Jack did not like Sarella, and so it was fortunate for that young person
that Jack's opinion was of no sort of consequence. He had been longer on
the range than anyone there except Don Joaquin, and he did much that
would, if he had been a different sort of man, have entitled him to
consider himself foreman. But he received smaller wages than anyone and
never dreamt of being foreman. He was believed never to have had any
other name but Jack, and was known never to have had but one suit of
clothes, and his face and hands were much shabbier than his clothes,
owing to a calendar of personal accidents. "That happened," he would
say, "in the year the red bull horned my eye out," or "I mind--'twas in
the Jenoorey that my leg got smashed thro' Black Peter rollin' on
me...." He had been struck in the jaw by a splinter from a tree that had
itself been struck by lightning, and the scar he called his "June
mark." A missing finger of his right hand he called his Xmas mark
because it was on Christmas Day that the gun burst which shot it off.
These, and many other scars and blemishes, would have marred the beauty
of an Antinoues, and Jack had always been ugly.
But, shabby as he was, he was marvellously clean, and Mariquita was very
fond of him. His crooked body held a straight heart, loyal and kind, and
a child's mind could not be cleaner. No human being suspected that Jack
hated his master, whom he served faithfully and with stingily rewarded
toil: and he hated him not because he was stingy to himself, but because
Jack adored Mariquita, and accused her father of indifference to her. He
was angry with him for leaving her alone to do all the work, and angry
because nothing was ever done for her, and no thought taken of her.
When Sarella and Gore came, Jack hoped that the young man would marry
Mariquita and take her away--though _he_ would be left desolate. Thus
Mariquita would be happy--and her father be punished, for Jack clearly
perceived that Don Joaquin did not care for Gore, and he did _not_
perceive that Mariquita's departure might be convenient to her father.
But Jack could not see that Gore himself did much to carry out that
marriage scheme. That the young man set a far higher value on Mariquita
than her father had ever done, Jack did promptly understand; but he
could perceive no advances and watched him with impatience.
As for Sarella, Jack was jealous of her importance: jealous that the old
man made more of his wife's niece than of his own daughter; jealous that
she had much less to do, and specially jealous that she had much smarter
clothes. Jack could not see Sarella's beauty; had he possessed a
looking-glass it might have been supposed to have dislocated his eye for
beauty, but he possessed none--and he thought Mariquita as beautiful as
the dawn on the prairie.
To do her justice, Sarella was civil to the battered old fellow, but he
didn't want her civility, and was ungrateful for it. Yet her civility
was to prove useful. Jack lived in a shed at the end of the stables,
where he ate and slept, and mended his clothes sitting up in bed, and
wearing (then only) a large pair of spectacles, though half a pair would
have been enough. He cooked his own food, though Mariquita would have
cooked it for him if he would have let her.
Sarella loved good eating, and on her coming it irritated her to see so
much excellent food "made so little of." Presently she gave specimens of
her own superior science, and Don Joaquin approved, as did the cowboys.
"Jack," she said to him one day, "do you ever eat anything but stew from
year's end to year's end?"
"I eats bread, too, and likewise corn porridge," Jack replied coldly.
"I could tell you how to make more of your meat--I should think you'd
sicken of stew everlastingly."
"There's worse than stew," he suggested.
"_I_ don't know what's worse, then," the young lady retorted, wrinkling
her very pretty nose.
"None. That's worse," said Jack, triumphantly.
"It seems to me," Sarella observed thoughtfully, "as if you're growing a
bit oldish to do for yourself, and have no one to do anything for you.
An elderly man wants a woman to keep him comfortable."
Jack snorted, but Sarella, undefeated, proceeded to put the case of his
being ill. Who would nurse him?
"Ill! I've too much to do for sech idleness. The Boss'd stare if I laid
out to get ill."
"Illness," Sarella remarked piously, "comes from Above, and may come any
day. Haven't you anyone belonging to you, Jack? No sister, no niece; you
never were married, I suppose, so I don't mention a daughter."
"I _was_ married, though," Jack explained, much delighted, "and had a
daughter, too."
"You quite surprise me!" cried Sarella, "quite!"
"She didn't marry me for my looks, my wife didn't," chuckled Jack. "Nor
yet for my money."
"Out of esteem?" suggested Sarella.
"Can't say, I'm sure. I never heerd her mention it. Anyway, it didn't
last--"
"The esteem?"
"No. The firm. She died--when Ginger was born. Since which I have
remained a bachelord."
"By Ginger you mean your daughter?"
"That's what they called her. Her aunt took her, and _she_ took the
smallpox. But she didn't die of it. She's alive now."
"Married, I daresay?"
"No. Single. She's as like me as you're not," Jack explained summarily.
Sarella laughed.
"A good girl, though, I'll be bound," she hinted amiably.
"She's never mentioned the contrary--in her letters."
"Oh, she writes! I'm glad she writes."
"Thank you, Miss Sarella. She writes most Christmasses. And she wrote
lately, tho' it's not Christmas."
"Not ill, I hope?"
"Ill! She's an industrious girl with plenty o' sense ... but her aunt's
dead, and she thinks o' taking a place in a boarding-house."
"Jack," said Sarella, after a brief but pregnant pause of consideration,
"bring her up here."
Jack regarded her with a stare of undisguised amazement.
"Why not?" Sarella persisted. "It would be better for you."
"What's that to do with it?"
"And better for Miss Mariquita. It's too much for Miss Mariquita--all
the work she has to do."
"That's true anyway."
"Of course it's true. Anyone can see that." (That Sarella saw it,
considerably surprised Jack, and provided matter for some close
consideration subsequently.)
"Look here, Jack," she went on, "I'll tell you what. You go to Mr. Xeres
and say you'd like your daughter to come and work for you...."
"And he'd tell me to go and be damned."
"But you'd not go. And he wouldn't want you to go. And _I'll_ speak to
him."
Jack stared again. He hardly realized yet how much steadily growing
confidence in her influence with "the Boss" Sarella felt. He made no
promise to speak to him: but said "he'd sleep on it."
With that sleep came a certain ray of comprehension. Miss Sarella was
not thinking entirely of him and his loneliness, nor entirely of Miss
Mariquita. He believed that she really expected the Boss would marry her
(as all the cowboys had believed for some weeks) and he perceived, with
some involuntary admiration of her shrewdness, that she had no idea of
being left, if Miss Mariquita should marry and go away, to do all the
work as she had done. Once arrived at this perception of the situation,
Jack went ahead confident of Sarella's quietly persistent help. He had
not the least dread of rough language. He had no sensitive dread of
displeasing his master. He would like to have Ginger up at the range
especially as Ginger's coming would take much of the work off Miss
Mariquita's hands. He even made Don Joaquin suspect that if Ginger were
not allowed to come he, Jack, would go, and make a home for her down in
Maxwell.
It did not suit Don Joaquin to lose Jack, and it suited him very well to
listen to Sarella.
So Ginger came, and proved, as all the cowboys agreed, a good sort,
though quite as ugly as her father.