II

The next morning, after a frugal breakfast of milk and cornmeal pancake,

prepared over an open fireplace on live coals, which reddened her cheeks

and bare arms, Mrs. Boyd pinned up her skirts till their edges hung on a

level with the tops of her coarse, calf-skin shoes. She then climbed

over the brier-grown rail-fence with the agility of a hunter and waded

through the high, dew-soaked weeds and grass in the direction of the

rising sun. The meadow was like a rolling green sea settling down to

calmness after a storm. Here and there a tuft of dewy broom-sedge held

up to her vision a sheaf of green hung with sparkling diamonds,

emeralds, and rubies, and far ahead ran a crystal creek in and out among

gracefully drooping willows and erect young reeds.

"That's his brindle heifer now," the trudging woman said, harshly. "And

over beyond the hay-stack and cotton-shed is his muley cow and calf.

Huh, I reckon I'll make them strike a lively trot! It will be some time

before they get grass as rich as mine inside of them to furnish milk and

butter for Abe Longley and his sanctimonious lay-out."

Slowly walking around the animals, she finally got them together and

drove them from her pasture to the small road which ran along the foot

of the mountain towards their owner's farm-house, the gray roof of which

rose above the leafy trees in the distance. To drive the animals out,

she had found it necessary to lower a panel of her fence, and she was

replacing the rails laboriously, one by one, when she heard a voice from

the woodland on the mountain-side, a tract of unproductive land owned by

the man whose cows she was ejecting. It was Abe Longley himself, and in

some surprise he hurried down the rugged steep, a woodman's axe on his

shoulder. He was a gaunt, slender man, gray and grizzled, past sixty

years of age, with a tuft of stiff beard on his chin, which gave his

otherwise smooth-shaven face a forbidding expression.

"Hold on thar, Sister Boyd!" he called out, cheerily, though he seemed

evidently to be trying to keep from betraying the impatience he

evidently felt. "You must be getting nigh-sighted in yore old age. As

shore as you are a foot high them's my cattle, an' not yourn. Why, I

knowed my brindle from clean up at my wood-pile, a full quarter from

here. I seed yore mistake an' hollered then, but I reckon you are

gettin' deef as well as blind. I driv' 'em in not twenty minutes ago, as

I come on to do my cuttin'."

"I know you did, Abe Longley," and Mrs. Boyd stooped to grasp and raise

the last rail and carefully put it in place; "I know they are yours. My

eyesight's good enough. I know good and well they are yours, and that is

the very reason I made them hump themselves to get off of my property."

"But--but," and the farmer, thoroughly puzzled, lowered his glittering

axe and stared wonderingly--"but you know, Sister Boyd, that you told me

with your own mouth that, being as I'd traded off my own pasture-land to

Dixon for my strip o' wheat in the bottom, that I was at liberty to use

yourn how and when I liked, and, now--why, I'll be dad-blamed if I

understand you one bit."

"Well, I understand what I'm about, Abe Longley, if you don't!" retorted

the owner of the land. "I _did_ say you could pasture on it, but I

didn't say you could for all time and eternity; and I now give you due

notice if I ever see any four-footed animal of yours inside of my fences

I'll run them out with an ounce of buckshot in their hides."

"Well, well, well!" Longley cried, at the end of his resources, as he

leaned on his smooth axe-handle with one hand and clutched his beard

with the other. "I don't know what to make of yore conduct. I can't do

without the use of your land. There hain't a bit that I could rent or

buy for love or money on either side of me for miles around. When folks

find a man's in need of land, they stick the price up clean out of

sight. I was tellin' Sue the other day that we was in luck havin' sech a

neighbor--one that would do so much to help a body in a plight."

"Yes, I'm very good and kind," sneered Mrs. Boyd, her sharp eyes ablaze

with indignation, "and last Sunday in meeting you and a lot of other

able-bodied men sat still and let that foul-mouthed Bazemore say that

even the wooden bench I sat on ought to be taken out and burned for the

public good. You sat there and listened to _that_, and when he was

through you got up and sung the doxology and bowed your head while that

makeshift of a preacher called down God's benediction on you. If you

think I'm going to keep a pasture for such a man as you to fatten your

stock on, you need a guardian to look after you."

"Oh, I see," Longley exclaimed, a crestfallen look on him. "You are

goin' to blame us all for what he said, and you are mad at everybody

that heard it. But you are dead wrong, Ann Boyd--dead wrong. You can't

make over public opinion, and you'd 'a' been better off years ago if you

hadn't been so busy trying to do it, whether or no. Folks would let you

alone if you'd 'a' showed a more repentant sperit, and not held your

head so high and been so spiteful. I reckon the most o' your

trouble--that is, the reason it's lasted so long, is due to the

women-folks more than the men of the community, anyhow. You see, it

sorter rubs women's wool the wrong way to see about the only prosperity

a body can see in the entire county falling at the feet of the

one--well, the one least expected to have sech things--the one, I mought

say, who hadn't lived exactly up to the _best_ precepts."

"I don't go to men like you for my precepts," the woman hurled at him,

"and I haven't got any time for palavering. All I want to do is to give

you due notice not to trespass on my land, and I've done that plain

enough, I reckon."

Abe Longley's thin face showed anger that was even stronger than his

avarice; he stepped nearer to her, his eyes flashing, his wide upper-lip

twitching nervously. "Do you know," he said, "that's its purty foolhardy

of you to take up a fight like that agin a whole community. You know you

hain't agoin' to make a softer bed to lie on. You know, if you find

fault with me fer not denouncin' Bazemore, you may as well find fault

with every living soul that was under reach o' his voice, fer nobody

budged or said a word in yore defence."

"I'm taking up a fight with no one," the woman said, firmly. "They can

listen to what they want to listen to. The only thing I'm going to do in

future is to see that no person uses me for profit and then willingly

sees me spat upon. That's all I've got to say to you." And, turning, she

walked away, leaving him standing as if rooted among his trees on the

brown mountain-side.

"He'll go home and tell his wife, and she'll gad about an' fire the

whole community against me," Mrs. Boyd mused; "but I don't care. I'll

have my rights if I die for it."

An hour later, in another dress and a freshly washed and ironed gingham

bonnet, she fed her chickens from a pan of wet cornmeal dough, locked up

her house carefully, fastening down the window-sashes on the inside by

placing sticks above the movable ones, and trudged down the road to

George Wilson's country-store at the crossing of the roads which led

respectively to Springtown, hard-by on one side, and Darley, farther

away on the other.

The store was a long, frame building which had once been whitewashed,

but was now only a fuzzy, weather-beaten gray. As was usual in such

structures, the front walls of planks rose higher than the pointed roof,

and held large and elaborate lettering which might be read quite a

distance away. Thereon the young store-keeper made the questionable

statement that a better price for produce was given at his establishment

than at Darley, where high rent, taxes, and clerk-hire had to be paid,

and, moreover, that his goods were sold cheaper because, unlike the town

dealers, he lived on the products from his own farm and employed no

help. In front of the store, convenient alike to both roads, stood a

rustic hitching-rack made of unbarked oaken poles into which railway

spikes had been driven, and on which horseshoes had been nailed to hold

the reins of any customer's mount. On the ample porch of the store stood

a new machine for the hulling of pease, several ploughs, and a

red-painted device for the dropping and covering of seed-corn. On the

walls within hung various pieces of tin-ware and harnesses and saddles,

and the two rows of shelving held a good assortment of general

merchandise.

As Mrs. Boyd entered the store, Wilson, a blond young man with an ample

mustache, stood behind the counter talking to an Atlanta drummer who had

driven out from Darley to sell the store-keeper some dry-goods and

notions, and he did not come to her at once, but delayed to see the

drummer make an entry in his order-book; then he advanced to her.

"Excuse me, Mrs. Boyd," he smiled. "I am ordering some new prints for

you ladies, and I wanted to see that he got the number of bolts down

right. This is early for you to be out, isn't it? It's been many a day

since I've seen you pass this way before dinner. I took a sort of

liberty with you yesterday, knowing how good-natured you are. Dave

Prixon was going your way with his empty wagon, and, as I was about to

run low on your favorite brand of flour, I sent you a barrel and put it

on your account at the old price. I thought you'd keep it. You may have

some yet on hand, but this will come handy when you get out."

"But I don't intend to keep it," replied the woman, under her bonnet,

and her voice sounded harsh and crisp. "I haven't touched it. It's out

in the yard where Prixon dumped it. If it was to rain on it I reckon it

would mildew. It wouldn't be my loss. I didn't order it put there."

"Why, Mrs. Boyd!" and Wilson's tone and surprised glance at the drummer

caused that dapper young man to prick up his ears and move nearer; "why,

it's the best brand I handle, and you said the last gave you particular

satisfaction, so I naturally--"

"Well, I don't want it; I didn't order it, and I don't intend to have

you nor no one else unloading stuff in my front yard whenever you take a

notion and want to make money by the transaction. Deduct that from my

bill, and tell me what I owe you. I want to settle in full."

"But--but--" Wilson had never seemed to the commercial traveller to be

so much disturbed; he was actually pale, and his long hands, which

rested on the smooth surface of the counter, were trembling--"but I

don't understand," he floundered. "It's only the middle of the month,

Mrs. Boyd, and I never run up accounts till the end. You are not going

_off_, are you?"

"Oh no," and the woman pushed back her bonnet and eyed him almost

fiercely, "you needn't any of you think that. I'm going to stay right on

here; but I'll tell you what I am going to do, George Wilson--I'm going

to buy my supplies in the future at Darley. You see, since this talk of

burning the very bench I sit on in the house of God, which you and your

ilk set and listen to, why--"

"Oh, Mrs. Boyd," he broke in, "now don't go and blame me for what

Brother Bazemore said when he was--"

"_Brother_ Bazemore!" The woman flared up and brought her clinched hand

down on the counter. "I'll never as long as I live let a 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."