Judy's antagonisms were implacable, and they were apt to find expression in her epithets and her metaphors. She knew next to nothing of Webb, and she had permitted her mountaineers to vote for him at the last preceding election. But now that she recognized in him an enemy of Boyd Westover, she hated him with an intensity and an unreason possible only to a nature such as hers, in which the primal passions of humanity had yielded themselves to no chastening of circumstance or civilization.
McGrath, to whom no hint of Judy's purposes had been given, answered her questions as if reading from a cyclopædia:
"William Wilberforce was an Englishman, celebrated as a philanthropist and especially distinguished by his work for the abolition of negro slavery. He was known in England as 'the great abolitionist.'"
"That's all right," said Judy with a grunt of satisfaction. "I ain't got no way o' findin' out how that bow-legged hoppergrass, Webb, got a holt'n the name, but he'll wish't he hadn't 'fore I git through with him. Now, Mark, I want you to write down jes' what you's tole me—no more an' no less—'bout that there abolitionist Wilberforce. Jest write it down on paper an' leave it."
"What are you up to, Judy, anyhow?" McGrath ventured to ask.
"That's what the queen bee axed the b'ar when he clum' the bee tree, an' the b'ar says: 'I'm up to the hole that's got the honey in it'."
And Judy vouchsafed no further explanation of her purposes.
Next day she sent for Edgar Coffey and questioned him.
"Who's this here Don Carlos Farnsworth that Westover's always a sendin' game to? Do you know him?"
"Yes. He's a white man."