my always put-upon and overly-maligned Jack,
Hunh?? Barb, if anyone's put-upon and overly maligned in this movie, it's not Jack! (Just consider, for example, some of the responses to those threads in the polling place -- he's everybody's best friend
and favorite dreamboat!)
Or wait: It just occurred to me you might have meant he's maligned by other characters in the movie rather than members of BetterMost. Even if that's the case, though, I still don't think I'd agree -- Aguirre hates Ennis, too, LD Newsome, Mr. Twist and Jimbo are all portrayed as jerks. And Jack is liked by everyone else we see him in contact with: Lureen, Randall, LaShawn, the bartenders, his mother, Ennis ...
And Lee, I certainly didn't mean to align myself with Old Man Twist, Aguirre and LD Newsome in heaping criticism upon Jack!! (Though I don't get your reference to Ennis -- when does Ennis ever criticize Jack except in a teasing way about the harmonica and, I guess, in a personally threatened way about Mexico?)
Let me clarify my previous post. All I meant is that, as I've stated on previous threads, I think one of the things Jack finds attractive in Ennis is that Ennis is graceful at things that Jack is a bit bumbling with. Ennis catches the watch while Jack drops the keys. Ennis hits the coyote, Jack misses. Stuff like that. Of course Jack is a very skilled sheep herder, outdoorsman and cigarette lighter. He's an OK singer and bull-rider. And he's a far better conversationalist and dancer than Ennis (the former being one reason Ennis is attracted to Jack).