The girl harkened, with close attention to the man—the lover—but with simple indifference to the gist of what he was saying. It was plain that she would have loved and followed him had he been a revenue officer himself.
“I’ll tell Uncle Jep,” she said presently. “He’ll be mighty proud. He does really set a heap of store by you, and they all know it. But I ain’t never goin’ to let you talk like that to him,” she added, the note of proud possession sounding in her voice. “Ef you’re goin’ to live in the mountains you’ll have to learn not to have much to say about moonshine whiskey and blockaded stills—you never do know who you might be hittin’.”
“You’ll take good care of me, won’t you Judith?” he said fondly, pressing the hand he held. “And I reckon I need it—I surely do manage to get into misunderstandings with people. But that wasn’t the trouble with Blatch Turrentine—he never thought any such thing as that I was a spy. He was mad at me about something else—and I don’t know yet what it was.”
Judith laughed softly, low in her throat, so far had they come from the uncertainty, strain, and distress of an hour before. When next the trail narrowed and widened again, she came up on his left, the side of the injured arm, but which brought her nearer to him, leaned close and laying her hand on his shoulder, whispered,
“I reckon I know. I reckon you’ll have to blame me with Blatch’s meanness.”
“Why, of course that was it!” exclaimed Creed. He looped the bridle on his saddle horn, reached up and drew her hand across his shoulders and around his neck. “That’s what comes of getting the girl that everybody else wants,” he said with fond pride. “But nobody else can have her now, can they? Say it Judith—say it to me, dear.”
Judith made sweet and satisfying response, and they rode in silence a moment. Then she halted Selim thoughtfully.
“This path takes off to Double Springs, Creed,” she said, mentioning the name of a little watering place built up about some wells of chalybeate and sulphur water. “We might—do ye think mebbe we’d better go there?”
Creed, who felt his strength ebbing, calculated the distance. They had seen, as they made the last turn under the bluff, the lights flaring at the Garyville station. Double Springs was more than a mile farther. “I reckon Garyville will be the best, dear,” he returned gently. Then, “I wish I had cut a little better figure in this business—on account of you,” he added wistfully. “You’re everything that a man could ask. I don’t want you to be ashamed of me.”
“Ashamed of you!” Judith’s deep tones carried such love, such scorn of those who might not appreciate the man of her choice, that he was fain to be comforted.