“There’s old man Gunnison. He might take you in for the night.”
“Where does he live?”
“Back a ways up the trail.”
“Won’t you show me the way?”
“I might,” she admitted. “Better give me that trunk,” she said, pointing to the bag. “You would sure be tired if you toted that all the way to Gunnison’s.”
The girl slipped from the pony and expertly made the bag fast to the saddle with the thongs. Then taking the reins, which she drew over the animal’s head, she strode out into the darkness. Brainard stumbled on after his guide as best he could. Presently when he became more accustomed to the dark and to progress over the uneven ground he joined the girl and tried to make her talk. She developed shyness, however, and replied only briefly to his questions. She lived somewhere up in the mountains towards which they were traveling and which could be dimly perceived ahead, a soft, dark barrier rising in the night. But what she did there, who her people were, she would not say. In spite of her youth and her inexperience she had a shrewd child’s wit that could turn off inconvenient curiosity. Although she drawled and spoke the slovenly language of uneducated people, there was something about her, perhaps her instinctive reserve, that bespoke a better breeding than her clothes and her speech indicated. She did not make further inquiries about Brainard’s business; he surmised that she refrained because she thought him to be some kind of a wrongdoer. He wanted to explain to her his erratic conduct, but he realized that it would be not only foolish but almost impossible to make clear to her limited mind just what the situation with him was. So for minutes there was silence between them while they plodded on.
Brainard liked the girl, felt a strange sort of pity for her, an unreasoned pity for a forlorn and lonely child, who he instinctively divined was sensitive and perhaps unhappy in spite of her flippant speech.
“What were you doing down there at the railroad?” he asked in another attempt to start conversation.
“Oh,” she replied vaguely, “nothin’.”
“Nothing! It must be a long way from your home to the railroad?”