“Well, you’d better care,” urged Judith. “You better make her stay home and behave herself. She’s gone over to Nancy Card’s taggin’ after Creed Bonbright. I wouldn’t stand it ef I was you.”
“I ain’t standin’—I’m settin’,” retorted Wade with rather feeble wit; but the girl noted with satisfaction the quick, fierce spark of anger that leaped to life in his clear hazel eyes, the instant stiffening of his relaxed figure. Like a child playing with fire, she was ready to set alight any materials that came within reach of her reckless fingers, so only that she fancied her own ends might be served. Now she went uneasily back to the hearthstone. Her uncle, noting that she appeared engrossed in her baking, gave a surreptitious glance into the small ancient mirror standing on the high mantel, made a half-furtive exchange of coats, and prepared to depart.
Up at the crib Blatch Turrentine was loading corn, and Jim Cal came creeping across from his own cabin whence Iley had ejected him. He stood for a while, humped, hands in pockets, watching the other’s strong body spring lithely to its task. Finally he began in his plaintive, ineffectual voice.
“Blatch, I take notice that you seem to be settin’ up to Jude. Do ye think hit’s wise?”
The other grunted over a particularly heavy sack, swung it to the waggon bed, straightened himself suddenly, and faced his questioner with a look of dark anger.
“I’d like to see the feller that can git her away from me!” he growled.
“I wasn’t a-meanin’ that,” said Jim Cal, patiently but uneasily shifting from the right foot to the left. “I’ll admit—an’ I reckon everybody on the place will say the same—that she’s always give you mo’ reason than another to believe she’d have ye. Not but what that’s Jude’s way, an’ she’s hilt out sech hopes to a-many. What pesters me is how you two would make out, once you was wed. Jude’s mighty pretty, but then again she’s got a tongue.”
“Her farm hain’t,” chuckled Blatch, pulling a sack into place; “and I ’low Jude wouldn’t have after her and me had been wed a short while.”
“I don’t know, Blatch,” maintained the fleshy one, timid yet persisting. “You’re a great somebody for havin’ yo’ own way, an’ Jude’s mighty high sperrity—why, you two would shorely fuss.”
“Not more than once, we wouldn’t,” returned Blatch with a meaning laugh. “The way to do with a woman like Jude is to give her a civil beatin’ to start out with and show her who’s boss—wouldn’t be no trouble after that. Jude Barrier has got a good farm. She’s the best worker of any gal that I know, and I aim for to have her—an’ this farm.”