“I didn’t see her when I was there.”
“Well, I’ll find out from somebody purty soon, I s’pose. So the begatter’s drivin’ snap for Mangan-Hatton, eh? Thinks he’s some skinner, that plug! All right, pa!”
Ahead of them was the man motioning for the van to circle around him and Mangan and come to a stop.
“Home, again!” and Wing o’ the Crow sighed. “Some home, I’ll say! Nice shady spot under that flower there! Does this country ever get so hot it smokes?”
CHAPTER VIII
A TRADE AND NEW RESOLUTIONS
IN the “borrow pit” to the left of the long dirt fill that was slowly creeping across the desert one Phinehas Daisy was at work with his snap team. The expert skinners in dirt work drive either the snap team or the plow team. Halfaman’s three white Percherons were beauties, willing workers, and it was a pleasure and an honor to handle them. To see their great muscles at work when he had hooked the trio to the pole of a loaded wheeler, to help out the two mules already pulling to the limit of their strength, was a pleasing sight.
The long line of wheelers and slips moved through the borrow pit, were loaded, and traveled on to the evergrowing fill and the dump—an endless chain. Mr. Daisy rested while a wheeler team was working up to the snap with the earth, previously loosened by the plow, billowing into the pan. During these brief intervals he was thoughtful. Then nonchalantly he would swing the heavy eveners by their chain, hook on to the wheeler pole, and drawl: “Le’s go!”
Then the five animals, with the three proud Percherons abreast in the lead, would heave into their collars and make life hugely enjoyable for Mr. Daisy. “High!” would come the yell of the wheeler holders. The five would stop in their tracks, and Halfaman would quickly disconnect the snap. Then, swinging sharply to one side, the mule skinner with his loaded wheeler would laze away toward the fill. Behind him another wheeler would be moving up to the wheeler holders, and again for a brief interval Halfaman would rest, an elbow on the expansive rump of one of his whites, and grow pensive.
From Squawtooth Ranch came a big tank wagon, drawn by six mules that labored ploddingly in the desert sand. Demijohn drove the tank-wagon team. The work was not difficult, but monotonous, consisting as it did of trip after trip between the pipe that spouted artesian water at Squawtooth and the Mangan-Hatton camp. Demijohn was an active man and loved to be moving about. Furthermore, he was considered an excellent snap driver, and he cast a look of envy at Mr. Daisy and his magnificent three white Percherons. Demijohn was a horse lover; he merely tolerated mules. Again, six mules required more “cuffing” and harnessing and collar scraping than did three horses—a child might figure that! Also the snap team got through work fifteen minutes earlier than the other teams, and at times the water wagon was out so late that the driver was obliged to eat alone, after everybody else had finished. And above all, Demijohn was human; and what human does not wish that he had the other fellow’s job and that the other fellow had his?
Just what was running through Mr. Daisy’s thoughts which caused him to wish that he were driving the tank wagon, and that Demijohn had the snap, would require more space to depict than in the case of the tank-wagon skinner. But if the statement he made that the Mangan-Hatton water wagon was now supplying the comparatively slight wants of the tiny camp of Jeddo the Crow, Jeddo having lost his own tank wagon by reason of careless chocking on the gondola which was to have brought it west, and not being financially able to buy a new one.