“Brother Bazemore!” The woman flared up and brought her clinched hand down on the counter. “I’ll never as long as I live let another dollar of my money pass into the hands of a man who calls that man brother. You sat still and raised no protest against what he said, and that ends business between us for all time. There is no use talking about it. Make out my account, and don’t keep me standing here to be stared at like I was a curiosity in a side-show.”
“All right, Mrs. Boyd; I’m sorry,” faltered Wilson, with a glance at the drummer, who, feeling that he had been alluded to, moved discreetly across the room and leaned against the opposite counter. “I’ll go back to the desk and make it out.”
She stood motionless where he had left her till he came back with her account in his hand, then from a leather bag she counted out the money and paid it to him. The further faint, half-fearful apologies which Wilson ventured on making seemed to fall on closed ears, and, with the receipted bill in her bag, she strode from the house. He followed her to the door and stood looking after her as she angrily trudged back towards her farm.
“Well, well,” he sighed, as the drummer came to his elbow and stared at him wonderingly, “there goes the best and most profitable customer I’ve had since I began selling goods. It’s made me sick at heart, Masters. I don’t see how I can do without her, and yet I don’t blame her one bit—not a bit, so help me God.”
Chapter III.
Wilson turned, and with a frown went moodily back to his desk and sat down on the high stool gloomily eyeing the page in a ledger which he had just consulted.
“By George, that woman’s a corker,” said the drummer, sociably, as he came back and stood near the long wood-stove. “Of course, I don’t know what it’s all about, but she’s her own boss, I’ll stake good money on that.”
“She’s about the sharpest and in many ways the strongest woman in the state,” said the storekeeper, with a sigh. “Good Lord, Masters, she’s been my main-stay ever since I opened this shack, and now to think because that loud-mouthed Bazemore, who expects me to pay a good part of his salary, takes a notion to rip her up the back in meeting, why—”
“Oh, I see!” cried the drummer—“I understand it now. I heard about that at Darley. So she’s the woman! Well, I’m glad I got a good look at her. I see a lot of queer things in going about over the country, but I don’t think I ever ran across just her sort.”
“She’s had a devil of a life, Masters, from the time she was a blooming, pretty young girl till now that she is at war with everybody within miles of her. She’s always been a study to me. She’s treated me more like a son than anything else—doing everything in her power to help me along, buying, by George, things sometimes that I knew she didn’t need because it would help me out, and now, because I didn’t get up in meeting last Sunday and call that man down she holds me accountable. I don’t know but what she’s right. Why should I take her hard-earned money and sit still and allow her to be abused? She’s simply got pride, and, lots of it, and it’s bad hurt.”