Wid only nodded. They pushed along up the road until finally they arrived, within a few miles of their own homesteads, at the little roadside store and postoffice kept by old Pop Bentley. They would have pulled up here, but as they approached the dusty figure of the mail carrier of that route came out, and held up a hand.
"Hold on, Sim," said he. "I heard at Nels Jensen's place that you had gone down the river. Well, it's time you was gettin' back."
Sim Gage smiled with a sense of his own importance as he took the letter, turning it over in his hand. "What's it say, Wid?" said he.
His neighbor looked at the inscription. "It's for her," said he. "Miss Mary Warren, in care of Sim Gage, Two Forks, Montany."
"Who's it from?" said Sim. "Here's some writing on the back."
"From Annie B. Squires, 9527 Oakford Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio. But listen——"
"That's the girl that Miss Warren told me about!" said Sim. "That's a letter from her. I'd better be getting back."
"I just told you you had," said the mail driver, something of pity in his tone. "I'm trying to tell you why you had. Why I brought this letter down is, you ain't got no place to get back to."
"What you mean?" said Wid Gardner suddenly.
"Hell's loose in this valley to-day," said the mail carrier. "Five fires, when I come through before noon. Wid, your house is gone, and your barn, too. Sim, somebody's burned your hay and your barn, and shot your stock, and set your house afire—it would of burned plumb down if Nels Jensen hadn't got there just in time. They saved the house. It wasn't burned very much anyways, so Nels told me."