Jerkline Jo's almost black hair was piled on top of her head in bewildering fashion, and set off with flashing rhinestone ornaments, furnished by Lucy Dalles. Jo wore a semievening dress of pale-blue silk, and Lucy had powdered her face and neck until little contrast could be noted between skin that had braved the desert winds and that which had been protected. Jo wore fashionable slippers with great shell buckles and high French heels. She cast a dazzling smile over the silent assemblage, then threw back her glorious head and let her laughter ring.
That laugh revealed her identity.
"Jerkline Jo!" came a chorus of yells, and men stared at her, while women drew together in groups, their comments expressed in lowered voices.
As they crowded around her Lucy Dalles peered in at the door, a contemptuous sneer on her lips.
"Have a good time, old girl!" she muttered, grinding her little white teeth. "But I learned something to-day that'll set you back a step or two. Get me to doll you up, will you, you impossible roughneck? You'll pay for that!"
CHAPTER XXIII
DRUMMOND WEAVES A DREAM
Shortly after Jerkline Jo left the beauty parlor of Lucy Dalles, mischievously bent on giving Ragtown a harmless little shock, Al Drummond sidled up to the old prospector at the bar in the Palace Dance Hall.
"Hello, old-timer," he said with a cheerful smile. "How's prospecting these days?"