ffective after the will had
been probated. To her delight, she found that the teams, blacksmith's
and wagoner's equipment, and the wagons would be hers intact. True,
the teams were a great expense, and there was almost nothing left with
which to buy hay and grain for them. But she was making inquiry here
and there in an effort to put them to work again. Eventually she was
successful in getting them on mountain pasture at a dollar and a half a
head per month. There were sixty-one animals in all, and the pasturage
fees amounted to quite a monthly sum, but it was far inferior to the
monthly feed bills she had been paying.

For several months she hung on desperately, hoping against hope, with
everything going out and nothing coming in, then one bright and
long-to-be-remembered day came news of the new railroad which was to
cross the desert a hundred miles from Palada.

Jerkline Jo made inquiry and found out the work was to begin at once,
and that the project was a large one, involving difficult construction
feats. By train she rode to the nearest railroad point, met the
engineers of the preliminary survey, found an old friend in the party,
and with him rode horseback on an old mining road over the range that
stood between the railroad and that part of the desert which the new
route would cross.

Close study of the engineers' maps and her general knowledge of
construction conditions told her much. She decided on the logical
place where the inevitable "rag town" would spring up. This, she
reasoned, would be as close as possible to the biggest camp of the main
contractors, Demarest, Spruce & Tillou.

There was water to be had at several widely separated places along the
new right of way, but she knew that the water supply closest to the big
camp would draw the tent city about it.

She knew, too, where the big camp would be, for the simple reason that
the heaviest piece of work is eventually left to the main contractors;
so she was able to figure to a dot just where Demarest, Spruce &
Tillou's Camp Number One would locate. She had not the remotest idea,
then, however, how this knowledge was to benefit her later.

To the tent town and to the camps of the many subcontractors who would
come, thousands of tons of freight must be hauled. The railroad point
nearest to the spot where the main contractor would camp was the town
of Julia, from which the two had ridden horseback, and the mountain
range lay between Julia