"Do you think it brave to say what you did about me and to make your boasts down at the toll-gate? Is that the way a man acts?"
"Somebody's been lyin' to you——" he began confusedly.
"No! You did say it and there's no use lying to me. I loathe you worse than a snake, and I wouldn't trust you as far. 'Gene Crawley, I've got a loaded shotgun in the house. So help me God, I'll kill you if you don't keep away from me."
She was in deadly earnest and he knew it. The rage of despair burned away every vestige of the brutal confidence in which he had intruded upon her little domain.
"I'm not such a bad feller, Justine——" he began, with a mixture of defiance and humbleness in his voice. It was now dark and they were alone, but she commanded the situation despite her quaking heart.
"You lie, 'Gene Crawley!" she exclaimed. "You are a drunken brute, and you don't deserve to be spoken to by any woman. You are not fit to talk to—to—to the hogs!"
He clenched his fists and an oath sprang to his lips. "I've a notion to——" he hissed, but could not complete the threat. The suppressed words were "brain you."
"I expect you to," she cried. "Why don't you do it, you coward?" He glared at her for a moment, baffled. Suddenly his eyes fell, his shoulders trembled, and his voice broke.
"I wouldn't hurt you for the whole world, Justine." He turned and walked away from her without another word.
'Gene Crawley never touched liquor after that night. "Not fit to talk to the hogs," "a drunken brute," were sentences that curdled in his heart, freezing forever the lust of liquor. He was beginning to crave the respect of a woman. Deep in his soul lay the hope that if he could only cease drinking he might win more than respect from her.