Page:Honore Willsie--Judith of the godless valley.djvu/85

 you see! Doug, a woman lets down the first bar when she begins to swear and drink. She begins where Judith is beginning. She's mighty apt to end where Inez is ending. You just think about ranching in Lost Chief from your mother's point of view. It's a rough kind of a community, Douglas, compared with the same class of people in other communities. The talk itself is rough; how rough you can't appreciate because you've never heard anything else."

There was another silence. Then Douglas asked heavily: "Peter, what am I going to do to keep Judith from going to Inez for advice?"

"Might not be such bad advice! Inez has no illusions about what she's doing or what she's paying."

"You don't mean to say Judith ought to go there?"

"No, I don't! But if a kid like you goes there himself, how can you preach to Judith? And she only goes there for the dancing and fun."

"But I'm a man!"

"I don't care what you are. You can't preach good sermons with a foul tongue. You ought to have the nerve to look at yourself as you are before you try to bring up Judith. Lost Chief is still fairly honest. Even your father calls Inez Rodman by her right title. There's hope in that!"

"But what shall I do about Judith, Peter?"

"Might make a man of yourself, Doug!"

"What's the matter with me?" demanded Doug, indignantly.

"Douglas, you haven't a clean-cut idea to your name. And a kid of seventeen as self-satisfied as you are isn't worth baiting a coyote trap with."

"There's not a guy in the valley works harder than I do!"