Chapter 23. The Water Question and Some Gossip

Miss Rosemary Allen rode down into One Man Coulee and boldly up to the cabin of Andy Green, and shouted musically for him to come forth. Andy made a hasty pass at his hair with a brush, jerked his tie straight and came out eagerly. There was no hesitation in his manner. He went straight up to her and reached up to pull her from the saddle, that he might hold her in his arms and kiss her--after the manner of bold young men who are very much in love. But Miss Rosemary Allen stopped him with a push that was not altogether playful, and scowled at him viciously.

"I am in a most furious mood today," she said. "I want to scratch somebody's eyes out! I want to say words. Don't come close, or I might pull your hair or something, James." She called him James because that was not his name, and because she had learned a good deal about his past misdeeds and liked to take a sly whack at his notorious tendency to forget the truth, by calling him Truthful James.

"All right; that suits me fine. It's worth a lot to have you close enough to pull hair. Where have you been all this long while?" Being a bold young man and very much in love, he kissed her in spite of her professed viciousness.

"Oh, I've been to town--it hasn't been more than three days since we met and had that terrible quarrel James. What was it about?" She frowned down at him thoughtfully. "I'm still furious about it--whatever it is. Do you know, Mr. Man, that I am an outlaw amongst my neighbors, and that our happy little household, up there on the hill, is a house divided against itself? I've put up a green burlap curtain on my southwest corner, and bought me a smelly oil stove and I pos-i-tively refuse to look at my neighbors or speak to them. I'm going to get some lumber and board up that side of my house.

"Those three cats--they get together on the other side of my curtain and say the meanest things!"

Andy Green had the temerity to laugh. "That sounds good to me," he told her unsympathetically. "Now maybe you'll come down and keep house for me and let that pinnacle go to thunder. It's no good anyway, and I told you so long ago. That whole eighty acres of yours wouldn't support a family of jackrabbits month. What--"

"And let those old hens say they drove me off? That Kate Price is the limit. The things she said to me you wouldn't believe. And it all started over my going with little Buck a few times to ride along your fence when you boys were busy. I consider that I had a perfect right to ride where I pleased. Of course they're furious anyway, because I don't side against you boys and--and all that. When--when they found out about--you and me, James, they said some pretty sarcastic things, but I didn't pay any attention to that. Poor old freaks, I expected them to be jealous, because nobody ever pays any attention to them. Kate Price is the