“I’ll see what I can do,” promised Manzanita, suppressing her laughter as she hurried toward the corrals.
For years a stage line had run between Opaco and Piñon, seven thousand feet up in the mountains. Piñon was the summer headquarters of the Squawtooth outfit, and also a post-office point for gold mining camps and a lumber mill farther back in the wilderness. The stage carried mail, supplies, and passengers; and often it brought out gold ingots to be shipped to the mint in San Francisco. Frequent washouts in the mountain roads and difficult grades made an automobile impracticable, and the company still adhered to the picturesque four-horse mode of travel for the outland lap of the trip. Now that the construction men had come the stage had changed its route, making a wide detour over the desert to include Ragtown, Stlingbloke, and all the camps between the latter and Squawtooth Ranch. Squawtooth had been a way station since time immemorial. Where it ran only once a week before the camps came, it now made trips every other day.
Two passengers boarded the stage to-day at noon as it pulled up, with a merry jingling of the bells on the leaders’ hames, in the Mangan-Hatton camp. One of them was Halfaman Daisy, the other Falcon the Flunky. The two had arranged with a couple of floaters passing through the line of camps to hold down their respective jobs for a few days, while they took a little vacation.
The stage took on the mail and two more passengers and rolled away toward Squawtooth.
It was not yet one o’clock when it reached the ranch, where Manzanita Canby came out with the mail and an order for groceries from Opaco. As she neared the stage one of the passengers leaned out and bestowed upon her a prodigious wink.
“Why, Halfaman! Are you off so soon?”
He winked again. “Off so soon,” he told her. “Any luck this mornin’, ma’am?”
“I made some progress, I think,” replied Little Apple with a smile. Then her hazel eyes widened a trifle as they sighted the passenger at Mr. Daisy’s side.
“Why, are you going, too?” she asked Falcon the Flunky.