“Certainly you may. But you look tired and hungry. The Trader has a piping Mulligan stew on the stove. It will do you good. Come inside.”
An Indian boy, who made his home with the Trader, was dispatched to relieve Attatak of her watch, and Marian sat down to enjoy a delicious repast.
There are some disappointments that come to us so gradually that, though the matters they effect are of the utmost importance, we are not greatly shocked when at last their full meaning is unfolded to us. It was so with Marian. She had dared and endured much to reach this spot. She had arrived at the critical moment. An hour later the Agent would have been gone. The Agent was her friend. Ready to do anything he could to help her, he would gladly have gone back with her to assist in defending her rights. But duty called him over another trail. He had no one, absolutely no one to send from this post to execute his orders.
“Of course,” he said after hearing her story, “I can give you a note to that outlaw, Scarberry, but he’d pay no attention to it.”
“He’d tear it up and throw it in my face,” asserted Marian stoutly.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” said the Agent, rising and walking the floor. “There is Ben Neighbor over at the foot of Sugar Loaf Mountain. His cabin is only three days travel from your camp. He’s a good man, and a brave one. He is a Deputy Marshal. If I give you a note to him, he will serve you as well as I could.”
“Would we need take a different trail home?”
“Why? Which way did you come?”
Marian described their course. The Agent whistled. “It’s a wonder you didn’t perish!”
“Here,” he said, “is a rough map of the country. I will mark out the course to Ben’s cabin. You’ll find it a much safer way.”