Hiram Hooker was riding with Jerkline Jo as they approached the buttes.
She was hammering away on her typewriter, while Hiram was deep in a
mathematical problem, his tongue out and gripped by his teeth. The
clicking of the typewriter ceased suddenly, and Jo asked:

"Isn't that a tent over there near the buttes, Wild Cat?"

Hiram looked up and shielded his eyes, straining his vision over the
rolling white backs of Jo's team into the yellow vastness beyond.

"Looks like it," he said.

"We'll not have to arrange for a watchman then. Demarest has sent a
man, I guess. Get out my binoculars, please, and see what you can make
out."

Hiram took the strong glasses from their case, and, steadying himself
against a side of the freight rack, trained them on the distant speck
of white that represented a lonely tent.

At once the tent seemed to jump across the desert to a point a short
distance ahead of them. Hiram's lips parted and a snort of surprise
escaped him.

Before the front of the tent, on a pole planted there, was a big sign
composed of black letters against a white background. And this is what
Hiram Hooker read:

The Homesteader's Promised Land of Milk and Honey

OFFICE OF THE PALOMA RANCHO INVESTMENT COMPANY

Orr Tweet, President. Walk In

CHAPTER XVIII

GREATER RAGTOWN

Indeed he was an important-looking individual who greeted the freight
outfit of Jerkline Jo when it came to a weary halt at the foot of the
desert buttes. He wore a new olive-drab suit, composed of Norfolk
jacket and bellows breeches, an imposing Columbia-shape Stetson, and
shiny new russet-leather puttees. From one corner of his mouth,
aligned with his twisted nose, protruded long, expensive-looking cigar.
This was Twitter-or-Tweet Orr Tweet.

Hat removed, bowing like a Japanese, he approached the astonished
skinners and offered his hand to Jerkline Jo.

"Madam," he said, "permit me to extend to you Ragtown's most cordial
welcome. And you, gentlemen, are included, of course. When you have
the time, Miss Modock, I should like the pleasure of your presence in
the office of the Paloma Rancho Investment Company. If I may offer a
suggestion, too, it might be well to deposit Mr. Demarest's freight
close to my office, so that I can look out for it until the arrival of
the outfit. Hooker, come with your employer if you can conveniently do
so."

So saying, Mr. Tweet recrowned himself with his new Stetson, turned,
an