airing of the mountain road.

"Fellow called Drummond has a big order to haul in trucks," the manager
of the supply company had told her. "It's for a store that's going to
open up at Ragtown, I understand. Guess he'll get it out tomorrow or
next day."

All went well with the wagon train during the first lap of the desert
trip. Hiram rode with his employer, and their migratory institution of
learning was in full swing. Then when they reached the beginning of
the mountain pass they found a shock in store for them.

The head skinner, Blink Keddie, had no more than entered the pass with
his eight bay mules when a man stepped into the road and held up a hand
for him to stop. He was a Western-looking individual, a seamed-faced
son of the deserts, and an immense Colt revolver dragged at his hips.
He had come from a tiny tent set back from the road a way, half hidden
by junipers and close to a trickling spring.

Keddie clamped his brake and stopped his eight, eying the stranger
curiously. Keddie, like Heine Schultz and Tom Gulick, had been on the
railroad grade with Pickhandle Modock when Jo was a little girl. He
was devoted to her and her interests, and anything that threatened her
prosperity he was wont to look upon as his personal affair.

"Mornin'," he drawled as the following teams came to a stop, and
skinners cupped hands behind their ears to listen.

"Quite a jag you got there," observed the man in the road.

Blink was entirely sober. "Jag" referred to the enormity of the load
of freight.

"Little matter o' sixty thousand, altogether. I wasn't aimin' to let
'em blow right here, though, I pardner. Was there any particular
reason ye had for stoppin' me?"

"Well, maybe there was, stranger. How many teams ye got pullin'."

Blink counted rapidly. "Four tens and two eights," he made reply.

"Uh-huh--but I mean how many span, pardner?"

Once more Blink struggled with arithmetic. "That'd make twenty-eight
pair, wouldn't it?"

"Just about--just about, pardner. And two times twenty-eight is
fifty-six, ain't it?"

Blink Keddie promptly agreed.

"Agreed, eh? Then I'll ask ye kindly for fifty-six dollars, stranger."

Keddie thoughtfully began rolling a cigarette. "If I had fifty-six
dollars, ol'-timer," he said, "I wouldn't converse with the likes o'
you."

The gunman grinned. "Does take some time to save that amount skinnin'
jerkline or bein' toll master on a mountain road," he admitted. "Are