The Ranch Girls and Their Heart's Desire Part 12

Jim Colter shook his head.

"You are a full grown woman, Jacqueline Kent, not a child, not even a very young girl. Not that I remember having reached decisions for you even in those days."

"Which means I was always obstinate, Jim."

"Always a bit obstinate, Jack."

"But I am not obstinate to-night, Jim Colter, and I won't if you say no."

Jim shook his iron-gray head.

"I shall not say no, Jack; you must decide as you think best."

"And if I go wrong you'll help me meet the consequences, even though you would rather I chose the other way?"

"So help me, yes, Jack Kent."

"All right, Jim, unless you forbid me, I have decided. If I am elected, and in ninety-nine chances in a hundred I won't be, do you suppose I will have to spend the greater part of my time away from the old ranch?"

CHAPTER XIII

THE CAMPAIGN

A few weeks later, had Jacqueline Kent been altogether outspoken, there were many hours when she would have confessed her regret at not having obeyed her sister Frieda's command. One could hardly describe Frieda's att.i.tude otherwise.

Certainly Jack had not been able to imagine the degree of excitement and controversy aroused by the simple fact that a comparatively unknown young woman had been nominated for membership in the Congress of the United States. If it were in her power and the power of the men and women voters supporting her she intended to be elected. Nevertheless, Jack had not understood either the amount or the character of work that would be required of her personally to accomplish this result.

In the past electioneering had appeared as a fairly amusing pastime.

Living in England, she had often seen Englishwomen engaged in it. They had not at that time been electioneering for themselves, but for their husbands or brothers, fathers or friends. Their method had been to drive about from one village to another talking to the village people and asking their support, or else stopping to argue or plead with the pa.s.sers-by along the country roads. At big political meetings, which men and women attended together, speeches were made and questions put to the speakers. In the past Jack had frequently accompanied her husband to these gatherings, where she had been greatly entertained. Then she had been a spectator with no personal role to fill. Now the situation was wholly changed.

A curious fact, but in the United States, supposedly less conservative a country than England, the nomination of a woman for a high public office was creating a greater storm of protest and of indignation than had been aroused in England by the same act. True, Jack was not the first woman chosen for this same office in a western state. But the fact that the number should increase, many persons in Wyoming declared to be alarming.

Now when Jack went to political gatherings, she found herself not only a center of attention and of controversy, but more often than not was compelled to make a speech. Never regarding herself as a good speaker, and always frightened, she never learned to enjoy the opportunity.

Moreover, as Frieda had warned her and as she had not fully appreciated, there was hardly an issue of the daily papers in which some information or misinformation concerning her personal history did not appear.

At first Jack refused to allow her photograph to be reproduced, insisting that people might wish to know what she thought and why she thought it, but certainly could have no interest in her appearance. Yet this was so absurd a position, as her friends and acquaintances agreed, that Jack was obliged to surrender. Afterwards she was forced to see photographs of herself, or at least what claimed to be photographs, in papers and magazines throughout the entire country, so that if ever she had possessed any personal vanity Jack considered that it would have been hopelessly lost. Now and then she used to carry the newspapers containing her pictures to members of her family, asking them if it were really true that she looked as the pictures indicated? Sometimes the family cruelly said the likeness was perfect and at others they were as annoyed as Jack herself.

But she really did not enjoy the political meetings as she had expected, or the notoriety, or the personal enmity oftentimes directed toward her.

Since the afternoon of her meeting with Peter Stevens by the Rainbow creek he had declined to do more than bow to her in public. The reason Jack did not fully comprehend. She had not intended to be frivolous or ungrateful concerning his proposal. She had not believed for a moment that he really cared for her. Peter was a confirmed old bachelor and always freely expressed himself as disapproving of her from the afternoon of their first re-meeting after many years. At the time she had been engaged in an escapade which had annoyed Peter Stevens almost as much as her present one.

Peter had not resigned as her political opponent. The only remark he had made to Jack which was at all friendly was to say to her one day when they were pa.s.sing each other on the street in Laramie, that the greatest kindness he could pay her was to defeat her in the present election.

Yet notwithstanding all the worry and the work, Jack did not agree with him. She did not intend to be defeated. She meant to win, else why the struggle and the fatigue and, more often than she confessed, the heartache?

Frieda had never forgiven her. This Jack had not at first believed possible, yet as the days pa.s.sed Frieda did not relent. Instead she appeared more annoyed and more unyielding, continuing to insist Jack was disgracing not alone herself but her family by running for a political office as if she were a man.

In fact, had it not been for her little girl, Jack feared that Frieda would have declined speaking to her. But Peace continued to adore her and Frieda would do nothing to frighten or grieve the child. The year or more spent at the ranch for the sake of the little girl's health had not been successful. Peace seemed to grow more ethereal, more fairylike with each pa.s.sing day. She was like a spring flower, so fragile and delicate one feared the first harsh wind would destroy her. Yet if she were at all seriously ill, it was Jack she wanted, Jack who seemed able to give a part of her vitality to the child, when Frieda was oftentimes too frightened to be helpful.

Therefore during the spring and summer of Jack's political campaign, if Frieda was not entirely estranged from her sister, it was only because Peace was occasionally ill and needed her.

Moreover, Jack had to endure Jim Colter's regret. Little as Jack had known what experiences she would be forced to pa.s.s through in a political campaign, Jim apparently had known even less. Now, although he was not given to looking backward when no good could come of it, more than once he had been driven to confess to Jack that he wished to heaven he had opposed her acceptance of the political nomination with every bit of influence he possessed.

Jack could see that it was agony to Jim to hear her name and character discussed as it had to be discussed were she to win enough popularity to elect her to office.

Not that he talked to her upon the subject during the few evenings when they were at home and saw each other a short time alone.

"You need a rest from the plagued thing, Jack, and so do I. To think that I actually agreed to allow one of my little Rainbow ranch girls to enter a campaign for office in Washington, D. C!" If Jim Colter had been speaking of a much worse place his tone could not have been drearier.

However, what worried Jack even more was that Jim insisted upon accompanying her wherever and whenever she was forced to attend any kind of political meeting. For this purpose he was neglecting his own work on the two ranches, and growing older and more haggard, chiefly, Jack thought, through boredom and the effort to hold his temper.

He did not always manage to keep his temper, however; on several occasions, although Jim never reported the fact, he came to blows over remarks he overheard. When Jack asked questions he simply declined to answer, and as Jim Colter was the one person in the world of whom Jacqueline Kent was afraid, she did not dare press the matter.

Naturally Jack made enemies, as every human being does who enters political life, and she was unusually frank and outspoken with regard both to her principles and ideas. But there was one enemy she made whom both she and Jim Colter especially disliked and distrusted. He was a young man who had been employed as a private secretary by Senator Marshall and was helping to manage Peter Stevens' election to Congress.

Senator Marshall had made a friendly call upon Jacqueline Kent at the time of her nomination, protesting in a fatherly fashion against her permitting herself to be put up as a candidate.

Afterwards he declared he had the right to oppose her election in favor of Peter Stevens. This right Jack never disputed. Mrs. Marshall led the opposition against Jacqueline Kent among the conservative women in Wyoming.

In fact, among her own family and her more intimate friends and acquaintances Jack possessed only three staunch and always enthusiastic supporters, her own small son, Jimmie Kent, who accompanied her to most of the day-time political meetings, Billy Preston, the young Kentucky mountaineer who after soldiering in France had decided to try his fate as a cowboy in Wyoming, and John Marshall, Senator Marshall's son.

Billy Preston a.s.sured Jack that he was making it his business to see that every cowboy in Wyoming voted for her. John Marshall declared that he proposed showing his father who had the greater influence in the state. He protested that his father had lost all chivalry by a.s.sisting a man when a woman was his opponent. If he would not descend to the tactics employed by Alec Robertson, his father's secretary and Peter Stevens' campaign manager, nevertheless, he was backing Mrs. Kent to win against all odds.

"The boy is falling in love with Jacqueline Kent, I am afraid, my dear, as he has never showed the slightest interest in politics in his entire life until recently," Senator Marshall confided to his wife toward the latter part of the summer.

"Nonsense, Mrs. Kent is older than John, and is not an especially attractive woman!"

And although Senator Marshall did not agree with his wife, he pretended to accept her opinion.

CHAPTER XIV

IN THE THICK OF THE FIGHT

"But I do think it would be wiser of you not to be present, not this afternoon. I could take a message saying you were not well."

Jack laughed.

"Yet the fact is I am perfectly well, John Marshall, and besides I am not a coward, or at least if I am a coward there are other things of which I am more afraid."