At any other time Jim-Ed would have resented the town man's tone and words; just now he was thinking about the way Liz had changed.
"I've gi'n ye the best half o' the road, mister," he said, deprecatingly, "'n' I can't do no better fer ye than that."
"Yes, you can, too," shouted the driver of the trap; "you can give us the whole road. It won't hurt your old cart to go out in the stumps, but we ain't going to drive in the ditch, not by a jugful. Get over, I tell you, and be quick about it."
To this the youth made no immediate reply; but he began to forget about the girl, and to feel himself growing hot. As for the girl, she had stepped to the front, resolved to "show off" and to make very manifest to the city men her scorn for her companion. Her cheeks and eyes were flaming, and the drummers were not slow to respond to the challenge which she flashed at them from under her drooped lids.
"Ah, there, my beauty!" said the driver, his attention for a moment diverted from the question of right of way. His companion, a smallish man in striped trousers and fawn-colored overcoat, sprang lightly out of the trap, with the double purpose of clearing the road and amusing himself with Liz. The saucy smile with which she met him turned into a frown, however, as he began brutally kicking the knees of the oxen to make them stand over.
The patient brutes crowded into the ditch.
"Whoa, there! Gee, Buck! gee, Bright!" ordered the youth, and the team lurched back into the road. At the same time he stepped over the cart-beam and came forward on the off side of the team.
"Ye'd better quit that, mister!" he exclaimed, with a threatening note in his voice.
"Give the lout a slap in the mouth, and make him get out of the way," cried the man in the trap.
But the man in the fawn-colored overcoat was busy. Liz was much to his taste.