odded coolly and demanded, "What's yore business hyarabout?"

In Jerry the rising joyousness of rebirth was full confessed. He was
here because since he had seen her last he had carried no other picture
in his thoughts, and now that the world was in bloom he wanted to see
her against a befitting background. To that end he had sold his small
farm and rented a plot and cabin near-by and if there was to be no
welcome for him here he had merely sold himself out of a home.

But the gray-blue eyes were whimsical, and the mobile lips smiling. He
was unrebuffed as he made a counter-query.

"Kain't a feller kinderly come broguein' in hyar, without some special
business brings him?"

Alexander felt that she had been unneighborly, but in her memory the
things that Brent had said to her had become a sort of troublesome
refrain. "Men will come and they won't be turned back." She
remembered, too, her own hot retort, "Like hell they won't!" It was in
the spirit of that retort that she answered.

"Ef ye hain't got no business hyar, ye hain't got no business hyar, an'
thet's all thar air ter hit."

"Mebby ye're ther business yoreself, Alexander," he suggested and there
was a persuasive quality in his voice.

"I'm my own business, nobody else's."

In this mood that had troubled her of late, Alexander was very
combative. She was not willing to surrender her code--not willing yet
to be treated as a woman.

"I heers tell thet ye've moved over hyar, bag an' baggage--an' ef I kin
help ye out any way, I'll seek ter convenience ye outen a sperit of
neighborness." She spoke in that extra-deliberate fashion that went
before a storm, and as she stood there with her head high, and her eyes
undeviatingly meeting his, she had the beauty of a war-goddess. "But
when ye hain't got no matter of need, don't come."

Jerry had no intention of being lightly repulsed. His purpose of
courtship had become his governing law but he had learned much of this
Amazonian woman and had set himself, not to an easy conquest, but to a
hard campaign. The man who, merely to be near one woman, sells a river
bottom farm that he had nursed into something like prosperity and who
takes on rocky acres in its stead, has shown, by his works, the
determination of his spirit.

Now, the humorous eyes riffled with a quiet amusement.

"I didn't say thet I come without business, Alexander. Mebby I hain't
stated hit yit."

"Then ye'd better state hit. Ye don't