FOUR-UP FOR HELP
Bound and helpless, Jerkline Jo Modock lay on the ground and listened
to the sounds of the battle raging around her. She knew that her hero
from Wild-cat Hill had come with his terrorizing panther scream, and
she heard curses and thudding clubs, then popping revolver shots.
She was struggling desperately to free herself of her bonds, but she
only wearied herself and accomplished nothing. With her teeth she
chewed at the cloth that covered her face, trying to draw it down below
her eyes, so that she could at least see; but her efforts here proved
futile, too. Then she began twisting her head from side to side and
hunching her shoulders, which she found she could move, in an effort to
loosen the knot at the back of her head, or to scrape the cloth away.
This last in time she accomplished, but it was long after all sounds of
the conflict had ceased.
As the cloth came loose she moved it along by sticking out her tongue
and working it from side to side, at the same time tossing her head
about. At last it slipped off, and, by raising her head, she gazed
about through the dark, wet trees.
She had heard the thud of horses' hoofs, but now not a horse was to be
seen. Fifty feet from her, perhaps, lay the silent form of Hiram
Hooker, flat on his back. No other human being save herself and Hiram
seemed to be in all that dripping wilderness.
Time and again she called to the man to whom she had given her heart,
but Hiram's lips remained motionless. A great fear clutched at her.
Hiram was dead.
She fought down her terror, the horror of it all, and sought
desperately for a way to release herself. She was bound round and
round until she was so stiff that even to roll over and over on the
ground was impossible, as she could get no purchase whatever for her
strong, tough muscles. She began striving to bend her knees, and in
this, as the bonds gradually changed position and gave a little, she
was eventually successful. Once she had a start in this tiresome
process, she gained more and more, and finally she could move her legs
from their straight position.
She rested then, and when she began squirming again found that she was
able to flop over on her side.
In this new position she looked about over the ground for something to
help her, and close at hand she saw the dull gleam of steel.
As yet she had not the remotest idea of why she had been kidnaped; nor
had she seen any of the persons who had perpetrated the act. Not a
word had been spoken to her or in her presence before the fight. She
had heard the man yelling about "the paper," though, toward the close
of the battle, but no other words throughout the entire ordeal.
The blade that showed its dull steel against the soggy brown pine
needles lay five feet beyond her reach. But now she could roll to it,
and began to do so, flopping along like a fish in the bottom of a boat.
She rested when her face was close to it, and began to study how she
might make use of it.
She might be able to take it in her teeth, but doubted if she could
reach that part of the rope about her shoulders, even then. If it was
a dagger, she could not think how she could utilize it, as it probably
would have no cutting edge. If it was a pocketknife, it doubtless
would be dull, as pocketknives usually are, and therefore useless.
With any pressure that she might be able to command, a keen cutting
edge would be necessary to free her from the coils of the lariat.
By now she had regained her strength, and once more began wriggling and
worming until her eyes were close to the blade, half hidden by pine
needles. Then she realized with surprise and a thrill of hope that the
object was a razor.
How such a tool came to be dropped by her assailants was more than she
could fathom. She did not try. Working her face closer and closer to
the razor she took the end of the handle between her teeth, and,
twisting her head from side to side, finally managed to close the blade
without cutting herself by pressing it against the ground.
Then she rolled so that her face was directly over it, and took both
handle and blade in her mouth, by the middle. Her brain had been
active through these clumsy maneuvers; she had a plan.
Now for a tree from which suckers were growing close to the ground.
The pines were hopeless in this respect, but off a way she saw the
naked branches of a black oak, and toward it she rolled, the closed
razor in her mouth.
It was a long, tiresome trip, and when she reached the tree there was
not a sucker growing from it. She saw another black oak close at hand,
and continued her flopping, seallike progress, toward it.
Here, to her unbounded delight, slender suckers grew up from an exposed
root. She released the razor and chewed upon one of them until she had
browsed it down to a leafless stub four inches high.
Then, working with her teeth and tongue and straining every muscle in
her neck, she contrived, at the risk of slashing her face, to insert
the stump of the sucker between the two halves of the razor handle.
This pushed up the blade, and it remained in a half-closed position
like a threatening guillotine. Knowing now that she would not be cut,
she took the end of the handle in her teeth and pulled it down as far
as it would go. Still the edge of the blade remained balanced against
the top of the sucker. So she rolled about until she found a pine
twig, which she took in her mouth, rolling with it back to the razor.
With one end of the twig in her mouth, she was able to push the blade
open with the other end, and it fell back against the root of the oak,
edge uppermost.
She rested again, and then crawled over the root until a coil of the
rope that bound her shoulders was pressing against the keen edge of the
razor blade. Working her shoulders up and down, she saw the leather
strands parting clean, and soon only one strand remained uncut. She
rolled from the razor and scraped this last strand against another
exposed root of the oak until it parted.
Two minutes more, and she was sitting up, unwinding the rawhide lariat
from her legs with hands that were free.
She struggled to her feet, and though she ached in every bone and
muscle, ran to Hiram and bent over him with a little cry of anguish on
her lips.
His shirt front was stained crimson, and terror seized her. She fought
it off and, bending down, listened with an ear to his heart. She
breathed a little tremulous prayer of thankfulness as she heard his
regular heartbeats, and then tore open his shirt to find that a bullet
had entered his breast, high up on the right-hand side.
As best she could she stopped the bleeding and tried to revive Hiram.
Into cold rain water, collected in a hollow of the ground, she plunged
her handkerchief again and again, bathing the man's temples and chafing
his wrists.
At last he opened his eyes, stared oddly at her a little, then, seeming
to remember everything, strove to rise.
Probably one woman in all that country could have completed the
gigantic task of getting this big, wounded man back to the wagons, but
Jerkline Jo was fortunately that woman. With an arm of Hiram about her
neck, and her arm about his waist, they staggered away through the
rain, Hiram conscious enough to direct the way, for the girl was
completely lost. It was early in the morning that their journey had
been interrupted so ruthlessly, but it was afternoon before they came
again to the road, and Hiram dropped exhausted in Jo's lead wagon.
Here she was able better to attend to his wound, and brandy, which she
always carried, revived him greatly.
There was no course open now but to loose all the horses but four,
leave three of the wagons where they stood, and drive as fast as she
could with the four hitched to the head wagon, to get the wounded man
to Artesian Ranch, about eighteen miles distant down on the Julia side
of the desert.
Never before or afterward in the lives of the actors in this outland
drama were the mountains that divided the desert to know such a drive
as that. Jerkline Jo had a set of four-up checks which she carried in
case of emergency, and by one o'clock four of her big whites were
racing down the perilous grade, with Jo holding the four leather lines
and operating the brake repeatedly, urging them to greater efforts
continually. The huge wagon careened about hairpin curves, skirted
precipices, rumbled from cañon to cañon, while the girl, always sure of
herself, always sure of her horses, guided it skillfully and laughed at
catastrophies that yawned at her every foot of the way.
In the middle of the afternoon they raced out on the desert and took up
the long miles to the ranch. At dark they reached it, the horses badly
spent, unaccustomed as they were to moving faster than a walk. There
was an automobile at the ranch, and Hiram was hurried on to the doctor
at Julia, while Jo worked far into the night rubbing down her trembling
whites, crooning to them, and giving them short drinks of water until
they were resting their weary bodies in the litter, content and quiet
at last.