CHAPTER XXIX
THE GENTLE WILD CAT RETURNS
Hiram Hooker was very weak when he reached the doctor. The bullet wasfound and successfully removed, however, and Hiram's great physicalperfection did the rest.
He was quickly on the mend, and in a month was able to take his teamagain.
Meantime Jerkline Jo and her four other skinners had contrived to maketheir customary trips from Julia to Ragtown, all of them calling to seeHiram, who was being cared for at the doctor's house, the minute theycompleted their west-bound trip. Jo spent most of her time with himwhen in Julia, and when he was well enough they talked frequently ofthe strange occurrence in the mountains. But they did not get down tosolid work on the mystery until Hiram was on his first trip to Ragtownafter his wound had healed. Then the wagon train came to a stop at thecurves, and Jo and all of her skinners walked through the forest to thescene of Hiram's battle.
After a search they found the spot. Jo showed the men the razor, stillpropped up as she had left it, held up by the sucker of the black oak.She found the remains of the lariat, too. A search failed to revealanything beyond the razor that had been dropped by the surprisedkidnapers.
"Lord, be merciful unto me, a skinner!" exclaimed Heine Schultz,seating himself on a prostrate pine. "Wild Cat, you say one o' theseJaspers was bendin' over Jo with this here razoo?"
"I'm sure it was that that he had in his hand," Hiram replied. "He wasthe second one that I soaked, and I saw him drop it."
"Boy! Boy! That musta been some fight," observed Jim McAllen. "Thinkof our ol' Wild Cat puttin' the three of 'em on the run! Man, howcomes it I miss all the good things in this life? Jo, was they aimin'to cut your pretty throat?"
Jo shuddered. "Thank Heaven I was blindfolded!" was her gratefulthought. "But how ridiculous, boys! A razor! If they'd wanted tokill me, at least one of them had a gat. Ask Hiram."
"Maybe they was just goin' to cut you loose and tell you why they'dswiped you, when the Gentle Wild Cat went wild again," suggested Gulick.
"Cut a perfectly good lariat!" Jo picked it up. "Couldn't they haveuntied the knots?"
Gulick took the lariat and examined it. "Thirty-five feet," he said."Rawhide--six-strand plait Been rubbed with cow's liver to soften 'er,too. What else? Whoop! What's this?"
He was studying the honda, also of rawhide, pressed flat when soakedand riveted in shape, a plaited button on the end of the lariat properto keep it from slipping through the hole.
"Letters cut in this," Gulick announced. "T. H.' Who's that standfor?"
All went silent for a time, thinking; then Hiram Hooker said quietly,as if what he suggested mattered but little:
"Tehachapi Hank."
All talked at once now. Not one was there that was not sure Hiram hadhit upon a clew.
"And Tehachapi Hank's a bad man," said Heine. "Admitted it himself.And he's a side-kick of that cholo-faced Drummond!"
Study of the razor, now red with rust, showed the amateur detectivesnothing.
"And ye saw only the face of one of 'em, Hiram?" Blink Keddie asked it.
"Only one. The others managed to keep their masks on."
"Tehachapi Hank and Al Drummond them other two was," said McAllenpositively. "Too bad it wasn't one o' them you knocked the mask offof, Wild Cat."
"And you never saw this fella that you got a look at?" asked Schultz.
Hiram shook his head. "I didn't even see him well," he added."Through revolver smoke--and the rain pouring--and next instant hisface didn't look like anything much. That was a wicked old pine knot."
"I'll say she was, boy! But about the razor?" Keddie kept on.
Again Hiram could not answer.
"Why, that's easy!" laughed Heine Schultz. "They was gonta give Jo ashave!"
Jo and Hiram walked together behind the rest and talked as the partyreturned to the wagons. For the first time she told him of what herskinners had had to report when they were over their sickness followingthe doping at Ragtown. One and all, they said, they had been invitedto the little cabin of the girl who ran the shooting gallery for adrink; after having fired several strings of shots and "joshed" withher out in front. From there they had gone to the Palace, andafterward, being dazed and feeling drowsy, had wandered in a group intothe Dugout, a place that they seldom frequented, and could remembernothing after that.
"Why--why--do they think Lucy doped them?" cried Hiram.
Jo shrugged. "They can't remember drinking anywhere but with her andin the Palace," she said. "They got it one place or the other, Hiram."
"The Palace, of course, then. Why--Lucy--she----"
"Is a friend of Al Drummond," Jo helped him out, her red lips set.
"Did you find out whether or not Drummond was in Ragtown at the time?"
"I looked into all that I dared, but it was nine days before I gotback. Oh, I had an awful time, with nobody to help me but a few greenmen I'd picked up at Julia--finding the horses and all. But Huber gothis hay!" she added proudly. "When I got back to Ragtown, of coursenobody remembered whether Drummond had been there that day or not. Hegoes and comes frequently, you know. And I didn't dare pressquestions. I told the boys to keep still about it all. I thought thatbest."
"Was Drummond there on your last trip in?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Beaten up? I'm sure I must have left my mark on all three of them."
"I didn't get to see him, but no one said anything about any injury."
"Much as we dislike him, it's hard to think that Drummond would beconcerned in such a plot," Hiram remarked.
"Plot?"
"Of course, Jo."
"Against me? What have I done?"
"We're getting nowhere with such speculation, Jo," said Hiram. "Weboys will just have to keep our eyes open and see what we can find out.There's more back of it than the idea to tantalize you because you beatAl Drummond in the freighting game. I wish I knew what the razor wasfor."
"Of course, they weren't going to kill me, Hiram. No need for all thatmonkeywork, if that had been the case."
"I only saw the man with the razor," Hiram told her, "and got busy. Ofcourse, I didn't even know it was a razor then, but I saw steel. Ithought they were going to kill you. Didn't take much time to think,at that."
"You terrible scrapper!" laughed the girl. "Who'd have thought thatI'd ever have needed such a man--and got him! Hiram, you've--you'venever kissed me since that night."
Hiram's face turned red as fire. "I ain't worthy to kiss ye, Jo," hesaid, lapsing into his backwoods drawl. "Wait'll I settle this thingthat's come up for you. Wait'll I find out about 'the paper.' Thenmaybe I'll have somethin' to offer you."
In his great embarrassment he pointed to the ground, where were tracksand scratches.
"Ben a bob cat usin' thereabouts," he drawled.
With Twitter-or-Tweet Orr Tweet the month that Hiram had been laid uphad developed a new and unforeseen situation. He laid the particularsbefore Jerkline Jo and Hiram, both investors in his enterprise. Theconference took place when Jo's freight outfit jingled into Ragtown twodays later.
Tweet invited them to dinner in the Wigwam, a saloon and restaurant andgambling house combined, where the patrons sat on stools before a highcounter which was in the nature of a continuation of the bar. Thethree took seats at the farther end, so that their conversation wouldbe less likely to be overheard.
"Playmates," Tweet began, when their orders were before them, "I didn'tthink our Uncle Sam would go to work and hand us a package just when wewere gettin' us a toehold. But that's just what he's done. I beenwatchin' for it to develop for some little time. Now the leak hassprung.
"You see, outside o' Paloma Rancho, every other section o' land in hereb'longs to the Gold Belt Cut-off, and adjoinin' sections are governmentland. Maybe you c'n guess what's happened."
"Thrown open," Jerkline Jo said promptly.
"Yep--open to homesteaders. They're flockin' in in automob
iles, inperambulators, on motor cycles, burros, horseback, and afoot--ineverything but submarines. So far as any one can see, they're gettin'just as good land as Paloma Rancho; and the folks we've sold to arecastin' dark looks at one Tweet. As if I was to blame! Two fellasthat hadn't paid in much have jumped their contracts with us, and aretakin' up claims. If many more pull stuff like that--say, somebody'llbe in bad!
"Just the same, though, my engineers tell me there's shallower waterhere than any place on this ol' desert. Butte Springs proves that,too. And we got the water right on the mountain lake; so they can'tget that. Riparian rights--all straight, by golly! No worry there. Idon't think settlers'll have any luck striking water without bigexpense anywhere around us. Just the same, it'll take time to provethat.
"The settler, you savvy, has six months after he files before he's gotto get on his land. Even then he ain't required to develop water; andchances are he won't. He'll put in dry crops to cover the improvementsdemanded by the government, whether they succeed or not--which theywon't. But all this time, because nobody'll be makin' a great effortto locate water, folks will be believin' that government land is asgood as ours. See the point? Paloma Rancho land will stop sellin'pronto, and our pleasant little dream will turn into a scary nightmare."
"But if the surrounding land is inferior to the rancho," said Jo, "it'sonly a matter of time until people will find it out. Then you'llregain your old status, won't you?"
"In time. Yeah--that's it. But time's money, little girl; and onceevery three months I gotta slap down six thousand filthy lucreinos,plus a neat little bunch o' interest, or--bingo! All is lost!
"Folks that peddled me this property are gettin' on their feet again,and their young lives are one long regret over havin' had ta part withPaloma Rancho. 'Salways th' way. One dog leaves a bone, and anotherdog comes along and goes to work and picks her up. Then the other doghe goes to work and thinks that was a pretty darn good bone after all.Then fur begins to fly, and old ladies yell: 'How cruel! Stop it, youbig heartless men!'
"So the other dogs won't miss a chance to shoot the prongs into me themoment I fail on a single payment and the interest due. They don'thave to; I signed to forfeit everything any interest day that I failedto pungle up. Three days o' grace--then--boom! 'Wasn't it pretty,papa! Shoot off another one just like it!'"
Jerkline Jo sipped her near-coffee thoughtfully, and gazed unseeinglyat the menu card, a marvel of weird orthography, punctuated with flyspecks and splatters of egg yolk. Jo had over ten thousand dollarsinvested in Paloma Rancho.
"We're not doing the freighting business that we did," she confessed,aware that Playmate Tweet was studying her face expectantly andpatiently straightening a nose whose tip always left true center themoment he released it. "Lots of the smaller contractors have finishedhere, and are moving on to new jobs up the line, out of our reach.Ragtown, too, seems to be slowing up, don't you think?"
Tweet pursed his lips. "I hate to admit it," he said, "but I guessyou're right. Still, we can expect things to be slower in winter.Then these settlers oughta help Ragtown some when spring comes along.Chances are, though, most of 'em are broke. 'Salways like that. I'vebeen homesteadin' communities before now. No good, as a rule.
"But I ain't worryin' about Ragtown. She'll perk up. We're gonta getthe yards and the roundhouse--that's a cinch. I know it now. Demarestslipped it to me. I've spread the glad tidin's, o' course, but itdidn't seem to help. Folks have believed it all along, and have goneahead on that belief--so the rush because of that feature was overbefore I sprung it. But Ragtown'll pick up in time. The floaters willgo, and substantial citizens will take their places. It's the landcontracts that we need in order to meet our payments and have a futureto bank on, and they're what'll slow up and hurt us till folks get saneand see we got the only dope."
"You'll have to meet the next payment--when?" Hiram put in here.
"April first--two months off. Six thousan' dollars and interest ondeferred payments."
"Can you meet it?"
"I couldn't if it was due now," was Tweet's reply.
"Well, I'll see that you meet that payment," Jo said. "That will giveyou three months more leeway--five months, counting from now--and bythat time things should begin to look up once more."
Tweet heaved a great sigh of relief. "That's a big load off my chest,"he claimed, as they left the stools.
Two hours later Hiram Hooker, apparently wandering aimlessly about thedimly lighted street, saw Al Drummond lift a hinged portion of theshooting-gallery counter and pass within. A man was in charge, andthere was nobody shooting. Drummond nodded briefly to him, traversedthe length of the target range, and disappeared through a door in therear.
Three minutes after this Hiram slunk stealthily along the alley and upto Lucy's little cabin. Softly his fingers plucked at a knot in aknothole, which he had loosened that evening while Lucy was on watch inthe gallery. Holding the circular bit of wood in his hand, he placedan ear to the knothole, which was hidden from those inside by a hugepiece of furniture.