“Was nothing done to this man Simpson?”

“The cattle outfit that he done the dirty work for swore an alibi for him.  Jim has been in hard luck ever since.  He’s been rustlin’ cattle right along; but Lord, who can blame him?  He got into some trouble down to Rawlins—­shot a man he thought was with Simpson, but who wasn’t—­and he’s been in jail ever since.  Course now that he’s out Simpson’s bound to get peppered.  Glad it didn’t happen here, though.  ’Twould be a kind of unpleasant thing to have connected with a eating-house, don’t you think so?” she inquired, with the grim philosophy of the country.

The eating-house patrons had gone their several ways, and the quiet of the dining-room was oppressive by contrast with its late boisterousness.  Mrs. Clark, her hands imprisoned in bread-dough, begged Mary to look over the screen door and see if anything was happening.  “I’m always suspicious when it’s quiet.  I know they’re in deviltry of some sort.”

Mary tiptoed to the door and peeped over, but the room was deserted, save for Simpson, huddled in a corner, biting his finger-nails.  “The nasty thing!” exploded Mrs. Clark, when she had received the bulletin.  “I’d turn him out if it wasn’t for the notoriety he might bring my place in gettin’ killed in front of it.”

“I dare say I’d better go and see after my trunk; it’s still on the station platform.”  Mary wondered what her prim aunts would think of her for sitting in Mrs. Clark’s kitchen, but it had seemed so much more of a refuge than the sordid streets of the hideous little town, with its droves of men and never a glimpse of a woman that she had been only too glad to avail herself of the invitation of the proprietress to “make herself at home till the stage left.”

“Well, good luck to you,” said Mrs. Clark, wiping her hand only partially free from dough and presenting it to Miss Carmichael.  She had not inquired where the girl was going, nor even hinted to discover where she came from, but she gave her the godspeed that the West knows how to give, and the girl felt better for it.

At the station, where Mary shortly presented herself, in the interest of that old man of the sea of all travellers, luggage, she learned that the stage did not leave town for some three-quarters of an hour yet.  A young man, manipulating many sheets of flimsy, yellow paper covered with large, flourishing handwriting, looked up in answer to her inquiries about Lost Trail.  This young man, whose accent, clothes, and manner proclaimed him “from the East,” whither, in all probability, he would shortly return if he did not mend his ways, disclaimed all knowledge of the place as if it were an undesirable acquaintance.  But before he could deny it thrice, a man who had heard the cabalistic name was making his way towards the desk, the pride of the traveller radiating from every feature.