ance," said the clerk briskly. "If you'd just wanted to
get your railroad trip out o' Frisco you'd not thought to pick out the
jerkline job, when only two were wanted. Jerkline Jo is a woman,
though."

"Yeah?" returned Mr. Tweet, then said to the heartbroken Hiram: "You
can't escape 'em, it seems, Hooker--you big mountain of a lady killer!
This is gonta be good. Send us to Jerkline Jo, old hoss! She'll bless
you with her last breath. Chances are you'll meet a regular woman,
now, Hiram--not a doll with three years' wages on her back! A big
outdoor picture like you fallin' for a bunch o' female French pastry
like that!"

The employment agency clerk shrugged and took their names.

CHAPTER X

JERKLINE JO

About six months previous to Hiram Hooker's momentous debut into the
world outside of the big trees of Mendocino County, a girl stood in her
dormitory room at Kendrick Hall and read a telegram with tear-dimmed
eyes.

This girl was Miss Josepha Modock. She was twenty-two, and Providence
had been kind to her--nay, lavish. She was straight and sturdy and
strong. Her hair was of a dark chestnut hue, and its beauty and
luxuriant growth made it at once the envy and admiration of her fellow
students of the Wisconsin boarding school. Her eyes were large and
dark and luminous, her nose just far enough short of perfect, her lips
full and distracting.

Josepha Modock had been two years at Kendrick Hall. She was older than
most of the girls who were her classmates, for the desire and
opportunity to acquire an education had come to her at a late day in
her teens. She was ambitious, however, and was making fast progress
with her college preparatory course. Then came the telegram which she
now held, and over which she wept tears of grief.

Her name was not really Josepha Modock. Modock was the name of her
foster father, and he and her foster mother, the latter dead now for
ten years, had given the girl the name of Josepha, because, when they
had found her a mere baby weeping and lost on the great desert of
California, they had discovered a "J" embroidered on her underwear.

At that time Peter Modock--"Pickhandle" Modock--had been what is known
in railroad-construction circles as a gypo man, or shanty man. A gypo
man is an impecunious construction contractor whose light, haphazard
outfit of teams and tools makes it necessary for him to subcontract in
the lightest dirt work from a slightly better equipped s