Chapter XIX: What Made the Wild Cat

Jerkline Jo's wagon train snailed on over the desert toward the tents of Demarest's big camp. The tires of Mr. Tweet's shiny new car plunked down into the road, and that gentleman continued on toward the trucks and the machine of Ragtown's first merchant, Mr. Huber.

Hiram Hooker was riding with Jerkline Jo, and the two had been deep in their studies when the appearance of the various automobiles had distracted their attention. Hiram now climbed to the top of Jo's immense load of baled alfalfa, and, looking back, made reports to her.

"They're all together now," he said, "and having quite an argument. Tweet's swinging his arms about as if he wanted to fight.

"Now he's getting into his car. He and the storekeeper are turning in ahead of the trucks. Here they all come, Tweet in the lead!"

A little later Tweet shouted to Hiram to stop, and Hiram relayed the command to Jo, who called to her ten whites and brought them to a standstill. A little later five angry men hurried on foot alongside the wagon.

"Here's your hundred and twelve dollars, Jo," Tweet said exultantly, passing the girl a sheaf of bills, "And that settles that. Now, Mr. Drummond, step over here and be introduced to Jerkline Jo Modock and my friend Hiram Hooker, from Wild-cat Hill. We'll see if you folks can't get together and conduct your affairs amicably."

Al Drummond, Hiram Hooker's one-time rival, was indeed there, dressed after the fashion of Mr. Tweet, and looking big and important and business-like. There was a dark scowl on his brow though as he came forward and nodded to Jo, but did not offer his hand.

"Well, I've been held up," he muttered, "and I'm going to see about it, but----"

"See about it all you want to, my friend," put in Tweet smoothly. "I have complete control of this land, and have the sole right to say who shall cross it and who shall not, and under what conditions. The ranch is posted, and everything is in order. This road is a new one, and you can't make the claim that it has been used so long that it must be considered in the nature of a public highway. You've not a leg to stand on; so every time you turn a wheel on this property it's goin' to cost you just what the last trip through the pass cost Jerkline Jo. You started something, my friend, and you can't finish it--that's all. Take your medicine like a sport."

"I'm going to keep up that mountain road, and I'm going to charge to move vehicles and teams over it," replied Drummond angrily. "My operations are legitimate. Yours are a holdup."

"Suit yourself." Tweet shrugged indifferently. "But, as I pointed out, you'll pay back every cent you collect from Jo. And, besides, you'll be out the expenses of your toll master."

"Others besides this lady will be crossing--lots of them later on," said Drummond. "I'm not going to keep that road in condition for the general public free of charge."

"Then the best thing you can do is make a dicker with Jo to share her part of the maintenance expenses, and you two divide the spoils that you collect from others."

"I can't agree to that," Jo put in hastily. "The road will serve very well as it is for our purposes, with a few repairs now and then which my boys can attend to themselves. We don't have to have a road in as good condition as the trucks will demand. We are entirely satisfied as matters stand."

Tweet slapped his thigh. "Spoken like a man!" he cried. "Now it's your move, Mr. Drummond. Fix your road all you want to and gouge travelers for the last cent you can, but this outfit travels through the mountains free, any way you can figure it out. Better write out a permanent permit for Jo, and do away with this collectin' back and forth and only breakin' even."

The truck man was so angry he scarcely could contain himself.

"It's a dirty, rotten deal!" he said between gritted teeth. "And this is only part of it. This bunch of roughnecks rolled a big boulder in the road after they'd passed yesterday, or some time, and it took us three hours to get it out. Had to hook on the trucks, and unload, and cut poles--and I don't know what all we didn't have to do to get the thing out so we could pass it. That's dirty, low-down business, and anybody who would do such a thing is a dirty piker--I don't care if she is a woman! If I've got to come out here and buck a wild woman with no principle I'll----"

Al Drummond paused abruptly. A mountain of bone and muscle had swooped down from the top of the load of baled hay and loomed large before him.

"Mr. Drummond," said a caressing voice with what seemed a totally disinterested drawl, "you're a liar!"

For a few seconds there was not a sound as Hiram Hooker stood before Drummond and eyed him placidly. The truck man's face had gone chalk-white. They were big men, both of them, and for all that Drummond's life had not been a rugged one, he was physically pretty much a man. Jo's skinners had come running back, and, with Tweet and Huber, looked on expectantly, sensing that a crisis between the two big huskies was imminent. Then came the voice of Jerkline Jo.

"Hiram," she said, "don't be hasty." Jerkline Jo had seen many a fight between big men of the outdoor life. It was no new experience, and there was not a quaver in her tones. She had been brought up where men settled matters with fists or guns or pick handles. "Listen, Hiram," she continued, "Mr. Drummond is telling the truth, I think, up to a certain point. When you boys were way ahead of me yesterday I heard a rumble behind me. Evidently a big boulder rolled down in the road after we had passed. Just the same I'll thank you, Hiram, to ask Mr. Drummond to apologize for accusing me of being responsible."

"Yes, ma'am," drawled Hiram, reverting to his old speech of the redwood forests. "Ye heard, Mr. Drummond. We didn't roll down any stone. I'd apologize now if I was you. That's best."

"Listen to the Gentle Wild Cat pur," said Heine Schultz, looking abstractedly up at the clouds.

"Well, you ain't me, you gangling hick!" said Drummond. "I saw footprints up above the rock wall that the stone fell from. It was pushed down. There are six of you. You could roll down a rock that we three couldn't budge. You even could hook on teams and drag it in the road behind you. Then when you came back, if it was still there, you could easily snake it out of your own way with these big horses."

"I reckon you're right," admitted Hiram. "But we didn't do that, so you oughta apologize to Jo." There was a deceptively soothing note in Hiram's tones. He seemed to be patiently pointing out the better course for Mr. Drummond to pursue, with no suggestion of what might be the penalty for guessing wrong.

"Well, I'll not apologize! I'm not a fool! That rock was rolled down. It----"

"You're a liar, Mr. Drummond," repeated Hiram.

Then they came together with a thud of big bodies and a shower of hooflike fists.

"Hi-yi!" yelled Blink Keddie. "What made our Gentle Wild Cat wild? Come on, boys! Back up ol' Wild Cat! Eat 'im, Hi-_ram_! Eat 'im alive! Le's send this outfit to the cleaners!"

"Blink!" called Jerkline Jo shrilly as the pugnacious skinner charged threateningly at Drummond's truck drivers. He came to a stop. "Don't make it general unless it becomes necessary," Jo added smoothly.

Meantime the two huge belligerents were hammering stunning blows at each other. About them now stood silent men in a circle, with the vast, hot desert stretching away on every side.

It developed shortly that Drummond was an athlete. He was quicker on his feet than Hiram and knew more tricks of offense and defense. Hiram, on the other hand, was a bull for strength and endurance, and in the big-woods country had maintained a reputation as a rough-and-tumble fighter and wrestler, though most of his encounters had been friendly bouts. Furthermore, he was cool as one of his Mendocino trout streams, and he fought in a businesslike way and never allowed himself to lose his temper.

He was therefore the more deadly, for his endurance was unbounded, and the punishment that Drummond was able to inflict seemed to have no effect whatever. And when one of his big fists found its mark a groan went up from Huber and Tweet. But Jerkline Jo and her rough-and-ready skinners, the latter all old fighters of the camps and used to unseemly sights, and the sickening sound of a big fist landing on giving bone, only watched and waited for the result.

In no time at all, it seemed, the face of the truck man was raw, while Hiram's showed only bruises. They clinched repeatedly, and soon it became apparent that Drummond was forcing these clinches.

"You've got 'im goin', Gentle Wild Cat!" yelled Tom Gulick. "Keep after his mush, ol'-timer! Pretty soon he won't be able to see you; then clean house with 'im!"

Drummond played for Hiram's wind now, but there was not an ounce of fat over the stomach that he hammered so repeatedly, and it seemed as if he were battering hard rubber. He was fast losing his own wind, for his life had not been so healthy as had that of the man from the Northern forests. Hiram's punishing fists were finding their target more frequently now, for the truck man's defense was failing him. He was slowing up--breathing hard--gulping.

"Guess it's time to stop it, Gentle Wild Cat," complacently observed Jim McAllen.

Then Hiram finished it. He crowded his big antagonist and beat him to his knees with blows that seemed to be skull crushing. Drummond's nose and mouth were badly damaged. Both eyes were mere slits, blazing between coloring puffs. One crushing, blow straight into his face as he came up defiantly sent him reeling about, head down, groping blindly.

"One more in the same place, Wild Cat!" called Gulick.

But Hiram desisted, though continuing to trail the groping man as he reeled through the sand, stumbling frequently.

"Lock the door, Hiram!" begged Heine Schultz. "It's all over but closin' up."

Hiram shook his head, and then Drummond wilted and sank in the sand.

Water was quickly provided, and the pulse of Jerkline Jo leaped as she saw that Hiram himself was taking the most prominent part in the whipped man's revival. It was fully five minutes before Drummond was conscious again; then Hiram helped to bear him to one of the trucks.

"Thank you, Hiram," Jo said softly as he returned.

He looked up into her eyes, which were moist round the rims. He had fought and won for his girl of romance, and he knew now that it had been she who through all the years had been beckoning him to come.

With a damp cloth she tenderly touched his bruised face here and there as the wagon train moved on again.

"Don't think any the worse of me, Hiram," she pleaded. "Perhaps I'm a roughneck, after all, as Drummond intimated. But I can't faint and carry on at the sight of blood and the sound of battering fists as most women do. I like a fight--a fair fight--a good fight--a manly fight. Life for me has been always a fight. I've learned not to shrink. Am I brutal--for a woman?"

"No," said Hiram. "I think I want you that way. Nobody could look into your eyes, Jo, and think you weren't tender and compassionate. I'd want my woman to be a fighter, I guess, when it was the time and place to fight."

Jerkline Jo's face was radiant with color, but she said softly:

"And I want my man to be a fighter. It's in my blood, it seems."

They said nothing more about it then, but each knew that love had spoken, and the unfriendly desert seemed a delectable land.

In camp that night Blink Keddie made a confession.

"Jo," he said, twisting and squirming, "me and Heine and Jim and Tom did ease that boulder into the road. We done it to get even for the empty water tank."

"Why, Blink!" Jo cried, aghast.

"We made it up to do it, and not even let Wild Cat in on the deal, 'cause he seemed to think like you did. So we rampsed our teams and got way ahead o' you folks, then stopped 'em when they was outa you folks' sight around the curves, and ran back through the trees with bars. We had our rock all picked out, and it didn't take the four o' us no time to ease her to the edge and let 'er plunk down in the road behind you. Then we run ahead through the woods and got on our wagons before you caught up. Now you know--what're you goin' to do about it?"

"Shall I have Wild Cat take you out, one at a time," Jo asked mischievously, after a thoughtful pause.

Keddie shrugged. "I ain't achin' for my portion o' that," he confessed, "but ol' Timberline will know he's been in a fight."

"It was despicable of you boys," Jo said sternly. "We'll not fight that way."

"But the empty water tank, Jo!" cried Heine. "My goat ain't through gettin' got about that deal yet. You gotta fight the devil with fire, as they say."

"I'm terribly sorry," Jo continued, her brow clouding. "That act is responsible for to-day's trouble, and we haven't yet heard the last of that, I'm afraid. And now _I'll_ have to apologize to Mr. Drummond and explain."

"No, no, Jo! Let Hi-_ram_ do it. He knows how to apologize. Think o' the water tank, Jo!"

"We have no proof that Drummond or his men were responsible for the empty tank, boys. I'm terribly sorry. I must think over what's best to be done now. We mustn't stoop to such methods. Even though we are subjected to underhand competition, we ourselves must fight fair and not descend to our enemy's level."

"You're aimin' to go to heaven, Jo," Gulick accused. "Drummond started the dirty work. We can show him a dozen tricks to offset emptyin' our tank. Better tell him not to do anythin' more. We'll stop his clock if he does."

"You'll do it fairly, then, or you'll not drive teams for me," Jo emphatically told them.

Their silence disturbed her. They knew that she could not do without them. Even as matters stood, she could have used one more jerkline skinner could she have found one good enough to handle her much-loved animals. They were loyal to her, a stanch little army, hard to defeat if their crude but forceful methods of fighting could be brought into play. All of them looked upon the girl as their especial charge in life, and whenever they fought for her they would, with only her well-being in mind, fight as they saw fit. Still, she could control them if forewarned of their plans. She always had controlled them--not by condemning and issuing orders and threatening, but by the exercise of her sweet womanly personality; for there was not a man of them but loved her and fairly worshiped at her shrine.