Hazily he turned this over. The trail led only to his hut. No one ever came who had not come to be there. Unless—
He threw back his head as something new swam to consciousness. She stood quietly, waiting to hear what he would do. Some sense of this sudden new dependence on him beset him like words.
“They’s a way over the mountain,” he muttered. “I made it in that sheriff business. Can you take that?”
“I’ll go any way,” she said.
“It’s pretty rough,” he told her. “It’s pretty rough,” he repeated with intense care. “I’ll take you. I’ll take you,” he insisted thickly.
“You mean you’d go with me?” she asked.
“You’d never fin’ it if I didn’t,” he told her. “Y-you’d never fin’ it. Never.”
“I’ll go any way,” she repeated. “But I didn’t mean to—to come down on to you like that.”
“Tha’s nothing,” he said. “Tha’s nothing. Tha’s nothing.”