This time Jack was unable wholly to restrain herself.

"Why should I have been annoyed, Frieda? I am not so impossible a person, am I? And the work I have been trying to do lately, even if you do disapprove of it, has not turned me into an ogre. But I won't worry you to-night, although I do believe, Frieda, you really intend to be unkind. Has Jim come back? I have not seen him for several days and if he is at home and not busy I thought perhaps he would walk back to the lodge with me."

Never in her life from the time she was a small girl had Frieda accepted reproof in an humble spirit, except under a few and very exceptional circ.u.mstances. The truth was that she had been spoiled all her days, first because she was the youngest of the four Rainbow ranch girls, her mother having died when she was little more than a baby, and later by her husband, who was a good deal her senior.

Now in spite of her sister's long self-restraint, Frieda showed resentment.

"It is your own fault and your own choice, Jack, that you no longer seem one of us as you did in the past. You can't have everything, you know, be a public character and a----"

"And a human being? I think you are mistaken, dear. I am very far from being a 'public character' as you express it, and I don't like the expression. Yet it seems to me that the celebrated women I have read about or known have been rather more human than most people, and not in the least anxious to be discarded by their families because they have found other things to occupy them outside of domestic life. I'll see you in the morning. Is Jim in his room, or has he gone with Jean and the little girls?"

Frieda frowned.

"Jim has not come back and that is another thing that is worrying us, although not a great deal. He wrote to say that he would return home this afternoon before dinner and we waited dinner for him an hour. But no word and no Jim. I suppose it is foolish to be uneasy, but Jim so rarely breaks his word even in the smallest matters, and he might have telephoned. It would not be pleasant to have Jim disappear as Ralph Merritt has, would it? It is funny, but now we are grown up, we seem to depend upon Jim as our guardian as much as we ever did. I don't see how we could get on without him."

Frieda ended her remarks without any special significance; nevertheless, her last few words continued to repeat themselves in Jacqueline Kent's mind during her walk back to the lodge.

The storm of the afternoon had pa.s.sed over and it was turning a good deal colder. Jack was not ordinarily impressionable and yet it seemed to her that to-night the sky possessed a peculiar hard brilliance, as if the mood of the outside world and the persons she loved were both harsh and unsympathetic.

Even Jean and Olive had not been near her in twenty-four hours, and if they should pretend they were trying to spare her, she knew that in former times they would not have wished to keep her shut out either from their happiness or sorrow.

Jim Colter would be different. Never at any moment in her life could Jack recall that he had been either harsh or unsympathetic, although stern he might be and had been when he thought it necessary. How infinitely kind he had been concerning this latest adventure of hers, regardless of his own disapproval.

About her difficulty of the afternoon he must never hear if she could keep the news from him. Yet of course if he had to know, Jack felt she would prefer to describe the situation herself, making as light of it as possible. All of her family and friends would be angry should they learn of it, even if some of them believed she deserved what she had received.

But Jim would take the matter far more to heart.

How stupid of Frieda to talk of their ever having to get on without Jim Colter's guardianship! In any case it could not mean so much to Frieda, who had her devoted if eccentric husband always at her service. Besides, Frieda and Jim had never been devoted friends. Jim had cared for Frieda, of course, as her guardian and for Jean and Olive, but the other Rainbow ranch girls had never shared his interests and tastes as she had done.

Jack drew her shawl more closely about her and started to run toward home. She was feeling uncommonly forlorn and depressed. Yet surely the day had been a sufficiently trying one to depress almost any human being!

The following morning Jacqueline was in the act of dressing when she heard Jean's voice calling her from below.

"Jack, hurry, will you, and come up to the big house. Peace is ever so much worse and the news has just reached us that Jim was hurt yesterday afternoon. No one understands exactly what has happened. Billy Preston telephoned, saying he was with Jim and would remain with him. We are not to go to him for the present. I answered the telephone myself and tried my best to find out how badly Jim was hurt. Billy says he was not run over and had not had a fall, only there had been some kind of an accident. He would not say what kind and I guessed by his voice that he was not telling all the truth."

"I'll be with you in half a moment if you'll wait for me, Jean,"

responded Jack.

A little later she joined Jean. "I wonder if you can tell me the name of the town where Jim was hurt yesterday?" she asked. "Surely Billy Preston told you as much as that! I must go to him of course."

The name of the town was what she had expected to be told. It was the village where she had attempted making a speech the afternoon before and been interrupted. Jim must have known of her plans and also learned of what might take place. How like him to have gone quietly to her protection without letting her hear of his presence! Yet in what way had he been hurt and how serious was his injury? Whatever other consequences she might hope to escape, for Jim's hurt she was entirely responsible.

Whatever Frieda might say of her selfish interest in her own future, of her desire for a career outside her own home and family, she would never be able to deny that Jim Colter had suffered because of her.

"Will you see that a car is ready for me immediately, please, Jean. I won't come back to the lodge. Jim will want me if anyone and I have the first right to go to him, because I am responsible."

Jean was scarcely listening.

"You won't be able to leave just now, Jack. After all Frieda's antagonism toward you she has been begging to have you come to her since dawn. You seem to be the only person she wants."

Jean nodded.

"There is only one hope. The doctor means to try a transfusion of blood.

I don't know from whom. We have all offered."

"Oh, Jean," Jack's voice shook, "I am the one person who will be best. I am stronger than any one else and Peace has always responded to my vitality. Yet if I am chosen I can't go to Jim."

"The choice is pretty hard, Jack. If you can not go Olive and Captain MacDonnell and I will. And some one will come back with the news as soon as possible. Yet you may not be the one."

However, as Jean Merritt looked at her cousin she had little doubt. In spite of the fatigue and chagrin of the day before, even of her anxious night, Jack walked with the swinging grace of perfect health and poise.

At this moment of dreadful double anxiety, harder upon her than any one save Frieda, she was for the time when the need was greatest, perfectly self-controlled. No one had ever seen Jack break down until the moment for action had pa.s.sed.

"It is because I have been so unkind to you, Jack darling, _this_ is my punishment," Frieda confessed brokenly, meeting her sister outside Peace's door. "But I have wanted to make up more times than you can dream, only I am so dreadfully spoiled and do so hate to give in, and I have despised your running for a public office chiefly I suppose because I realized it would separate us. Peace won't know you."

Two hours later Frieda and Jack were in Frieda's bedroom, Jack undressed and in a loose white wrapper, her hair braided in two heavy braids.

"Now you must not be a goose, Frieda, dear," she expostulated. "I am not in the least danger from the blood transfusion, as the doctor has just told you. I may be laid up for a little while afterwards, perhaps not long. And there are many chances that Peace will get better at once. You know how glad I am of the opportunity to help. What is the use of being a healthy person if one cannot be useful."

"But, Jack, you may be more exhausted than you dream. You may be forced to give up your political work for several weeks. And Henry said only yesterday that these were the most important weeks of all, if you are to be elected. At the very last people will probably have made up their minds one way or the other."

"Oh, well, perhaps the question of my election is not so important to me as you may think, Frieda. In any case it does not count the tiniest little bit in comparison with either you or Peace, now that you actually need me. When I accepted the nomination for Congress I did not know that anybody needed me especially except Jimmie. I thought perhaps I was freer than most women."

Jack was talking to distract Frieda, who had not been told of Jim Colter's injury and so did not realize the extent of the sacrifice her sister was making.

CHAPTER XVI

THE ELECTION

"When do you think we will hear, Jack?"

"Toward late evening, Jim. At least I was told that at about eight o'clock a fairly good guess could be made. But suppose we don't talk of it. Let me read to you."

Jim Colter, who was lying on a couch in a large sunny, empty room moved a little impatiently.

"If you lose the election, Jack, it will be because of the demands we have all made upon you in these last weeks. You had nothing much to go upon but your personality, your chance of pleasing people and convincing them of your sincerity, and here you have been shut up at the Rainbow ranch for weeks. It has not been in the least necessary for you to take care of me, any one of the girls could have looked after me equally well. You are not a born nurse, Jack, as the saying goes. So when you recovered and I was safe at home you should have gone on with your election campaign."

"Really, Jim, 'ingrat.i.tude, more fierce than traitors' arms, quite vanquished him,' or her, in this case. If I'm not a 'born nurse' you don't dare say that of late I have not become a cultivated one.

Moreover, if the other girls could have taken equally good care of you, please remember that they have been doing their share, they and every member of this household! Do you suppose a man can continue in perfect health for as many years as you have and then in case of illness not require a regiment of nurses to look after him? But confess, if I am not a good nurse, you can growl more successfully at me than at any one else."

"Am I growling, Jack? Perhaps I do pretty often, but at present it is because I regret so deeply that you have to devote yourself first to Frieda and Peace and afterwards to me, when you have needed all your time and energy for your political work. If you are defeated I shall always feel responsible."

"Vain of you, don't you think?" Jack answered. "Besides, Jim Colter, you are well enough now for us to talk of something that I have been thinking of for a long time. Never have you confessed to me or to any one else, so far as I know, how in the world you happened to be so seriously hurt. In the first place, what brought you to town on that especial afternoon when you were supposed to be miles away attending to some business connected with the ranch? Then arriving there, how did you manage to get into the midst of a rough-and-tumble fight? Billy Preston did tell me this much. But I presume you must have ordered him to keep quiet, else he would not have been so non-committal."

Jim Colter stared at the opposite wall rather than toward the figure of the girl sitting near him, or through either of the two large windows with wide outlooks over the Rainbow ranch. It was mid-afternoon of an early autumn day with a faint haze in the air, unusual in the prairie country.

"I don't believe I feel equal to talking, Jack, not just at present, or for any length of time," he answered a trifle uneasily. "Perhaps I'd better try to sleep."