Hack

hack
verb, transitive. To cut with rough or heavy blows. verb, intransitive. To use a computer to gain unauthorized access to data in a system. To gain unauthorized access to (data in a computer). To manage. To cope. To ride a horse for pleasure or exercise.
phrasal verb. To pass one’s time idly or with no definite purpose, as in “hack around.” To annoy or infuriate someone, as in “hack someone off.”

When the sky began to clear, she was relieved. He had been in her way since first light, unable to till or cultivate because of the rain. Unused to her housekeeping routines and bored, he followed her as she swept and dusted, persisting even after she told him uncounted times that no, she didn’t need any help. He had resorted to re-reading an old issue of one of his stockman’s journals, but that distraction wore out by the time she called him for lunch.

She declined his offer to help with the dishes, leaving him sipping the last of his tea at the kitchen table. She noticed that the rain had stopped before he did, since she was standing at the sink, looking out the window. “Finally,” she heard him mutter, then his chair scraped and he brought his glass and placed it on the counter beside her. Without a further word, he left the kitchen by the screen door and headed for the barn.

Ten minutes later, she glimpsed him astride the bay gelding as they crossed the fallow field at a brisk walk. She knew he would be hacking the game trails that threaded the orchard and woodlot for an hour or two before returning to pester her again, and she relaxed. In another woman, her attitude might be taken as evidence that she was anxious for him to leave the house so she could call her lover, but that was not the case. She had held sway in this house with her own thoughts for companionship for so many years that she had stopped longing for that of another person.

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.