“Jake—an’ her father.”
And the two men became silent, while their horses ambled leisurely on toward home. It was Tresler who broke the silence at last.
“And this is the reason you’ve stayed so long on the ranch?” he asked.
“Mebbe. I don’t reckon as I could ’a’ done much,” Joe answered hopelessly. “What could a drunken choreman do anyways? Leastways the pore kid hadn’t got no mother, an’ I guess ther’ wa’n’t a blazin’ soul around as she could yarn her troubles to. When she got fixed, I guess ther’ wa’n’t no one to put her right. And when things was hatchin’, ther’ wa’n’t no one to give her warnin’ but me. ‘What is the trouble?’ you ast,” the little man went on gloomily. “Trouble? Wal, I’d smile. Ther’ ain’t nothin’ but trouble around M’skeeter Bend, sure. Trouble for her—trouble all round. Her trouble’s her father, an’ Jake. Jake’s set on marryin’ her. Jake,” in a tone of withering scorn, “who’s only fit to mate wi’ a bitch wolf. An’ her father—say, he hates her. Hates her like a neche hates a rattler. An’ fer why? Gawd only knows; I ain’t never found out. Say, that gal is his slave, sure. Ef she raises her voice, she gits it. Not, I guess, as Jake handles me, but wi’ the sneakin’ way of a devil. Say, the things he does makes me most ready to cry like a kid. An’ all the time he threatens her wi’ Jake fer a husband. An’ she don’t never complain. Not she; no sir. You don’t know the blind hulks, Tresler; but ther’, it ain’t no use in gassin’. He don’t never mean her fer Jake, an’ I guess she knows it. But she’s plumb scared, anyways.”
Tresler contemplated the speaker earnestly in the moonlight. He marveled at the quaint outward form of the chivalrous spirit within. He was trying to reconcile the antagonistic natures of which this strange little bundle of humanity was made up. For ten years Joe had put up with the bullying and physical brutality of Jake Harnach, so that, in however small a way, he might help to make easy the rough life-path of a lonely girl. And his motives were all unselfish. A latent chivalry held him which no depths of drunkenness could drown. He leant over and held out his hand.
“Joe,” he said, “I want to shake hands with you and call you my friend.”
The choreman held back for a moment in some confusion. Then, as though moved by sudden impulse, he gripped the hand so cordially offered.
“But I ain’t done yet,” he said a moment later. He had no wish to advertise his own good deeds. He was pleading for another. Some one who could not plead for herself. His tone had assumed a roughness hardly in keeping with the gentle, reflective manner in which he had talked of his “flower.” “Tresler,” he went on, “y’re good stuff, but y’ ain’t good ’nough to dust that gal’s boots, no—not by a sight. Meanin’ no offense. But she needs the help o’ some one as’ll dig at them weeds standin’. See? Which means you. I can’t tell you all I know, I can’t tell you all I’ve seed. One o’ them things—I guess on’y one—is that Jake’s goin’ to best blind hulks an’ force him into givin’ him his daughter in marriage, and Gawd help that pore gal. But I swar to Gawd ef I’m pollutin’ this airth on the day as sees Jake worritin’ Miss Dianny, I’ll perf’rate him till y’ can’t tell his dog-gone carkis from a parlor cinder-sifter.”
“Tell me how I can help, and count me in to the limit,” said Tresler, catching, in his eagerness, something of the other’s manner of expression.