Dan took her hand in a firm, friendly clasp as he said earnestly: “Meg Heger, I don’t care what your name is, I don’t care who your parents were. I care only to be your friend, your very best. Of course I would not wish to call you Margaret since it would be displeasing to you.”
The girl withdrew her hand, replying: “Call me Meg. I’m used to that and hearing it won’t make me think. Oh, I’ve thought about it all so long and so much!”
Then as they started walking side by side, leading their horses, the girl confided: “Next month, when I am eighteen, Teacher Bellows, Pa Heger and I are going to start on a long, hard trip. We’re going to find, if we can, the tribe that was living in the deserted mining town on Crazy Creek the year that I was brought to the Heger cabin.” How her dark face brightened, and Dan realized that he had never dreamed that anyone could be so beautiful. “If we find them, then I shall know,” she concluded. For a few moments they walked on in silence. “If they tell me I am the daughter of——” The girl hesitated as though dreading to utter the name of Slinking Coyote, then began again, “If I am a member of their tribe, I shall live near them and help them. I shall be a teacher to their children. It will be my duty. But if, as Pa Heger and Teacher Bellows think, my parents were of a foreign race, my future will be different.”
Dan, knowing how deeply humiliating the conversation must be for the girl and wishing to change the subject, exclaimed: “How stupid of me! I brought Bag-o’-Bones down for you to ride. You must be very tired after your wild race to Scarsburg.”
The girl smiled gratefully. “I believe I am very, very tired,” she confessed, “which happens but seldom. I had thought that I was tireless.”
They soon reached the road in front of the Abbotts’ cabin and Meg bade Dan take from the pony’s saddle bags the papers and receipts. Although he pleaded to be permitted to accompany her to her home, she shook her head. “You haven’t had your supper and it is very late.” Then impulsively she reached down her brown hand as she said with an almost tremulous smile: “Good-night, my friend.”
It was early dusk when Jane, still sitting on the porch of their cabin intently listening, heard voices and the clattering of slow-moving horses along the mountain road below the bend. She leaped to her feet, her breath came with nervous quickness, she pressed her hand to her heart. Oh, what if Meg had been too late. Before she could decide what she ought to do, she heard Dan’s voice calling to the mountain girl, who was evidently not stopping. Jane ran to the top of the stone stairway. How ungrateful it must have seemed for her not to have been there to thank Meg for the effort she had made, whether or not it was successful. But Dan was leaping up the steps, two at a time, his face radiant.
Jane thought that all of his joyousness was caused by the message he was shouting to her: “Sister, that wonderful girl reached there on time! Our cabin is saved for us! How can we ever thank her?”
Jane, who had never been so upset by anything before in her protected life, clung to her brother almost hysterically. “Oh, Dan, Dan, I am so thankful! Do you think Meg Heger will ever forgive me? I was so rude to her when she first came.”
The lad was serious at once. “I do not know that she will,” he replied as he recalled that the mountain girl had said the reward she requested was the friendship of all the Abbotts except Jane.