Page:Honore Willsie--Judith of the godless valley.djvu/178

 "Say it again, slow!" ordered Douglas, his eyes still on Fire Mesa.

Judith obeyed.

"I didn't know Inez had got religious," he said, when Judith finished.

"She hasn't. She doesn't believe anything except that beauty is right and ugliness is wrong."

"Then she'd better clean up her door-yard!" exclaimed Douglas.

"O darn it!" sighed Judith. "I can't even discuss poetry with you without your heaving a brick."

"I'm not heaving bricks. O Judith, I'm so devilishly unhappy!"

"You ought to quit thinking so much and have something you are crazy about doing. When I get blue, I put Whoop-la to bucking."

"I'm crazy about something, all right. Judith, don't you think you're ever going to care about me."

"I don't know, Doug. Who does know, at sixteen?"

"I did."

"I wouldn't marry a man that expected me to be a ranch wife in Lost Chief, if I loved him black in the face." Judith jumped down from the fence and turned Whoop-la free for the night.

Douglas sat staring at her, wondering whether or not to mention the subject of the trip to Mountain City. He was firmly resolved that unless Judith gave in to her mother on the matter, he was going with her and his father. But finally he decided that he would not end their friendly conversation with a row and he clambered down and went about his chores.

And so the days passed and the time grew close for the departure to Mountain City. One evening, two days before the start, Douglas and Judith went to call on