"Ye can't pass hyar!"
"So you can talk, after all," he observed coolly. "It's a help to learn that much at all events."
He had chanced on a path, he realized, which some moonshiner preferred keeping closed and the girl had been stationed there as a human declaration, "no thoroughfare."
Still he stood where he was and presently he had the result of his waiting.
A deep, masculine voice, unmistakable in the peremptoriness of its command, sounded from the massed tangle of the hillside. It expressed itself in the single word "Begone!" and Henderson was not fool enough to search the underbrush for an identifying glimpse of his challenger.
"My name is Jerry Henderson and I was seeking to be shown my way," he said quietly, keeping his eyes, as he spoke, studiously on the face of the girl.
"Begone! I'm a-warnin' ye fa'r. Begone!"
The wayfarer shrugged his shoulders. Debate seemed impracticable, but his annoyance was not lessened as he recognized in the clear eyes of the young woman a half-suppressed mockery of scorn and triumph.
Henderson stooped and hefted his pack again to his shoulders, adjusting it deliberately. If it must be retreat, he wished at least to retire with the honors of war. The girl's expression had piqued him into irascibility.
"I'd heard tell that folks hereabouts were civil to strangers," he announced bluntly. "And I don't give a damn about whatever secret you're bent on hiding from me."