Chapter XXIX: The Gentle Wild Cat Returns

Hiram Hooker was very weak when he reached the doctor. The bullet was found and successfully removed, however, and Hiram's great physical perfection did the rest.

He was quickly on the mend, and in a month was able to take his team again.

Meantime Jerkline Jo and her four other skinners had contrived to make their customary trips from Julia to Ragtown, all of them calling to see Hiram, who was being cared for at the doctor's house, the minute they completed their west-bound trip. Jo spent most of her time with him when in Julia, and when he was well enough they talked frequently of the strange occurrence in the mountains. But they did not get down to solid work on the mystery until Hiram was on his first trip to Ragtown after his wound had healed. Then the wagon train came to a stop at the curves, and Jo and all of her skinners walked through the forest to the scene of Hiram's battle.

After a search they found the spot. Jo showed the men the razor, still propped 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 reveal anything beyond the razor that had been dropped by the surprised kidnapers.

"Lord, be merciful unto me, a skinner!" exclaimed Heine Schultz, seating himself on a prostrate pine. "Wild Cat, you say one o' these Jaspers was bendin' over Jo with this here razoo?"

"I'm sure it was that that he had in his hand," Hiram replied. "He was the second one that I soaked, and I saw him drop it."

"Boy! Boy! That musta been some fight," observed Jim McAllen. "Think of our ol' Wild Cat puttin' the three of 'em on the run! Man, how comes 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 grateful thought. "But how ridiculous, boys! A razor! If they'd wanted to kill 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'd swiped you, when the Gentle Wild Cat went wild again," suggested Gulick.

"Cut a perfectly good lariat!" Jo picked it up. "Couldn't they have untied 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 soaked and riveted in shape, a plaited button on the end of the lariat proper to keep it from slipping through the hole.

"Letters cut in this," Gulick announced. "T. H.' Who's that stand for?"

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 had hit 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 detectives nothing.

"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 McAllen positively. "Too bad it wasn't one o' them you knocked the mask off of, 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 his face 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 a shave!"

Jo and Hiram walked together behind the rest and talked as the party returned to the wagons. For the first time she told him of what her skinners had had to report when they were over their sickness following the doping at Ragtown. One and all, they said, they had been invited to the little cabin of the girl who ran the shooting gallery for a drink; after having fired several strings of shots and "joshed" with her out in front. From there they had gone to the Palace, and afterward, being dazed and feeling drowsy, had wandered in a group into the Dugout, a place that they seldom frequented, and could remember nothing after that.

"Why--why--do they think Lucy doped them?" cried Hiram.

Jo shrugged. "They can't remember drinking anywhere but with her and in 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 got back. Oh, I had an awful time, with nobody to help me but a few green men I'd picked up at Julia--finding the horses and all. But Huber got his hay!" she added proudly. "When I got back to Ragtown, of course nobody remembered whether Drummond had been there that day or not. He goes and comes frequently, you know. And I didn't dare press questions. I told the boys to keep still about it all. I thought that best."

"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 be concerned 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. "We boys 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 beat Al Drummond in the freighting game. I wish I knew what the razor was for."

"Of course, they weren't going to kill me, Hiram. No need for all that monkeywork, if that had been the case."

"I only saw the man with the razor," Hiram told her, "and got busy. Of course, I didn't even know it was a razor then, but I saw steel. I thought 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 that I'd ever have needed such a man--and got him! Hiram, you've--you've never kissed me since that night."

Hiram's face turned red as fire. "I ain't worthy to kiss ye, Jo," he said, lapsing into his backwoods drawl. "Wait'll I settle this thing that's come up for you. Wait'll I find out about 'the paper.' Then maybe I'll have somethin' to offer you."

In his great embarrassment he pointed to the ground, where were tracks and scratches.

"Ben a bob cat usin' thereabouts," he drawled.

With Twitter-or-Tweet Orr Tweet the month that Hiram had been laid up had developed a new and unforeseen situation. He laid the particulars before Jerkline Jo and Hiram, both investors in his enterprise. The conference took place when Jo's freight outfit jingled into Ragtown two days later.

Tweet invited them to dinner in the Wigwam, a saloon and restaurant and gambling house combined, where the patrons sat on stools before a high counter which was in the nature of a continuation of the bar. The three took seats at the farther end, so that their conversation would be less likely to be overheard.

"Playmates," Tweet began, when their orders were before them, "I didn't think our Uncle Sam would go to work and hand us a package just when we were gettin' us a toehold. But that's just what he's done. I been watchin' for it to develop for some little time. Now the leak has sprung.

"You see, outside o' Paloma Rancho, every other section o' land in here b'longs to the Gold Belt Cut-off, and adjoinin' sections are government land. Maybe you c'n guess what's happened."

"Thrown open," Jerkline Jo said promptly.

"Yep--open to homesteaders. They're flockin' in in automobiles, in perambulators, on motor cycles, burros, horseback, and afoot--in everything 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 are castin' dark looks at one Tweet. As if I was to blame! Two fellas that hadn't paid in much have jumped their contracts with us, and are takin' up claims. If many more pull stuff like that--say, somebody'll be in bad!

"Just the same, though, my engineers tell me there's shallower water here 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't get that. Riparian rights--all straight, by golly! No worry there. I don't think settlers'll have any luck striking water without big expense anywhere around us. Just the same, it'll take time to prove that.

"The settler, you savvy, has six months after he files before he's got to get on his land. Even then he ain't required to develop water; and chances are he won't. He'll put in dry crops to cover the improvements demanded by the government, whether they succeed or not--which they won't. But all this time, because nobody'll be makin' a great effort to locate water, folks will be believin' that government land is as good 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's only a matter of time until people will find it out. Then you'll regain your old status, won't you?"

"In time. Yeah--that's it. But time's money, little girl; and once every 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 with Paloma Rancho. 'Salways th' way. One dog leaves a bone, and another dog comes along and goes to work and picks her up. Then the other dog he 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, you big heartless men!'

"So the other dogs won't miss a chance to shoot the prongs into me the moment I fail on a single payment and the interest due. They don't have to; I signed to forfeit everything any interest day that I failed to 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 unseeingly at the menu card, a marvel of weird orthography, punctuated with fly specks and splatters of egg yolk. Jo had over ten thousand dollars invested in Paloma Rancho.

"We're not doing the freighting business that we did," she confessed, aware that Playmate Tweet was studying her face expectantly and patiently straightening a nose whose tip always left true center the moment he released it. "Lots of the smaller contractors have finished here, 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 guess you'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've been homesteadin' communities before now. No good, as a rule.

"But I ain't worryin' about Ragtown. She'll perk up. We're gonta get the yards and the roundhouse--that's a cinch. I know it now. Demarest slipped it to me. I've spread the glad tidin's, o' course, but it didn't seem to help. Folks have believed it all along, and have gone ahead on that belief--so the rush because of that feature was over before I sprung it. But Ragtown'll pick up in time. The floaters will go, and substantial citizens will take their places. It's the land contracts that we need in order to meet our payments and have a future to bank on, and they're what'll slow up and hurt us till folks get sane and 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 on deferred 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 give you three months more leeway--five months, counting from now--and by that 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 the dimly lighted street, saw Al Drummond lift a hinged portion of the shooting-gallery counter and pass within. A man was in charge, and there was nobody shooting. Drummond nodded briefly to him, traversed the length of the target range, and disappeared through a door in the rear.

Three minutes after this Hiram slunk stealthily along the alley and up to Lucy's little cabin. Softly his fingers plucked at a knot in a knothole, which he had loosened that evening while Lucy was on watch in the gallery. Holding the circular bit of wood in his hand, he placed an ear to the knothole, which was hidden from those inside by a huge piece of furniture.