep after those two suckers. Take care of her, Wild Cat, and do
whatever she tells you to do, or answer to me with your life. There's
only one Jerkline Jo, you know, and the world needs her all the time.
So long, playmates!"
"Jo," said Hiram when Tweet had bustled away up the dimly lighted
street, "there's an awful mess. Heine and Jim and Tom and Blink are
all drunk as fiddlers!"
"What!" Jo stopped in her tracks and held him by the arm. "Oh, dear!"
she cried. "How could they do such a thing! I've watched them so
carefully, and they've been so good. But the moment I'm out of their
sight for a few hours---- Oh, dear! I didn't think that they'd treat
me that way!"
"I can't get it straight myself, Jo," Hiram told her. "They always
hoist a few when we get in, and sometimes I join them. I've never
before seen any of them when he wasn't at least able to ramble safely
back to camp. But to-night they're all four dead to the world. I
can't even shake a word out of them. Heine just sits there in the
Dugout, with his head on his breast, and is like a dead man."
"Where were you?"
"In camp--studying. About half past nine I thought I'd stroll into
town and get a cigar and see what the boys were doing. I couldn't find
them in the Palace, and went from place to place till I stumbled on
them in the Dugout, every last one of them down and out. I was looking
for Tweet, to have him take the bunch of them to camp in his car, when
I saw you folks come out of the restaurant."
"The Dugout," puzzled Jo. "Do they go there often?"
"Hardly ever. It's the worst dump in town, as you know. They're all
crooked enough, but I've heard strange whisperings about certain shady
happenings in the Dugout."
"Was anybody with them?"
"Not when I found them."
"Hiram," said Jo, "it sounds like dope to me. They're loyal to me, I
tell you. No, they're not to blame--they'd never treat me that way.
They've been doped."
"But why? And by whom?"
"Those are questions. None of them have any money on them to speak of,
I know. I've got the bank pass books of every one of them in my chest.
Again, who'd have the nerve to dope and try to roll a skinner of
Jerkline Jo's? He'd be playing with fire. These dive keepers know all
about me; they know my power. I could mobilize an army of two hundred
stiffs in an hour's time, and if I asked it they'd lay every dump in
Ragtown flat. You bet these parasites know better than to trifle with
Jerkline Jo."
Her dark eyes flashed angrily in the light of a store window.
"Well, let's not stand here bewailing our fate like children lost in
the woods. We've simply got to _get_ out to-morrow. Mr. Huber is wild
about the shortness of his stock of hay, and I promised to rush him all
I could. Get Tweet and dump my boys into his car and take 'em to camp.
We'll see what we can do to bring them out of it and make them fit for
the trip by morning."
Far into the morning hours, in the outfit's camp on the edge of town,
Jo and Hiram strove to revive the stupefied men, but nothing beyond
groans could they get from them.
"They're doped, Hiram--pitilessly doped!" Jo cried in despair at last.
"Go for Doctor Dennison. Carry him on your shoulders if he won't come."
The medical man came readily at Hiram's request, and after a brief
examination of the sluggish men remarked that Jo's surmise had been
correct. He then ordered her to go to her cabin and get some badly
needed sleep, and at once went to work on the unconscious quartet, with
Hiram aiding all he could.
"Whoever did this cursed thing, Wild Cat," said the physician, "was an
amateur. He might have killed them. They've taken aboard terrible
doses, and I can tell you right now that not one of them will start for
Julia to-day. You may as well tell Jo to make other arrangements."
His prophecy proved correct. Heine Schultz had regained consciousness
when dawn came, but was unable to tell a coherent story of what had
occurred, and was deathly sick. The other three still remained
unresponsive to the doctor's treatment.
"Well," said Jo, when she answered Hiram's knock on her cabin door at
five-thirty, "what must be must. Huber has to have hay. I promised
it, and Jerkline Jo never, never breaks a promise. So hook up the
blacks and whites, Hiram, and lead six of Heine's team to be added to
yours and six of Jim's for me. Hook on two trailers. You and I will
make it to Julia and drive sixteen each back here with Huber's hay.
That's the very best we can do, but we'll do that the best we know how.
I'll be out by the time you get 'em hooked up. We'll nibble our
breakfast as we travel. Shoot the piece, Hiram boy, my knight from
Wild-cat Hill!"
That night in a pelting hail storm Jerkline Jo and Hiram went into camp
beside the mountain lake, and the stage was set for the second act in
the plot cooked up by the two who had lost all principle under
Ragtown's subtle influence--Al Drummond and Lucy Dalles.