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 "I'd feel proud to chop wood fer you, Judy."

"Seein's you don't hev to," she flashed back. "I notice men is allus proud to do things fer wimmin if it's sumpin they don't hev to do. You'd better git along an' see to sellin' yer terbaccer crop."

Something brisk and decided in her manner made him take a step backward toward the door. But the whiskey gave him a little courage.

"I hain't a man that goes araound talkin' private to other men's wives," he began desperately, in a pompous, whiskey fuddled voice.

"You mean you air," countered Judith, getting up from her rocking chair. "You take yerse'f along about yer business, Bob Crupper."

The sharp and quite decided tone of her voice made him take another step backward and open the door. She gave him a push which sent him over the threshold and slammed the door in his face. Peering out of the little window, she saw him kick his horse in the ribs and gallop away. As she watched him out of sight she suddenly saw him standing by Wolf's wagon shed talking to Luke. He turned and looked at her, said something to Luke, and the two men laughed. She resented the look and the laugh and felt angry and insulted by his recent quite uninvited advances. Yet deeper seated and longer lasting than the anger and the feeling of insult, there was a sense of pleasurable excitement. Her neck and right shoulder were still warmly conscious of the bold gaze of his eyes. She looked at herself in the glass and saw that her cheeks were glowing—not entirely with anger. It was a long time before her neck and shoulder could forget how they had been looked at; and she was not sure that she wished to have them forget.

"Did Bob Crupper come to the strippin' room to see about your buyin' his terbaccer crop?" she asked, when she and Jerry were at supper that night.

"No. Was he here?"