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Coincident with this disappearance Jane's gardeners and workers in the alfalfa fields and stable men quit her, not even asking for their wages. Of all her Mormon employees about the great ranch only Jerd remained. He went on with his duty, but talked no more of the change than if it had never occurred. "Jerd," said Jane, "what stock you can't take care of turn out in the sage.
What he wanted was to be free of mules and burros and steers, to roll in dust-patches, and then to run down the wide, open, windy sage-plains, and at night browse and sleep in the cool wet grass of a springhole. Jerd knew the sorrel when he said of him, "Wait till he smells the sage!"
Venters rode to the barn, and, leaping off, shouted for Jerd. The boy came running. Venters sent him for meat, bread, and dried fruits, to be packed in saddlebags. His own horse he turned loose into the nearest corral. Then he went for Wrangle. The giant sorrel had earned his name for a trait the opposite of amiability.
One of his daily duties was to give Black Star and Night and the other racers a ten-mile run. This day it had been omitted, and the boy grew confused in explanations that she had not asked for. She did inquire if he would return on the morrow, and Jerd, in mingled surprise and relief, assured her he would always work for her.
Go with Jerd every day when he runs the horses, and don't let them out of your sight. If you would please me win my gratitude, guard my black racers." When Blake had mounted and ridden out of the court Lassiter regarded Jane with the smile that was becoming rarer as the days sped by. "'Pears to me, as Blake says, you do put some store on them hosses.
"Where are the boys?" she asked, looking about. "Jerd, Paul, where are you? Here, bring out the horses." The sound of dropping bars inside the barn was the signal for the horses to jerk their heads in the windows, to snort and stamp. Then they came pounding out of the door, a file of thoroughbreds, to plunge about the barnyard, heads and tails up, manes flying.
The other day, near the south-west gates, we fell in with a whole colony of them which, however, were the lesser animal, or Jerd species who occupied an entire eminence to themselves, the sovereignty of which seemed to have been conceded to them by the Bey of Tunis.
Black Star came pounding into the court, dragging Jerd half off his feet, and he whistled at Lassiter's black. But at sight of Jane all his defiant lines seemed to soften, and with tosses of his beautiful head he whipped his bridle. "Down, Black Star, down," said Jane. He dropped his head, and, slowly lengthening, he bent one foreleg, then the other, and sank to his knees.
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