"I couldn't think anything wrong of you, ma'am,' he told her gently as she finished.
"And don't call me 'ma'am,' please," she corrected with a friendly smile. "And that reminds me that I made us wander from the subject of Twitter-or-Tweet. You were telling me about him when I interrupted. What is he? He's not a common tramp--a stiff."
"He says he's a promoter and capitalist," Hiram repeated.
Hiram then told of Mr. Tweet's card, which promulgated his operations as a salesman of banana lands, and of the stock he claimed to own in the new ditch digger.
"I thought perhaps he was some sort of a book agent," said the girl, laughing.
"I don't know much about people," Hiram confessed with naïve simplicity. "I can't judge folks very well--some folks, anyway."
"I'm afraid he's a wind bag," decided Jo. "Well, we'll befriend him to the grade, anyway, and I guess that then he'll be obliged to shift for himself. If freight were moving freely, and every day, I might manage to use him--but that won't be the case at first. So we'll have to bid him good-by at the camps. I have an idea he can take care of himself."
Jerkline Jo glanced at her leather-protected wrist watch.
"It's eight minutes of twelve, Hiram," she announced. "I'll roll out my biscuit dough. Can you yell? If so, shout ahead to Blink Keddie and call a halt for noon."
Hiram rose to his six feet one and cupped his great hands about his mouth. The mellow call that he sent out had rung through miles of Mendocino forest, and now caused every skinner in the line to turn and look back. A wave of Jo's hand and they understood the noon had come.
When they were in camp, and the teams had been fed and watered from the great tank wagon, and Jerkline Jo, with the able help of Twitter-or-Tweet, had made ready the steaming meal, there arose loud praise of the girl's idea concerning the fireless cooker.
"By golly, Jo, this here's grub!" applauded Jim McAllen. "Some scheme, ol'-timer!"
"I thought it was a kind of a nutty idea when you sprung it, Jo," confessed Tom Gulick, "but I'm strong for the cooker now. Long may she wave! Pass the gravy, Blink."
Jerkline Jo glowed with pleasure over her success.
Mr. Tweet made himself very useful by acting as waiter, and hopped about with pots and pans, leading the steaming food on the skinners' plates. Jo watched him with interest, but still was unable to consider him anything but an imaginative failure--a man who perhaps had seen better days.