The She Boss Part 20

The head skinner, Blink Keddie, had no more than entered the pa.s.s with his eight bay mules when a man stepped into the road and held up a hand for him to stop. He was a Western-looking individual, a seamed-faced son of the deserts, and an immense Colt revolver dragged at his hips.

He had come from a tiny tent set back from the road a way, half hidden by junipers and close to a trickling spring.

Keddie clamped his brake and stopped his eight, eying the stranger curiously. Keddie, like Heine Schultz and Tom Gulick, had been on the railroad grade with Pickhandle Modock when Jo was a little girl. He was devoted to her and her interests, and anything that threatened her prosperity he was wont to look upon as his personal affair.

"Mornin'," he drawled as the following teams came to a stop, and skinners cupped hands behind their ears to listen.

"Quite a jag you got there," observed the man in the road.

Blink was entirely sober. "Jag" referred to the enormity of the load of freight.

"Little matter o' sixty thousand, altogether. I wasn't aimin' to let 'em blow right here, though, I pardner. Was there any particular reason ye had for stoppin' me?"

"Well, maybe there was, stranger. How many teams ye got pullin'."

Blink counted rapidly. "Four tens and two eights," he made reply.

"Uh-huh--but I mean how many span, pardner?"

Once more Blink struggled with arithmetic. "That'd make twenty-eight pair, wouldn't it?"

"Just about--just about, pardner. And two times twenty-eight is fifty-six, ain't it?"

Blink Keddie promptly agreed.

"Agreed, eh? Then I'll ask ye kindly for fifty-six dollars, stranger."

Keddie thoughtfully began rolling a cigarette. "If I had fifty-six dollars, ol'-timer," he said, "I wouldn't converse with the likes o'

you."

The gunman grinned. "Does take some time to save that amount skinnin'

jerkline or bein' toll master on a mountain road," he admitted. "Are you the boss?"

"If I was the boss," slowly returned Blink, "I wouldn't live in the same county with you."

By this time Jerkline Jo, who had been hurrying forward along the wagon train to find out what had occurred, arrived on the scene of their airy persiflage.

"What's wrong here, Blink?" she wanted to know.

"This fella has been insultin' me," claimed Blink. "He insinuated I belonged to the idle-rich cla.s.s. I guess he's inst.i.tutin' some sort of a drive or other. You talk to 'im, Jo."

"Well?" The girl wheeled and faced the man, hands on hips.

The Westerner swept off his hat. "Ye see, ma'am," he said to her, "this here's a toll road now--from here clean acrost the mountains to the desert on t'other side. I'm toll master. I'm to collect two dollars a loaded team for the trip through the pa.s.s. The price includes the return trip, empty."

Jerkline Jo paled. Up behind her crowded Tom Gulick, Hiram Hooker, Heine Schultz, and Jim McAllen, and, if looks could have killed, the man with the gun would have been ripe for the undertaker's care.

"Two dollars! You mean----"

"A dollar a head, then, ma'am. You got fifty-six animals. That 'u'd be fifty-six dollars, wouldn't it?" He smiled persuasively.

Jo gasped, and turned and glanced helplessly over her little army of loyal men.

"By whose authority are you demanding this?" She spun back to the toll master, her dark eyes now aflame.

"Mr. Al Drummond he's the boss, ma'am. He's from Friscotown. He's gotta keep up the road, so o' course he's gonta charge other folks to travel on it. It's jest like as if it was his private prop'ty, as I savvy the deal, ma'am. I got papers to show ye, if ye wanta see 'em.

Course I got nothin' to do with it--nothin' atall. Mr. Drummond he jest hired me to collect the fees and keep folks off that refused to pay. I might add, though, ma'am, that I've always been considered a pretty good keeper-off when I'm hired for that purpose. I'm from the Kitchen Rancho, over toward the Tehachapi. They call me Tehachapi Hank. At yer service, ma'am."

Jerkline Jo's red lips were straight. She was indignant. A sense of defeat almost overwhelmed her. Such a situation had not even remotely occurred to her. In a wave of despair the realization swept over her that she had attempted something of which she knew nothing. There had been no one to advise her, and in the unbounded confidence of youth she had not sought counsel. On the railroad grade few men could have put anything over on her. But this was another matter.

Fifty-six dollars for the eighteen-mile trip through the pa.s.s! It would be ruinous. She would be obliged to advance her rate to meet this additional expense, and then the truckman holding the franchise would be able to haul freight cheaper than she could.

Back of her the men were muttering useless threats among themselves.

Jo found her voice at last. There was no need to ask to see a copy of the franchise, because there was not the slightest doubt in her mind that everything was aboveboard in that respect. She simply had been outgeneraled. There was nothing to do but to pay--for the present, at least--as the freight on her wagons must be delivered at any cost, now that she had contracted to deliver it. What she said was:

"Will you accept my check?"

"Certainly, ma'am--most certain," was the ready reply.

"I'll go back to my wagon and write one for you then," she said, trying to keep her voice steady. "Let the wagons go on, please. When mine reaches you I'll hand out the check."

Tehachapi Hank touched his broad-brimmed hat again. "All right and proper, ma'am," he a.s.sured her.

He was waiting by the roadside when her stanch whites marched past him, and she reached the check out through the slats of the rack. He touched his hat brim again and smiled then with true Western politeness, pocketed the slip of paper without so much as glancing at it.

Dully she watched the broad straining backs of her beloved animals as they planted their great fetlocked feet and heaved their burden ever upward. Ahead of them she could hear her skinners shouting back and forth from wagon to wagon above the jingling of the bells, their tones high-pitched and angry. Why had she not consulted with Demarest and asked him to lay before her details of every angle that might present itself in such an undertaking as hers?

Demarest knew all the twists and turns of modern business ruthlessness.

He might have been able to foresee a situation like this and to put weapons into her hands with which she might have combated it.

She shrugged her st.u.r.dy shoulders finally, and as noon was close at hand gave attention to her cooking. For the present she would drive the matter from her thoughts. There was work to be accomplished, which was a part of the present delivery of freight. When this task was completed she would see what could be done.

CHAPTER XVII

IN LETTERS OF BLACK

There was a general outburst of indignation on the part of Jerkline Jo's devoted retainers when the outfit went into camp at noon, quarterway through the mountain pa.s.s.

"We'll fix 'im, Jo!" Heine Schultz exclaimed angrily. "All we gotta do is make out to get ahead o' his old cough wagons and not let 'em pa.s.s.

We can hold 'im back clear through the pa.s.s, if we string out. Le's figger it out fer the rest o' the trip, Jo. There's not over six places where one vehicle can pa.s.s another. Now what we gotta do is string out our outfit so's none o' us'll hit one o' those places when the machines are comin'. Say, we can hold 'em up till----"

"Heine," said Jerkline Jo quietly, "is that your idea of business."

"Course it is. Stick it to the Al Drummond, Jo! He's started somethin' that he'll have a hard time finis.h.i.+n', that's all. Say, we can slip it to him till he'll be sick o' that dirty deal he handed you.

Leave it to Blink and me. We got it all schemed out."