“No,” she agreed. “Oh, well, I’m not worryin’. I’ll show him when he comes back. I’m as big as he is behind a gun.”
Bob looked at her, startled. He saw she was whistling to keep up her courage. “Are you sure enough afraid of him?”
Her eyes met his. She nodded. “He said he was coming back to marry me—good as said I could like it or lump it, he didn’t care which.”
“Sho! Tha’s jus’ talk. No girl has to marry a man if she don’t want to. You don’t need any gun-play. He can’t make his brags good if you won’t have him. It’s a free country.”
“If he told you to do something—this Jake Houck—you wouldn’t think it was so free,” the girl retorted without any life in her voice.
He jumped up, laughing. “Well, I don’t expect he’s liable to tell me to do anything. He ain’t ever met up with me. I gotta go peel the spuds for supper. Don’t you worry, June. He’s bluffin’.”
“I reckon,” she said, and nodded a careless good-bye.