"Very well," John Marshall returned. "But if you don't mind I'll ride down to the ranch house first. I want to speak to Billy Preston. He telephoned I would find him at about lunch time."
Jack frowned for an instant and then nodded agreement.
She guessed that her two young men friends were to discuss the self-same news that John Marshall had just repeated to her. It seemed unnecessary, still she did not feel that she had the right to object.
The word John Marshall had brought was that an effort was to be made to break up the meeting at which she was to speak during the afternoon. The meeting was to occur in a fairly large sized village not far away in which she was supposed to have but few friends. The village was one of the manufacturing towns in the state, and her friends were among the ranchmen.
But Jack honestly did not believe any serious outbreak would occur. She was not always foolhardy, although this was occasionally one of her weaknesses of character; she simply thought this afternoon that an effort was being made to frighten her away. Afterwards it would be easy to say that a woman candidate to an important political office who could be so easily frightened should hardly be entrusted with the service of the state.
Within half an hour, John Marshall having returned, he and Jack and Jimmie and the chauffeur were motoring toward the desired destination.
"Billy Preston will be at the meeting with a few of the cowboys from the Rainbow ranch and from a few of the other ranches in this neighborhood, so if there is trouble there will be some people on our side," John Marshall insisted with boyish satisfaction when the car had taken them several miles from the lodge.
"What?"
Jack clutched her companion's sleeve for an instant, her voice and manner for the first time revealing alarm. "You don't mean you and Billy Preston have actually made arrangements for a difficulty. I did not think there could be one simply because an effort might be made to make me stop talking. I can do that readily enough and I intend to stop if any trouble begins. Now I think I had better give up after all and go back home. John, you were foolish."
"You can't go back now, it is too late," the young man argued. "The crowd will already have started to the meeting and if you don't turn up and they are disappointed it may lose you heaps of votes. And it is going to be pretty close if you do win. Everybody says it depends upon your personality and good sense and your magnetism. You have got to win people over and to make them forget the prejudice against you. You have got to show them that you have been studying this whole question of government and really know a thing or two. Funny to be calling yourself an 'Independent' and belonging to no old-time political party. I don't know whether the idea is a good one or a bad one. But don't be worried about Billy Preston and his little party. There won't be more than a dozen in all and Billy has promised they won't make as much noise as a whisper if things go well and the game is a straight one."