“Won’t we give Jack a grand plantin’?”
Maverick Joe looked at the handsome young Vigilante who rode at his side.
“Ay, we’ll plant him well, Harry. I wish we could please ’im by burying Tom’s throat and the big bonanza in the same grave.”
“That bonanza business must have been imagination,” answered the young man.
“Maybe so,” said Joe, half-musingly. “But I’ve been thinking since I left Jack. Did you ever hear of that rumor?”
“About the girl, cap’n?”
“Yes. People don’t talk about it much now. Jack used to talk about it. I recollect one night that he sat up till three—it was in his stable—talking about the woman that he eloped with away down among the States. Old Jack used to be a good-looking young man, and not very long ago either.”
“Oh, I never heard about the elopement,” exclaimed the young Vigilante quickly. “What has that to do with the lost girl?”
“A good deal if Jack told the truth. You see, Harry, Jack’s wife was rich—her father had lots of the lumps—but she took up with Jack. Of course they had to run away, and the old man cut the girl off and cursed her besides. They had one child—a girl. She was born somewhere in Sacramento Valley. Jack and his wife showed that they could be as contrary as the old man. One day, five years after the elopement, a letter came from Jennie’s father; but she spunked up and chucked it into the fire without opening it. What war in it nobody knows. It war the last one thet come. Jack said thet night in his stable thet he would give his right arm—and it war his business arm, too, to know what thet letter said. But the fire had cindered it. To make a long story short, Harry, Jennie died a year after thet, and Jack loaned his baby girl to an old pard, who went under the time the Feather Injuns got on their ears and killed everybody.”
“But the girl—Jack’s baby?”