Arthur Preston Hankins

“ Down on the desert there was no rain whatever, but the wind blew with such terrific force as to flatten many of the railroad camps, whirl desert cabins around, carry away chimneys, and send a sand storm raging over the level stretches which was more than cruel to man and beast. Down there men staggered around in the blackness, their shelter swept from over their heads, their eyes and teeth filled with sand—a scene of turmoil and intense discomfort if not of actual suffering. ”

“ If he thought Falcon the Flunky to be a scoundrel—and he could think little else from his viewpoint—what tortures he must be suffering, when he knew that his beloved daughter had escaped into the mountains with such a man and was now at that man’s mercy somewhere up there in the illimitable fastness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the lead moved a camp wagon, the cover made of wood, as is a gypsy’s migratory home. Six lean mules heaved in the collars to pull the chariot through the heavy sand. Driving them was a girl, with hair and eyes as black as night. Behind the camp wagon trailed other teams, hitched to other wagons and wheeled implements of the grade.
“Jeddo the Crow at last!” cried Mangan. “You’ve heard of him, Manzanita—you told me so. That’s Wing o’ the Crow driving six-up. If it were thirty-six it would make no difference to her. I must see them. Let’s ride over.” ”

“ Womanlike, also, she was riding now in unquestioning devotion to protect the man she loved, be he guilty or innocent. The makers of our laws were perhaps wise when they decided it to be unjust for a wife to be compelled to implicate her husband. For if the wife loves the husband it would require more than laws to make her condemn him. Blind justice for men—blind love for women!
On and on she rode, pulling up only when the pinto raced alongside the work in the camp of Jeddo the Crow, where Manzanita saw her black-haired girl friend driving a wheeler team. ”

“ The vehicles were drawn up in a hollow square, and teams were unharnessed and fed inside the barrier, which served as a corral. There was necessarily a great hubbub, for there was no moon and nobody seemed to know where anything was. Orders were bawled right and left, amended, countermanded, and disregarded. Men swore intermittently, especially when they came in contact with a nest of desert cacti, unseen in the dark, but quite able to make its presence known. Teams stamped and eagerly crunched their feed. Men fell over piles of harness and kicked things—sometimes to their regret. ”

“ Early evening brought no less an important individual to the ranch than Martin Canby, racing in from the mountains on his snap-nosed bay, rapidly chewing squawtooth for his kidneys and bursting with enthusiasm over the man hunt. ”

“ The other’n must be your Falcon. Yes—sure it is! Well, goodness me—what d’ye know ’bout that!”
The small procession marched on over the sand heaps and neared the borrow pit. The sagging grin of Mr. Phinehas Daisy greeted them from behind the team in the lead. Abreast of him another span of strong mules drew up and came to rest, and Falcon the Flunky was their driver. In all there were ten teams of brown mules, young, thin-limbed, well fed, and all wearing shining new harness. Behind some of them trailed ten new number-two wheelers, whose pans never had disturbed plowed earth. ”

“ I admire your father. He’s so forceful and—and convincing. [222] I doubt if any other man I ever met could tie me hand and foot so easily. He has a convincing way with that big gun of his. It’s folly to misinterpret him.”
“He’s an old dear,” said Manzanita. “And as for disappointment, he started out as a homesteader at Squawtooth, with almost nothing for backing. Disappointments! Goodness me! His life has been one disappointment after another up until the last ten years.”
“We’ll see if we can reward him for his patience and perseverance,” said The Falcon with a merry laugh. ”

“ Todd, gentleman of the saddle, had been the one to find the tumbleweed caught on a greasewood bush, with a piece of yellow paper wound about an inside branch and tied there with a strip of white cloth. Of an investigating nature, Toddlebike had swung his cow horse close to the greasewood, leaned his fat body from the saddle, and picked up the weed. A moment and he was firing his six-shooter in air and waving his Stetson frantically.
Soon an eager company was gathered around him, and Squawtooth Canby was reading the messages aloud. ”

“ Oh, I didn’t think such a thing of Pa Squawtooth! He’s refused to give Rattle-pod my half of the letter, and of course the kid has had no chance to read the milk message. Oh, Pa Squawtooth! I’ll never forgive you! And the coarseness of their work, Tom. Even though they’re trying to fake us, they ought to have sense enough to all stand out there and look on. They don’t know enough to try and make the proceeding appear natural. That alone might scare us off, even if we didn’t know the signal is a trap.”
“Not so fast,” said The Falcon. ”

“ For answer The Falcon laid hands on the rawhide [243] and, with a vigorous boost from her, started climbing, his knees working against the face of the rock to aid him.
“You’re all right,” she applauded as he mounted swiftly and dexterously. “The only fears I ever entertained about you, Tom, were that you might turn out to be a mamma’s boy. But you ride like a saddle tramp and you climb beautifully.”
“Huh!” grunted The Falcon, as he reached the noose and clambered to the summit of the rock. ”

“ I was put out at the thought of a railroad crossing Squawtooth.”
“Don’t care now, do ye, Nita?”
“Not so much, pa. I begin to realize that other people in the world must live, and that railroads are necessary to their prosperity and happiness. Everybody can’t be fortunate enough to live at dear old Squawtooth.”
“Uh-huh. What if Hunt Mangan was to ask ye to marry ’im, Manzanita?—if ye don’t resent my impertinence.” ”

“ Daisy’s triumphal return, Manzanita sat on the broad veranda of the old adobe at Squawtooth Ranch. She and Mrs. Ehrhart were alone. Supper was over, and the housekeeper had gone to her own room. Manzanita’s father had been at Little Woman Butte all day, and she did not expect him home for the night. The patient had been taken in the stage to a hospital on the other side of the range—“the inside,” as the desert dwellers called the peopled district between the mountains and the coast. ”

“ The powerful machine leaped forward, kicked dust in Opaco’s already dirty face, rumbled across the bridge, and growled its way through the defile. Then it raced out on the open desert, and the wind shrieked with laughter over another victim.
“Great jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!” yelled Demarest into the burning ear of his partner, Mr. Everett Spruce.
“What d’ye say?” bawled Spruce.
“I said—go to the devil; that’s what I said!” And Demarest spit out a mouthful of sand and tied his handkerchief over his nose. Spruce cupped both hands about his mouth and placed his head close to Demarest’s ear. ”

“ It was not Falcon the Flunky, but one of her father’s vaqueros, Splicer Kurtz.
“Yes. Hello, Splicer! What brings you out of the mountains?”
“Sumpin. Got anything cold you could gi’me to eat, Manzanita?”
“Sure; pie and milk and cold beefsteak. Or I’ll cook you something. Are you afoot? I didn’t know you could walk.”
The cow-puncher stepped on the veranda and laughed. “Oh, I’m ridin’. I left my caballo out on the desert, though, and walked in.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Young love knows not the drag of time. There is so much to be told, so much to be planned, so many assurances and reassurances of undying devotion to be made, that the sun’s course from rim to rim is all too speedily accomplished, and the light of the stars and the smile of the moon must be requisitioned to render one day long enough. ”

“ Bright, capable men have taken to tramp life in many cases because polite society has for some reason ostracized them. They may be bank defaulters, forgers, or even worse. Surely your reason will tell you that no educated, refined man need be a tramp laborer these days; and that, since he is educated and refined, ambition can’t be lacking. So, such a man must be a renegade, a fugitive from justice, an ostracized member of good society to explain his adherence to the slip-along life of the construction stiff. Now, I haven’t said a word against Falcon the Flunky, have I? ”

“ Men sprang into the saddles and loped off in the direction indicated by the watcher; but before any of them had progressed very far a big black car rushed past them, caroming from hummock to hummock with alarming recklessness, with Mangan, Squawtooth Canby, and Mart in the rolling tonneau, and Demarest seated beside his driver. ”

“ And Manzanita could be the only excuse for such a foolish play at that.
It was not until after dinner—supper as it invariably was called at Squawtooth—that Canby and Mangan found themselves alone, Manzanita having taken The Falcon away to show him that ever interesting marvel on a ranch, “the cutest little calf, born only last night.” The cattleman and the contractor were left on the broad Spanish veranda, smoking cigars. Mangan’s host cleared his throat apologetically.
“I expect I hadn’t oughta ask it, Mr. Mangan,” he began; “but, d’ye know, I never heard tell o’ Mr. Falcon until to-night! ”

“ Any man, vaquero, miner, prospector, homesteader, or the chance wayfarer from the inside of the range was welcome at Squawtooth so long as he showed the slightest evidences of being a gentleman as the term is interpreted in the outland West. Penniless prospectors and underpaid cow-punchers for years had sat at table with the master of the squat old adobe and the master’s daughter, and no member of the household ever had thought of considering them anything but equals. To break the custom of a lifetime is a difficult matter ”

“ 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. ”

“ Another noon had come and gone, and this time no signal whatever had fluttered in the tall cottonwood down at Squawtooth. Manzanita fried the last of the bacon and poured cold water into the coffee to settle it.
“It’s bacon straight,” she announced with an attempt at a laugh. “Next meal it’ll be coffee straight. We dare not even go out to pot a rabbit now, with them hunting as close as they are. If we were to shoot they’d locate us in no time at all. With them mounted and us afoot, we’d never get away.”
Falcon the Flunky nibbled at a strip of bacon that had refused to crisp, then dropped it. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ If I want to be with you, it’s nobody’s business, is it?”
“That’s the old, old, commonplace defense,” he said. “But they’re wondering and chuckling in their sleeves back there in camp. And that won’t do where you’re concerned. They can’t understand, of course. If you have a friend in camp, he should be Hunter Mangan or the walking boss, or perhaps one of the bookkeepers—not one of the stiffs, a flunky.”
“Oh, you know you’re not a flunky, so far as that goes! And so does every one, I guess.”
“Perhaps. But that doesn’t help matters. It’s a rather difficult subject for a man to talk upon. ”

“ 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 [37] “pa,” her brother Martin, a good saddle and saddle horse, and the illimitable sweep of desert and mountains ”