FALCON OF SQUAWTOOTH

Falcon, of Squawtooth

A Western Story

BY
ARTHUR PRESTON HANKINS
Author of “The She Boss”

CHELSEA HOUSE
79 Seventh Avenue New York City

Copyright, 1923
By CHELSEA HOUSE
Falcon, of Squawtooth
(Printed in the United States of America)
All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign
languages, including the Scandinavian.

CONTENTS

FALCON OF SQUAWTOOTH

CHAPTER I
THE FALCON FINDS A FRIEND

A LONG freight train, westward bound, came to a stop in a little California mountain town with a shriek of brakes and a hiss of air. At once a brakeman clambered agilely down the steel ladder of a box car in the middle of the train, and sent the side door of the car creaking along its rusty track. He thrust his head inside and peered about through the darkness of the interior.

Then he cried raucously:

“Come outa that, now! Make it snappy, Jack!”

In a dark corner of the box car a man arose and stepped slowly toward the square of sunlight that represented the door. As the light of day shone in upon him the brakeman looked him up and down, and did not seem so displeased.

The tramp was dressed in overalls, fairly decent shoes, and a cap. Though he was grimy and stained from hours of travel on a freight, he was no dirtier than the brakeman and was dressed as well. His hair was close-cropped, and no stubble of beard showed on his rather boyish face. His eyes were dark and twinkling. His figure was straight and strong. There was nothing hangdog about this tramp.

The brakeman’s tones were mollified as he asked:

“Where you goin’, Jack?”

“West.”

“Uh-huh. I know that. What’re you ridin’ on?”

“I’m broke.”

“Yeah? You don’t look it. You look like a workin’man.”

“I am.”

“What d’ye follow?”

“Railroad-construction work.”

“Huh! A stiff, eh?”

“Yes—a stiff.”

The “shack” was silent a little. Then seeming to have decided the point under contemplation:

“Well, slide out. Guess it’s time for you to eat anyway. But I’ll let you ride out the division for a dollar.”

“Sorry, but I haven’t a dollar. Thanks, though.”

“Four bits, then.”

“Simply haven’t a cent.”

“Well, then unload—and beat it!”

The tramp sat down in the door, dangled his feet, and dropped lightly to the ground.

“So long!” he said, and strode away beside the train, his hands in his trouser pockets.

“Humph!” snorted the brakeman, and gave the door a vicious shove that forced a protesting scream from the track and rollers.

The little town was six thousand five hundred feet above the sea, in the high Sierras. The breath of pines came to the vagabond’s nostrils as he trudged along. A dynamic trout stream plunged over and around huge boulders on its frenzied race to the blue Pacific, two hundred miles away. The rare air of the high altitude, to which the traveler was unaccustomed, sent the blood pounding through his veins; and despite the beginning of hunger pangs his spirits were elated and his step elastic as he walked on toward the village.

Before he reached even its outskirts he saw five men—tramps like himself, no doubt—in camp beside the rushing stream. The odor of cooking came to his sensitive nostrils. He had only to climb down a twenty-foot fill, crawl through the right-of-way fence, and try his luck. He had fed dozens of fellow wanderers, while his money lasted, since he had left the State of Kansas. He had been penniless, now, only since the day before. He realized that he might not be welcome in this hobo camp, for he had long since learned that the so-called tramp fraternity is a figment of the imagination. But the mountain air had made him desperately hungry—his money had fed many of the class down there in camp—it was time for at least a part of his bread cast upon the waters to drift into an eddy and start floating back.

He scrambled down, forked himself between the strands of barbed wire, and boldly approached the source of those savory odors.

That this was a permanent hobo camp was evident from the many blackened cans that lay about, the cold ashes of ancient camp fires, and the carvings on the trees that shaded the rendezvous.

One man stooped over the fire and stirred a large can of boiling Mexican beans. Another was cutting into slices a loaf of bread with his pocketknife, hacking to the center on one side, then turning the loaf to complete the cuts, by reason of the shortness of the blade. Three others lounged on the ground, smoked and whittled, and eyed the newcomer with disapproval.

“How are you, fellows?” the “buttinsky” said, smiling and seating himself on a moss-covered stone.

No one replied, but the man who was cutting the bread looked up and grinned.

He was about the newcomer’s age, and had a clean, lean face with distinct freckles on it and on his neck. His hair was sandy and kinky, and a comb and brush would have made no change whatever in its wiry appearance. His eyes were blue and friendly.

The stranger at once sensed that this man was of a different type from his four companions. Though a tramp, there were about him no marks of the confirmed John Yegg. The others were old-timers of the oldest known school.

“Going to have a little feed, eh?” innocently remarked the new arrival. “I smelled those beans cooking a hundred yards away.”

The old-timers looked from one to another in blank amazement. “Can you beat it?” was the question their looks expressed. Then with a great sigh as of resignation to the demands of a stern duty, one of them rose and fumbled in a pocket of his grease-salvaged vest.

He extracted a dirty match, looked it over with owl-like wisdom, and, stepping around the fire, silently passed it to the newcomer.

At least four pairs of cold eyes watched this pantomime. The man who had been offered the match took it mechanically, and looked up into the donor’s face.

“Seems to me I get you,” he said, a trifle embarrassed. “I’ve heard of a tramp’s being given the match in a camp where he’s not wanted. It’s a subtle suggestion, I believe, for him to go elsewhere and build a camp fire of his own, isn’t it?”

“Ol’-timer,” the donor of the match said sneeringly, “youse’re right. Dat means ‘Beat it!’—and dis means ‘Beat it quick!’—see?”

He lifted a clenched fist for the other’s inspection.

“Oh, I get you,” the unwelcome visitor replied, rising from the stone. “I’ll beat it, of course. But don’t labor under the delusion that what you’ve just held up has anything to do with it.”

He turned, thrust his hands into his pockets again, and started back toward the right of way.

“Wait a minnit, Jack!”

The ejected one turned. It was the bread slicer who had spoken.

“C’mon back here an’ dig in on the bread an’ beans, ol’-timer,” he invited. “You’re as welcome as the flowers in May. I happen to know, for the simple reason that I’m the Jasper that bungled up for the pinks and the punk myself. I’m entertainin’ to-day.”

The man who had passed the match turned on him with a snarl.

“Wot’s de idear, ‘Halfaman’? Do youse want every farmer on de line to come buttin’ in on yer scoffin’s? Youse gi’me a pain, Jack!”

“Aw, go get in yer kennel and gnaw yer bone, ‘Blister’!” retorted the bread-and-beans magnate. “You ole fuzzy tails get my goat. You wouldn’t give a man a crumb o’ tobacco; but I notice you’re always the first one to butt in yerself when anybody else has scoffin’s. I buys them pinks and I buys this punk; and all that any o’ you stiffs furnished for this little picnic was the salt ‘Monk o’ the Rum’ swiped from the grocer while I was gettin’ the beans. I’ll do the sayin’ who’s to scoff in this camp. C’mon back here, ol’-timer, and dig in!”

“Sinful Blister,” which was the weird moniker of the dissenter, slouched back to his seat on the ground, muttering discontentedly. The other John Yeggs shrugged indifferently, in full sympathy with the Blister, but diplomatically acceding to the wishes of him who had bought the beans.

The now invited guest returned, and the cook poured out the beans into smaller tin cans and silently passed one to him. The one designated as Halfaman thrust two slices of bread into the other’s hands, and into other cans poured black coffee.

For a space the six ate in silence, the stranger from time to time glancing at his benefactor as if he wished to thank him, but could not find the words.

“Where you headin’ for, Jack?” Halfaman presently asked, his freckled cheeks shuttling over jaw-bones that oversaw the mastication of huge portions of food.

“West,” was the short reply.

“What d’ye follow when ye’re followin’?”

“I’m hunting construction work.”

“Dirt or rock?”

“Either.”

“That’s me; I’m a stiff. Was you beatin’ it down to the desert? There’s a big job openin’ up down there.”

“Yes, I heard about that. The Gold Belt Cut-off, eh?”

“That’s her, I’m makin’ it down there. I know lots o’ contractors that’ll have jobs on the road.”

The other ate in silence for a space, as if thinking deeply. “I don’t know but I’ll try to get down there, too,” he said presently. “I wasn’t exactly headed for any particular place.”

“She oughta be a good job. There’s good men’ll be down there. First thing I c’n ketch goin’ west takes me.”

“Do—do you mind if I go along with you?” hesitatingly asked the other.

“I should say not! I don’t like ramblin’ alone. Never did. I get to talkin’ to meself. Sure—we’ll make it out together. What’s yer moniker, Jack?”

Again the stranger hesitated. Then a little red crept into his face as he replied: “They call me ‘The Falcon.’”

One of the John Yeggs snorted softly and winked at a companion. It was quite plain to him that the speaker knew little about hobos’ monikers and such things.

“Been followin’ construction work long?” asked Halfaman.

“Virtually all my life,” returned the other.

At this another of the listeners sighed wearily, and whispered to one near him:

“Get dat, will youse? Been follyin’ de big camps all his life! C’n youse beat it? I’m bettin’ he never seen a railroad camp—hey? No foolin’!”

His friend nodded with a grimace that showed agreement.

When he had finished eating, the new friend of The Falcon rose, and, lying flat, took a long drink from the cold mountain stream.

“Well,” he announced, “I’m beatin’ ’er up to the tracks. C’mon, if you’re goin’ with me, Jack. There’s a westbound freight due before so very long, if the switchman didn’t lie—and he didn’t look like he had brains enough to lie.”

“Much obliged for de scoffin’s, Halfaman,” volunteered one of the tramps as The Falcon followed the freckled youth through the fence.

“Keep the change!” called Halfaman. “But next time I’m settin’ up the eats, le’ me do the invitin’.”

There was no answer; and the two struggled up the hill, and walked along the track toward a water tank to hide and wait the coming of the next westbound freight.

They reached the tank and sat down on the ground behind it, resting their backs against the pedestals. Halfaman removed a greasy cap with a broken visor, and laid it in his lap, allowing the cool mountain breeze to play with the kinks of his sandy hair. He had a way of talking out of one corner of his good-natured and rather wide mouth which amused the reticent Falcon.

“You ain’t been on the road long, have you, kid?” he said kindly.

“Why do you say that?”

“You might just as well be wearin’ a card on yer breast, like a blind man does, tellin’ the world about it,” said Halfaman. “Le’ me tell you sumpin. You don’t wanta go buttin’ into hobo camps like you did back there. Them old Jaspers hate themselves. They got no use fer the likes o’ you.”

“But you’re not like them.”

“I should say I ain’t! I’m a construction stiff. They’re just stiff. I’m a tramp, but I work. They don’t unless they have to—see? I was buyin’ some pinks and punk to cook up for myself—see?—and they butts in on me and gets me for a feed. I never turn a stiff down if I got anything, so I told ’em to come on an’ bust ’emselves. I know two of ’em—‘Sinful Blister’ and ‘Monk o’ the Rum.’ The other two’s pals o’ theirs. I’ll feed anybody—gaycat, yegg, bindle-stiff, skinner, mucker, or dyno. But I want ’em to feed me when I’m broke, too. I got no use for the likes o’ them back there. I’m a decent tramp—get me?”

“Yes,” replied The Falcon. “I try to be that myself. That’s why I approached the camp. I thought maybe I’d be treated like I’ve treated dozens of others since I started West.”

“And wasn’t you?”

“Yes—by you. And I’ll not forget it. Stay by me—if you like me—and you’ll never regret what you did for me to-day.”

The other studied him openly. “I don’t quite get your number,” he stated. “Your hands ain’t the hands of a workin’ stiff, and you talk kinda like you knew how. You say you been followin’ construction camps all yer life?”

“That’s what I said.”

“But you was lyin’.”

“Well, the way you say that, I can’t resent it, of course. Anyway, I call myself a railroad stiff. Accept it as truth, or don’t—it makes little difference to me. I may be raw—I guess I am—but you stick with me and I’ll pay you for that dinner.”

“Don’t do it till I ask for it,” retorted the other, cupping a hand back of one of his prominent ears and listening up the track.

He arose and went to the two lines of steel, sprawling flat and holding an ear to a rail.

“I hear her singin’ to me,” he announced, returning. “She’ll be here in a minnit. Now that moniker of yours.” He stood before the tank looking at the many carvings thereon. “I don’t see it here, f’r instance. Get up an’ I’ll show you mine. Cut ’er there three years ago, when I was ramblin’ east, ridin’ through the snowsheds, stretched out on the backs of a car o’ sheep to keep warm. Some bed if it don’t lay down under you!”

The Falcon had risen and stood looking up to where the other pointed. In neat carving, on one of the wooden pedestals, he saw:

HALFAWAY DAISY
1917, BOUND EAST
PHINEHAS BEGAT ABISHUA

“That’s an odd name,” remarked The Falcon. “And the quotation?”

“Well, by golly, it ain’t any odder’n my real one, ol’-timer! Daisy’s me right name; and as if that wasn’t funny enough the old folks slipped me a Bible name—Phinehas. Phinehas Daisy—c’n you beat it? I’m one o’ the begatters.”

“What’s that?” asked The Falcon, the lips of his grave mouth twitching in amusement.

“Ain’t you never read the Bible?”

“Not as much as I ought, perhaps.”

“Well, the begatters, as I call ’em are in the Bible. I learned that part by heart till it got down to me. It goes like this: ‘And the children of Amram; Aaron, and Moses, and Miriam. The sons also of Aaron; Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar. Eleazar begat Phinehas. Phinehas begat Abishua.’ Didn’t you ever read that?”

“Yes, I suppose so. Rather dry in there, I thought.”

“Well, I’m Phinehas. I’m one o’ the begatters—see? But the bos they call me Halfaman. That’s pretty raw, too. See how they got it on me? I gotta be square all the time, or folks will think I’m only half a man because they call me that. I used to have a pal, and his right name was Holman Rose. Wasn’t that funny?—Rose and Daisy! Sometimes they called us ‘The Bouquet.’ And then, seein’ his name was Holman, they called me Halfaman. Maybe they’re right, but I never refused a guy a feed when I had it. Here she comes, Falcon. Now you do just what I tell you to, and we’ll make ’er out easy, and ride ’er clean to the desert—if we’re lucky. Believe me, ole Falcon, I’m a ramblin’ yegg when I get started!”

CHAPTER II
“SQUAWTOOTH” CANBY

THE village of Opaco, on the fringe of the big California desert, never in all its day had seen such frenzied activity. Ninety miles to the east over the wastes of sand, yuccas, greasewood, and cacti, the engineers of a railroad company had made the preliminary survey of the proposed Gold Belt Cut-off, and every indication pointed to the fact that Opaco would be the natural source of supply for the big camps that would come to build the road.

Even now one of the construction companies was temporarily in their midst, while they unloaded their outfit of tents and tools and horses and wagons innumerable from the sidetracked freight train that had brought it to Opaco. The local livery stable and its accompanying corrals were taxed to the limit to minister to the stock. More than fifty strange men, who spoke in the argot of tramps, labored at unloading the train and piling which they removed in big mountain wagons against the ninety-mile trip to Squawtooth Ranch, the outfit’s camping place. The two hotels were filled to overflowing with the nomadic laborers. Opaco stood about open-mouthed and watched. It was as good as a circus come to town. And the outfit—the Mangan-Hatton Construction Company, from Texas—was the first of many to arrive. Others came from Utah, Colorado, and Washington—and it was rumored that eventually the biggest of them all would come from Minneapolis—the main contract company, Demarest, Spruce & Tillou, a concern that handled millions.

Furthermore, every train that came into Opaco brought tramps and tramps and tramps. Some of them were shipped in; others just came. For the first time Opaco learned that tramps really hunt for work; because all that arrived went shambling to the temporary office which Mr. Hunter Mangan had set up, and came away examining meal tickets and speculating with one another on the job-to-be, somewhere out there in the land of the horned toad and the venomous sidewinder, and the little desert owl called tecolote.

A long-bearded man on a magnificent black horse rode into Opaco, with jingling silver spurs, flapping chaps, and brush-scarred tapaderos. The rider “packed a six,” and rode in an elaborate silver-mounted saddle. The West was written all over him.

“There’s Squawtooth Canby,” Opaco whispered to itself. “He ain’t been in town for three months or more. Say, I guess he should worry, eh? Railroad buildin’ right through Squawtooth Ranch! Where he had to drive his cows from ninety to a hundred an’ fifty miles to ship ’em, and run all the fat off ’em, he’ll shoot ’em in the cars right on his own ranch when the railroad’s built. It’ll make a millionaire out o’ Squawtooth Canby!”

The old man with the flowing gray beard rode direct to the City Hotel, and dismounted as gracefully as a youth of twenty-one. He lowered the plaited, tasseled reins from the black’s neck, and, with the beautiful animal biting at him playfully, stalked into the hotel, spur rowels whirring.

Half of the hotel office had been given over to the needs of Mr. Hunter Mangan, senior partner of the construction company of Mangan & Hatton, and toward this part Squawtooth Canby strode. A dark, good-looking, businesslike young man arose from a desk and held out a cordial hand to the cowman.

“Well, well, Mr. Canby, it’s good to see you again,” was “Hunt” Mangan’s greeting. “This is an unexpected pleasure. We got in only two nights ago, and I have been so busy since that I neglected dropping you a line to notify you that we are on our way. Sit down; sit down! How’s everything out at Squawtooth?”

Their hands gripped—strong hands, both of them—the hands of men who rule and are not afraid of work.

“I heard ye was in, Mr. Mangan,” said Squawtooth. “I hadta ride in on a matter o’ business to within fifteen mile of Opaco; so I just says to myself I’ll fog it on down and shake hands with Mangan while I’m about it. This town looks like a gold rush was on.”

“Oh, we’re a tiny concern compared with some you’ll see before the job’s completed,” Mangan replied. “But how is the ranch?—and—and Miss Canby?”

“Oh, ranch is there yet,” and Squawtooth grinned through his patriarchal beard. “And Manzanita’s flip as ever. Gettin’ purtier every day, by golly! Don’t know where she’ll stop. She was talkin’ about ye only t’other day, and wishin’ ye’d hurry up an’ move out on the desert.”

“Good! And I assure you we’re anxious enough to get there, too. But this represents only about three fourths of our outfit. The rest is coming in to-morrow from a little clean-up job in Utah. So we’re waiting for them, and will all move out together. Let me see—it’s two months since I was at Squawtooth, isn’t it?” Mangan laughed. “I’ll never forget the first day when I drove up with the engineers in the buckboard, and Miss Canby told me what she thought of railroads and railroad builders. At first, you know, she didn’t realize that I was one of the contractors who were coming to desecrate her beloved desert. Did she tell you about it?”

“Oh, yes. She told the world about it. Manzanita’s funny that way. She was born at Squawtooth—in a saddle, she says—and she don’t like any other place on earth. She don’t like railroads ner autos ner flyin’ machines, ner any o’ the modern tricks. And she don’t like neighbors, either. Just wants to ride and ride forever over the desert, and the furder she c’n look without seein’ anything but what the Almighty put there the better she likes it. And as for your railroad runnin’ right through Squawtooth—say, she was wild as a loco Indian. But she’s calmed down now. She took a likin’ to ye, Mr. Mangan, and I guess that’s what made her change her mind.”

“I’m certainly glad to hear you say that last, Mr. Canby.” Hunt Mangan’s face was a little red. “I—I formed a high opinion of your daughter during the few days in which you folks at Squawtooth showed us such royal hospitality. I hated to have her so sore at me for being a party to the desecration of her adored solitudes. I consider her a remarkable young woman.”

“She’s worse than that!” Squawtooth replied, with a slight frown of abstraction.

Outside, across the street, a freight train stopped before the depot. Cautiously the door of a box car slid open, and two hobos looked out, and up and down the track, then dropped to the ground and hurried away.

Squawtooth Canby, who had observed through the fly-specked hotel window, chuckled.

“See them tramps get outa that box car?” he asked Mangan. “Purty slick, some o’ them fellas.”

“Stay here a day and you’ll see hundreds of them,” laughingly replied Hunt Mangan. “They’re drifting in by dozens and twenties. The train crews are not hard on them, for they know they’re beating it in here to work. Tramps—stiffs, as we call ’em—form the backbone of railroad construction, you know.”

“I didn’t know tramps worked at all,” said Canby.

“You’ll know more about them before the steel is laid across Squawtooth,” observed Mangan. “There are tramps and tramps.”

“Here comes them two into the hotel,” remarked the cowman.

“They’re coming to see me about jobs, no doubt. Well, they’ve struck the right place. If they’re old-timers I can use them. But I hate to break new men in. And there’s little need to just now—there are plenty of stiffs all up and down the line.”

He swiveled toward the two, who had entered and now approached the desk.

“Well, fellows,” he said lightly, “what’s the good word from up the line?”

“Hello, Mr. Mangan,” returned one of the tramps, speaking out of the corner of his mouth and grinning good-humoredly.

Mangan rose to his feet “Well, if it isn’t Halfaman Daisy!” he ejaculated, and strode around Canby to grip the hobo’s hand. “Tickled to death to see you, old-timer! Where did you blow from?”

“Aw, I was over in Nebrasky with a little gypo outfit,” Halfaman said bashfully. “I heard some o’ the gaycats talkin’ about the Gold Belt Cut-off, out here in Cal, and when they slipped it that you folks had a piece of ’er I hit the blinds straight out. How’s chances, Mr. Mangan?”

“Best in the world, old-timer—best in the world,” Hunt Mangan assured him. “I’d fire a man to put you behind one of our teams. Let’s see—you drove Jack and Ned on snap down on that little Arkansas job last time you were with us, eh?”

“That’s right, Mr. Mangan.”

“Well, by George, you can have a snap team on this job, if you want it! I’ve got three big white Percherons just breaking into snap work. Under five years old, all three of ’em. Want to take a shot?”

“Sure do, bossman. She listens good to me. When you say a horse is a horse he’s a horse. But say, Mr. Mangan, I—I got a pal that wants a job, too.”

“This man here?”

“Yes, bossman. And take it from me, he’s one good scout.”

“Good skinner, did you say?” queried Hunter Mangan.

“Well—I said ‘good scout;’ but I’ll bet he’s a good skinner, too. If he ain’t, I’ll make him one.”

“I’ll say he’d have a good instructor, Halfaman. But you know me. I’m a crank about good men. I pay well and I feed the best, and I treat a man white from the word go. Therefore I expect—and always get—the best stiffs on the line. So if your side kick is there, he’s on.”

Both Mangan and Canby had been keenly watching the man who accompanied Halfaman Daisy. While he was strong and well-built and bronzed, and had a fearless but kindly eye, he looked anything but a railroad stiff.

“Well, Mr. Mangan,” Halfaman was saying, “he’s an educated plug, this Ike; and I’ll bet he could do lots o’ things better’n chasin’ Jack an’ Ned.”

“That may be true, but it happens that we don’t need anything but skinners. Let him speak for himself, Halfaman. Step out here, old-timer. Can you knock Jack and Ned in the collar to suit the worst crank in the business?”

The prospective teamster smiled. “I can’t truthfully say that I’m an expert skinner,” he admitted. Halfaman, greatly disturbed, was nudging him with an elbow. “I’ve had quite a little to do with horses and mules, but I can’t say that I can handle them as I’ve seen some men do it.”

“Uh-huh. Well, that’s a frank confession, anyway. Most men don’t admit their shortcomings so readily when applying for a job. Well, I’m sorry—but we’ve got a fine lot of railroad stock—all young—and I hate to risk ruining them by breaking in new men on them. It doesn’t take long for a green skinner to put the fixings to a young team—you know that, Halfaman. Sorry, old-timer, but——”

“Now, looky here, Mr. Mangan,” put in Halfaman. “You ’n’ me’s good friends. This Jasper is me pal; and if he can’t get on with me, stuff’s off. Now you c’n give um somethin’ to do, I know. Come on, Mr. Mangan.”

“You old beggar!” Mangan laughed; then he wrinkled his brow. “Wait a minute,” he said. “I’ve just thought of something.”

He went to the old-fashioned telephone back of the hotel counter and whirled the crank in a signal ring. Presently he spoke to somebody, then returned and said:

“I’ve got a job for your pal, Halfaman. The cooks can use another flunky. If he wants to tackle that, at thirty-five and, he’s got a job.”

Halfaman looked inquiringly at his friend.

“I’ll try anything once,” said the other.

“You’ve both got jobs, then,” Hunter Mangan concluded, turning briskly to his desk. “Let’s see—what’s that impossible name of yours, Halfaman?”

“Rub it in!” grinned the new snap driver. “Make me spill it before everybody! You know it’s Phinehas.”

Hunter Mangan, in high good nature, chuckled and wrote the name.

“And yours?” He turned to the other.

“I call myself The Falcon,” came the quiet reply.

“Moniker, eh? But I can’t make out checks to ‘The Falcon,’ can I? What does your mother call you?”

There was a little space of silence. “I don’t use my right name, Mr. Mangan,” said the tramp. “Even Halfaman here doesn’t know it yet. He calls me Falcon.”

Mangan shrugged. “All right,” he said. “I know stiffs. None of my business. I’ll put it ‘Falcon the Flunky’—that do?”

“Good enough.”

Hunter Mangan wrote a little, then handed a card to each man. “Those’ll let you in the dining room here at the hotel,” he informed them. “I guess you can do the rest. And now you’d better get out and help with the loading up.”

Halfaman looked at his card, then at his employer, then up at the solemn-faced clock on the dirty wall. To the clock he spoke.

“It’s three o’clock,” he said. “And this rube dining room will be closed. But I saw a little short-order joint right around the corner, and—ahem!”

Hunter Mangan reached into his pocket and passed him a dollar.

“Get out o’ here!” he ordered.

Grinning, Halfaman pocketed the dollar and hastened out ahead of Falcon the Flunky.

The cattleman had been a silent listener, his blue eyes growing wider and wider as the conversation progressed. Now he looked in puzzlement at the contractor.

“So that’s the way ye treat ’em, eh?” he said in a tone of wonderment. “That’s kinda funny. You’re a college man, Mr. Mangan—I thought ye’d be kinda stuck up with common tramps.”

Mangan laughed heartily. “I see you know nothing about construction camps, Mr. Canby,” he said. “We’re one of the biggest democracies on earth, I guess. Can’t run ’em any other way. The stiff is as independent as a hog on ice. Get uppish with him, and you’ll see your mules standing idle in your corrals. Wait till we get established out there. You’ll change your mind about the men you are pleased to call tramps.”

“What’s a ‘flunky?’” asked Squawtooth.

“Cook’s helper—pot-walloper—roustabout waiter—dishwasher.”

“Oh, I see. Falcon the Flunky! Funny! Kind of a smart-lookin’ Jasper.”

“He’s seen better days,” remarked Mangan briefly.

“D’ye shell out many dollars like that right along?” was Canby’s next question.

“Hundreds of them—between jobs, like this.”

“Humph! Charge it up to ’em?”

“I should say not!”

“Jest put ’er down on the wrong side o’ the profit-an’-loss account, eh?”

“No—on the other side. You’ve got to be a good fellow in the railroad-construction game, Mr. Canby. It pays in the end.”

“I’ll punch cows,” observed Canby dryly.

The cattleman took his leave of the senior partner of the Mangan-Hatton Construction Company within the hour. He was to spend the night at a small ranch eight miles from Opaco, and ride to Squawtooth next day. He mounted the black, swung him around with a slight cant in the saddle, and galloped out of town, seeing little, thinking deeply.

The brooding mood held him until he had crossed the river and passed through a rocky defile in a chain of buttes. Then the yellow desert opened its arms to him, and he and the black horse became a moving atom in the vast waste.

He had ridden the fifteen miles of which he had told Mangan for the sole purpose of seeing that gentleman for a few minutes once more. He had met Mangan during the earlier part of the preliminary survey of the proposed railroad. A month previous to that meeting two of the main contractors had called at Squawtooth—Messrs. Demarest and Tillou, of the big firm of Demarest, Spruce & Tillou, of Minneapolis. It was Mr. Demarest who had told Squawtooth that Mangan very likely would decide to subcontract the piece of work nearest to Squawtooth, and that they would be neighbors. Demarest had spoken of the subcontractors as young, energetic men of means, and Squawtooth had become doubly interested.

Then Hunter Mangan himself had come, and at once old Squawtooth took a liking to him—not forgetting that descriptive phrase of Demarest, “young, energetic men of means.”

For be it known that Webster Canby, more commonly known as Squawtooth, the cattle king of the desert country, was an incorrigible snob. Aside from this he was pretty decent.

Squawtooth Canby’s wife had been dead ten years. The mistress of Squawtooth Ranch, then, was his daughter, Miss Manzanita Canby—a thorn in his flesh, the sting of which he both loved and deplored.

Manzanita Canby was nineteen; and if Squawtooth Canby was an incorrigible snob, she was an incorrigible roughneck. Three years of her young life had been spent away from Squawtooth while she was at school in Los Angeles. These three years had made no appreciable dent in her. She seemed to care for nothing in life beyond her “pa,” her brother Martin, a good saddle and saddle horse, and the illimitable sweep of desert and mountains; and on this rock all of her father’s hopes and ambitions for her had grounded.

She attended country dances and permitted fatuously grinning cow-punchers to swing her lithe figure in their arms. Of this her father highly disapproved. She spoke Mexican Spanish like a native, but beyond this her interest in the languages died. She cared nothing for well-to-do and good-looking young men whom her father coerced out from the cities under the pretext of a bear hunt in the mountains or a deer hunt through the foothill chaparral. To marry her to a man of means—now that this future was assured along these same lines—was the consuming ambition of Squawtooth Canby, an ambition that bade fair to be forever fruitless.

So the old cowman had jumped at the chance of having a young, energetic man of means—one Hunter Mangan—camped on Squawtooth Ranch with his big construction company. Surely this offered the chance of a lifetime to make his daughter see the error of her ways. And at the very beginning Manzanita had voiced her disapproval of a railroad being built over her beloved desert, and particularly through her beloved Squawtooth Ranch, and accordingly was averse to the man who had a hand in the desecration.

Old Squawtooth left no stone unturned to interest Manzanita in Hunter Mangan, and he was quite certain that to interest the young contractor in his wild and willful daughter was the least difficult part of his task.

Squawtooth was considered wealthy. Up at Piñon, in the chain of mountains that fringed the desert on the south, was his summer range—many thousand acres in the National Forest. In the winter the cows fed over a ninety-mile desert range, from Little Woman Butte to Squawtooth and beyond. Thus grass was practically assured for all seasons of the year, and for all time to come, unless the railroad should bring a flock of homesteaders down upon him. But if it did this it would automatically increase the value of his own holdings. It also would give him wonderful shipping facilities, both at Squawtooth and Little Woman Butte.

Yes, Squawtooth Canby was to become a big man, and Manzanita Canby must be thrown into the company of big men, so that she might pick the biggest of them and marry him. And Hunter Mangan seemed to be the man.

Everything was planned carefully, but still, as he rode along, the brow of Squawtooth Canby was corrugated. He could not shake off the presentiment that all of his strategic plans might fail because of the willingness of a slip of a girl called Manzanita.

CHAPTER III
THE DESERT

“LET’S go!” cried Hunter Mangan, seated in the saddle, and cupping his lean, strong hands about his mouth.

At the cry a four-mule team moved off with a load of tents and took to the road that wound through Opaco, across the bridge, and through the rocky defile to the desert. A six-up team of horses followed with a load of lumber. Teams pulling strings of six-wheeled scrapers fell in line. Two-mule teams, four-mule teams, six and eight-mule teams swung into the impressive procession and followed. And soon a parade a mile and a half long was trailing in a cloud of dust through open-mouthed Opaco.

Midway in the procession Halfaman Daisy draped himself over a high spring seat and looked indolently down on the slick backs of six young mules. A cigarette hung from his lip at the corner of his sagging good-natured mouth. Halfaman’s load consisted of ranges and commissary stores, and just behind him, on a huge bundle of canvas lay Falcon the Flunky, flat on his back, gazing serenely up into the dusty desert sky.

“‘And the children of Amram; Aaron and Moses and Miriam,’” quoted Halfaman drowsily. “‘The sons also of Aaron; Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar. Eleazar begat Phinehas’—that’s me—‘Phinehas begat Abishua.’ Abishua—that’s him! And I’m huntin’ him down—I’m on my way. I’m on the trail o’ the ‘Wing o’ the Crow’——

“Oh, I been a-down on-a the gumbo line,

A-skinnin’ mules when the weather’s fine,

A-shootin’ craps when the sun don’t shine,

An’ now I’m a-ramblin’ to that baby mine!

With the pay day—for me ba-bay!

With the pay day of that gumbo line!”

As a vocalist there was room for improvement in Mr. Halfaman Daisy, but he sang the old skinner’s song with a swing and gusto that entertained his lolling passenger.

“A-hikin’ through a camp on the ole S. P.,

A gypo queen she a-throwed a kiss at me!

The pay was a dollar, and the board cost three,

But I stuck till she beat it with the cook, Hop Lee—

And me pay day—oh, ba-bay!

And me pay day on the ole S. P.!

“How d’ye like that song, ol’-timer?” he drawlingly asked his friend.

“It’s interpretive, to say the least,” Falcon the Flunky vouchsafed.

“They’s a hundred and fifteen verses that I remember,” observed Halfaway, “but I’ll only spring ’em on you two or three at a time. Know what a gypo queen is?”

“Yes, I’ve heard of gypo queens, or shanty queens. A gypo man, or shanty man, as I understand it, is one who owns a very small, dilapidated construction outfit, and takes subcontracts in light work from a bigger subcontractor. His daughter—if he has a daughter—is usually in camp with him, and she flirts with the stiffs to keep ’em on the job, despite the poor grub and poor pay and long hours. Am I right?”

“Right as a fox,” Halfaman replied. “Say, you have been about the camps a little, ain’t you? Now, then—did you get an earful o’ my recent begattin’ remarks—pertickelerly the last, where I says: ‘Eleazar begat Phinehas. Phinehas begat Abishua?’”

“Yes, I heard.”

“And now another question, ol’-timer: You’re such an old head at the railroadin’ game, did you ever know anybody named Abishua?”

“I think not.”

“Uh-huh—I guess you’re right. It ain’t known generally that the bird I’m thinkin’ about is named Abishua. Only the members of his family and a few close friends—sounds like a newspaper tellin’ about a weddin’ or a funeral—only them know he’s got a Bible name like that. But his right front name is Abishua. And don’t forget that Phinehas begat Abishua. Phinehas—that’s me. And if I begat Abishua I’m a bigger Jasper than Abishua, ain’t I? Well, what I say goes. How ’bout it?”

“I am hoping,” remarked The Falcon dryly, “that if you keep on you you may tell me something.”

“Gi’me time, Jack—gi’me time,” retorted Halfaman. “Stick yer neck in th’ collar, there, ole tassel-tail! Gi’me time. So you’ve heard tell of gypo men and gypo queens, but you never heard of an Ike called Abishua. Well, then, did you ever hear of a gypo queen called Wing o’ the Crow?”

The Falcon turned on his side and looked down at Halfaman. “Wing o’ the Crow,” he said thoughtfully. “That’s picturesque. What about her?”

“Her is right. And Abishua begat Wing o’ the Crow. Believe me, ole Falcon, that was some begattin’!”

“Yes—go on.”

“Well, his name’s Jeddo—Abishua Jeddo. He’s a tall, bony shanty man with only one arm. And his eyes and his hair are black as a crow. So the stiffs monikered ’im ‘Jeddo the Crow.’ And what Jeddo the Crow begat is called Joy. She’s twenty-one years old, as dark as her dad; and say—you c’n look at her just as easy!

“Her ma’s dead. The girl was born in her dad’s gypo outfit, and she’s a gypo queen. But not like the rest of ’em. Oh, no! She don’t slip none of ’em a kiss on the side to keep ’em followin’ Jack and Ned for Jeddo the Crow. No, no! Get fresh with her, and she’ll bend a pick handle over your frontispiece. She works in the cook shack, waits table, washes the dishes, and then goes out and hitches up a team and moves dirt till mealtime again. Or she c’n stick pigs”—load scrapers without wheels, commonly called “slips”—“swing a drillin’ hammer, skin four-up or six-up or jerkline—do anything on a railroad grade, by golly! And purty! Say, am I gettin’ talkative?

“Well, anyway, she’s her dad’s right-hand man. Bein’ one-armed, he couldn’t run the outfit without Wing o’ the Crow. And now d’ye savvy where she gets that moniker! Ole Jeddo the Crow is shy a wing, but he’s got the girl. So she’s Wing o’ the Crow to the stiffs. And purty—— But now I know I’m gettin’ talkative!”

“You’re very entertaining,” admitted Falcon the Flunky. “But I’m curious to know what brought Jeddo the Crow and Wing o’ the Crow to your mind just now.”

“Huh! That’s easy! ‘Phinehas begat Abishua,’ and Abishua gotta do what Phinehas says. An’ ole Phinehas he says: ‘Jeddo the Crow he’s so reckless with giant powder and things he’s likely to lose his other wing. And he’d better prepare for it by gettin’ another wing in the family beforehand.’ That’s what Jeddo the Crow’s begatter says.”

“Oh-ho! I think I begin to understand. It may be that out over the desert there Wing o’ the Crow is in camp, waiting for her Phinehas.”

“Well, if she ain’t there now she’s gonta be soon. Say, mule, poke yer neck furder into that, will you? Gonta be soon, ole Falcon. And Phinehas crossed four States like a ramblin’ kid to be there, too.

“Oh, when I’m a-ramblin’ down to rest,

Just ramble me out into the Golden West,

On a ramblin’ train, on a ramblin’ quest.

To die like a rambler on the tramp queen’s breast!

On pay day—oh, ba-bay!

On a pay day lay me down to rest!”

“Is it all settled between you and the young lady of the picturesque moniker, Halfaman?”

“Settled! I’ve chased them crows from coast to coast! Worked for half wages and et two suppers in one night! Beans? I hate the sight o’ beans—unless Wing o’ the Crow boils ’em! Settled! I’ve lost weight and ambition and everything to get things settled. But on this job, boy, I’m gonta make one big effort to nail the Wing o’ the Crow to a convenient tree. I won’t be with Mangan long after Jeddo the Crow gets perched out there, ’cause I gotta get that gypo queen this time or lose me reason. I’m what you might call distraught right now.

“Oh, a-Jeddo the Crow he’s a gypo man,

Gotta sling-bloke harness and a movin’ van,

Gotta three ole mules and a wheeler pan,

But I’ll stick around forever if I can-can-can!

Without a pay day—oh, ba-bay!

Without a pay day from that gypo man!

“I didn’t just make that up. Whoever did I don’t savvy. But I guess he was nuts about Wing o’ the Crow like I am. And, say, when a plug tells the truth right out like I do, he sure is nuts, ain’t he? Oh, well, at the worst I’m a ramblin’ kid. Now, I’ll say this is some desert—what, ol’-timer?”

The Falcon looked and gloried in the sight.

Away to the east appeared a hazy line of irregular calico buttes. To the south and west the pine-studded ridges of the mountains rose. Between them, level as a dance floor and covered sparsely with yucca palms, bronze greasewood, sage, and innumerable dry lakes, lay the colorful desert baking in the sun. Now and then a lone coyote stood staring, then slunk away mysteriously through the low growth. Tecolote, the wise-eyed little desert owl, perched himself on the dirt heap beside his hole in the ground and scolded at them, brave as a lion. Lean jack rabbits hopped away indifferently through the avenues of the greasewood. Halfaman pointed ahead with the long whip that he never seemed to need for another purpose.

“I think we’re makin’ for the saddle in that range o’ buttes,” he said. “That’s where the ole road comes through and hits the desert—our old road, boy. I think Squawtooth Ranch is about in there. That’s where we’re gonta camp, I hear. Boy, boy! Pass me that ole water bag. Make haste or I die! ‘And Phinehas begat Abishua!’”

Higher and higher mounted the yellow dust cloud. On and on into the mocking desert forged the wagon train, a long, winding snake whose joints were men and teams and vehicles—a mere worm wriggling slowly over a yellow carpet in the banquet hall of the gods.

Evening on the desert, with the mountains casting their long shadows athwart the rapidly cooling land. Three black specks, far apart, but drawing together slowly at a converging point between them and the squat adobe house at Squawtooth, with its sheltering cottonwoods and its oasis of green alfalfa set like an emerald in a sheet of yellow brass.

The three black specks grow larger and larger—two galloping horses, the one a pinto, the other a bay, and a mouse-colored pack burro—the California chuck wagon. A girl rides the pinto, a boy the bay, the burro trotting ahead of the latter. The boy and girl wave their hands at each other and gallop on. The ponies neigh greetings; the burro adds his mournful “Aw-ee-aw!” Two of the specks now become one. Side by side in the cow pony trot, Manzanita and Martin Canby ride home together from a day on the desert, the burro, with Martin’s camp outfit, trotting ahead.

Manzanita was colored almost as brown as the stumpy trunk of the beautiful shrub after which her mother had named her. Her hair was chestnut. She usually wore it in two girlish braids that reached to the bottom of her saddle skirts. Her eyes were hazel. With the possible exception of the waxen plume of the Spanish bayonet, there was nothing prettier nor more graceful on the desert; and the hill-billies and desert rats of the male persuasion would not have admitted the exception. One thing certain, the plume of the Spanish bayonet was far more dignified than its animate beauty rival. She rode with the ease of an amazon in her silver-mounted man’s saddle—a prize won at a rodeo for horsewomanship—and carried a holstered Colt .38 on a .45 frame for company. She wore a man’s hat with a rattlesnake band, an olive drab shirt, fringed leather chaps, and riding boots.

Martin Canby was just a freckle-faced, chapped, spurred, sombreroed kid of the desert—live as an eel, all grins, good nature, and backwardness. He was three years younger than Manzanita.

“Well, kid, did you find those strays?” asked the girl.

“Yes—a dozen of ’em. That old breechy bunch with them calves. They’d wandered down the mountainside and was makin’ it for Caldron Cañon. Ask me why? I dunno. No grass down there like’s up on top. Cows don’t know nothin’.”

“Your speech is artistic, mi hermano. Say ‘Cows don’t know anything.’”

“‘Cows don’t know anything,’” repeated Mart dutifully. “Has pa got back from Opaco?”

“Quién sabe! Hadn’t when I left home. I don’t expect him before to-night.”

“What’d he go for, anyway? Said he wanted to see ‘Flip’ Globe. What’d he wanta see Flip for?”

“I haven’t the remotest idea, Martie.”

“I have,” Mart declared. “Not what he wanted to see Flip about, but what took ’im to Opaco. I met ‘Splicer’ Kurtz this afternoon. He was comin’ down from the mountains for somethin’—I forget what. Said he heard yer friend Mangan had got into Opaco with his outfit. If that’s so, pa went to see Mangan. What’ll ye bet?”

“Nothing. I’m positive he rode in for the sole purpose of seeing Mr. Mangan and that the Flip Globe story was—well, just a story.”

“Pa Squawtooth sure took to that Mangan, didn’t he, Nita?”

“Si, señor. Yo penso.”

“And I know why! I know why!” Mart sang boyishly, wrinkling his snubbed and peeling nose at his sister.

“Oh, you do! Well, let me tell you something, old kid—he’s on a wild-goose chase. This Hunter Mangan seems to be a pretty square sort of a fellow. But that ends it so far as I’m concerned. Between you and me, podhead, I don’t dislike Mr. Mangan nearly so much as I pretended I do to Pa Squawtooth. That is, personally, you understand. But I do detest what he represents—the railroad through Squawtooth. I don’t want it there; and if I had my way it would never be there. Pa Squawtooth, old money snob that he is, thinks it the finest thing on earth, of course. It’s a wonder he didn’t try to have it through the front yard, with a depot before the door! It’ll ruin my desert—that’s what it’ll do! Soon folks will be moving in and taking up land, and—oh, dear!—it makes me sick to think of it!”

“Aw, what d’you care? We’ll have lots fun when the camps get here.”

“You will, maybe, but I won’t. And furthermore, Mr. Wiseman Pod, you don’t know whether even you will have fun, as you so youthfully express it. What do you know about camps like that? You know nothing of the world that you haven’t seen between a cow’s horns, muchacho. Maybe you’ll have fun, and maybe you won’t.”

Mart grasped his saddle horn and leaned toward the ground, hooking the counter of one of his high-heeled cowboy boots about the cantle. Mart had been still entirely too long. With ease he grasped a bunch of the plant called squawtooth, which gave the district its name, and five spears of which, shaped like the ribs of a fan, was the Squawtooth brand. Mart held on for dear life while his pony polled. The slender, fluted, rushlike spears were tough and held tenaciously; and next instant Mart was unhorsed and standing on his head in the sand.

His sister shouted with derisive laughter. “You’re a goose!” she cried. “Watch me!”

Leaning low in the saddle, she set her mare at a gallop toward a bunch of squawtooth that upreared itself from a bed of fine desert sand. As the pinto neared it Manzanita swung toward the earth, hooked a heel about her cantle, and grasped the plant as the mare sped by.

This was an old game of the two. The squawtooth was tenacious; sometimes they were able to snap it off, sometimes otherwise. If not, and they refused to loose their hold——

Well, in this instance, too, there was a flutter of leather chaps, a girl spinning head down in air, and a smothered plup in the sand bed.

A hundred yards apart brother and sister sat on the ground and watched their horses and the burro, the latter with his shaggy head down and playfully kicking to right and left, racing off toward home without them.

“Le’s walk!” shouted Mart. “Darn that burro! There goes my fryin’ pan!”

The girl brushed the sand from her hair and ears and eyebrows.

“All right!” she sputtered. “And there goes your bacon, too! And that last looked like a loaf of bread. As I was saying,” she continued serenely when he came up to her, “you know nothing whatever about railroad-construction camps. Neither do I, and I’m content in my ignorance. I know just what pa means to do. He’ll invite Mr. Mangan and any of the rest of the bosses that he thinks are big bugs to the house; and he’ll do everything in his power to make me interested in one of them—Mangan, of course, since he’s supposed to be the wealthiest of all of them. Oh, he makes me sick! Say—wait a minute; my boot’s full of sand.”

She sat down, removed her elaborately stitched tampico-top riding boot, shook the sand from it, and dusted her stocking. Mart waited, chewing absently on a spear of squawtooth. Mart had been told by the Indians that to chew squawtooth was good for kidney trouble. Mart did not know that he had kidney trouble, and he did not like the bitter taste of squawtooth. But considering that an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure, he chewed it all day long when riding the desert and mountains after cows.

“There! That feels better.”

Manzanita had slipped her boot on again and removed her silver spurs. Side by side they plodded on through the clinging sand.

“Darn them caballos!” muttered Mart.

“You should say, ‘Darn those caballos,’ brother mine.”

“‘Darn those caballos,’” seriously repeated Mart, chewing his squawtooth and stooping to recover his frying pan.