Hiram Hooker was riding with Jerkline Jo as they approached the buttes. She was hammering away on her typewriter, while Hiram was deep in a mathematical problem, his tongue out and gripped by his teeth. The clicking of the typewriter ceased suddenly, and Jo asked:
"Isn't that a tent over there near the buttes, Wild Cat?"
Hiram looked up and shielded his eyes, straining his vision over the rolling white backs of Jo's team into the yellow vastness beyond.
"Looks like it," he said.
"We'll not have to arrange for a watchman then. Demarest has sent a man, I guess. Get out my binoculars, please, and see what you can make out."
Hiram took the strong glasses from their case, and, steadying himself against a side of the freight rack, trained them on the distant speck of white that represented a lonely tent.
At once the tent seemed to jump across the desert to a point a short distance ahead of them. Hiram's lips parted and a snort of surprise escaped him.
Before the front of the tent, on a pole planted there, was a big sign composed of black letters against a white background. And this is what Hiram Hooker read: