Falcon, of Squawtooth

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.