Simpson?"

"The cattle outfit that he done the dirty work for swore an alibi for him.
Jim has been in hard luck ever since. He's been rustlin' cattle right
along; but Lord, who can blame him? He got into some trouble down to
Rawlins--shot a man he thought was with Simpson, but who wasn't--and he's
been in jail ever since. Course now that he's out Simpson's bound to get
peppered. Glad it didn't happen here, though. 'Twould be a kind of
unpleasant thing to have connected with a eating-house, don't you think
so?" she inquired, with the grim philosophy of the country.

The eating-house patrons had gone their several ways, and the quiet of the
dining-room was oppressive by contrast with its late boisterousness. Mrs.
Clark, her hands imprisoned in bread-dough, begged Mary to look over the
screen door and see if anything was happening. "I'm always suspicious when
it's quiet. I know they're in deviltry of some sort."

Mary tiptoed to the door and peeped over, but the room was deserted, save
for Simpson, huddled in a corner, biting his finger-nails. "The nasty
thing!" exploded Mrs. Clark, when she had received the bulletin. "I'd turn
him out if it wasn't for the notoriety he might bring my place in gettin'
killed in front of it."

"I dare say I'd better go and see after my trunk; it's still on the
station platform." Mary wondered what her prim aunts would think of her
for sitting in Mrs. Clark's kitchen, but it had seemed so much more of a
refuge than the sordid streets of the hideous little town, with its droves
of men and never a glimpse of a woman that she had been only too glad to
avail herself of the invitation of the proprietress to "make herself at
home till the stage left."

"Well, good luck to you," said Mrs. Clark, wiping her hand only partially
free from dough and presenting it to Miss Carmichael. She had not inquired
where the girl was going, nor even hinted to discover where she came from,
but she gave her the godspeed that the West knows how to give, and the
girl felt better for it.

At the station, where Mary shortly presented herself, in the interest of
that old man of the sea of all travellers, luggage, she learned that the
stage did not leave town for some three-quarters of an hour yet. A young
man, manipulating many sheets of flimsy, yellow paper covered with large,
flourishing handwriting, looked up in answer to her inquiries about Lost
Trail. This young man, whose accent, clothes, and manner proclaimed