"What's the matter?" she asked, abruptly.
The sleigh had come to a sudden standstill, and the boy was holding the lines in dogged silence.
"Why don't you drive on?" she asked.
"Now you jus' looky here," he replied, in a rough and bullying tone. "I ain't a-goin' one step furder. I'm mos' froze, an' the station's right ahead. You foller yer nose a spell, an' you'll git thar. Gimme the shawl an' the fifty cents, an' git out."
For one moment 'Tilda Jane sat in blank amazement. Then she looked from his dirty, obstinate face to the plump pony. The latter showed no signs of fatigue. He could go for miles yet. If he had made a plea for the harness, she would not have so much wondered, for it was patched and mended with rope in a dozen places.
Then her blood slowly reached boiling-point. She had stood a good deal from these Folcutts. The shawl was worth five dollars. That she knew, for she remembered hearing the matron tell how much it had cost her. She had overpaid them for this drive, and she was not prepared to flounder on through the snow and perhaps miss her train.
Her mind, fertile in resources, speedily hit upon something. She must get this bully out of the sleigh, and she fixed him with a glance more determined than his own. He had on a rough homespun suit of clothes, and a home-made cap to match it. This cap was pulled tightly over his ears, but it was not on tight enough to resist 'Tilda Jane's quick and angry fingers.
Plucking it off, she threw it over a snake fence into a snow-bank, saying at the same time, "If you're goin' to turn me out, I'll turn you out first."
The boy was furious, but the cold wind smote his head, and, postponing retaliation, he sprang first for his cap, shouting warningly, however, as he swung his leg over the fence, "I'll make you pay up for this, you—"
'Tilda Jane neither heard nor cared for the offensive epithet applied to her. With feet firmly braced, both hands grasping the lines, Gippie beside her, and Poacher racing behind, she was sweeping down the road. She had never driven a horse before in her life, but she adored new experiences, and she had carefully watched every motion of the young lout beside her.