Then impulsively she stepped forward and extended her hand.
"I'm glad you've come, Mr. Hooker," she said. "And I do hope you are really a jerkline skinner."
"And how 'bout me?" complained Mr. Tweet.
"I beg your pardon," said the girl, biting her lip. "What a stupid thing for me to say! But really—well, Mr. Hooker does look more like an outdoors man than you do, Mr. Tweet. I didn't mean to discriminate between you in my offer of welcome, though. Mr. Hooker, are you a jerkline skinner?"
For the first time Hiram's soft voice began to drawl. "Yes, ma'am," he told her earnestly. "I've driven jerkline since I was knee-high to a duck—eight and ten and twelve, and even sixteen, ma'am. I reckon I can make 'em pull, no matter how far out you hook 'em on."
"Where have you worked?"
"At home, ma'am—in the big timber o' Mendocino County—haulin' tanbark and ties and shakes and posts over the mountains to the lumber steamers on the coast."
"Do you love horses and mules?" she queried eagerly.
"I love everything that breathes, I reckon, ma'am," he told her softly. "I kill nothin' that lives, except rattlesnakes, unless I need the meat. Then sometimes I don't kill."
Jerkline Jo's dark eyes glowed. She turned to Mr. Tweet.