“No!—no!—no!” she cried to the man before her, “don’t you look at me—don’t you speak to me.”
“Why, Judith,” he protested, hanging on Selim’s flank and talking to her as she whirled the sorrel into the road and put him at the slope at a pace which that petted animal very much resented, “why Judith, ef one feller goes back on you thataway you be mad at him—he’s the one to be mad at. Here’s me, I stand willin’ to make it up. Creed Bonbright has shamed you—he’s left you; but you could make him look like a fool if you would only say the word—and you and me would——”
“Now you go back!” Judith turned upon him as one speaks to a dog who is determined to follow. “I ain’t nary ’nother word to say to you. Leave me alone!”
“But Judith, hit ain’t safe for you to be ridin’ up here in the night time, thisaway,” Blatch insisted. “Lemme jest go along with you——”
“I’ll be a mighty heap safer alone than I’d be with you,” Judith told him, urging Selim ahead, “and anybody that knows you well will say so. You—go—back.”
Chapter XIX
Cast Out
Judith reached the Top in the grey, disillusioning light of early dawn. The moon, a ghastly wraith, was far down in the west, the east had not yet taken any hint of rose flush, but held that pallid line of greyish white that precedes sunrise.