She was sobbing, and the Inger, so lately a flame of intent and desire, did not dare to touch her, and had no least idea what to say to her. In a moment she was able to speak again. “I thought I could hide here for a day or two,” she said, “till they quit huntin’. Then I could get away. Would you hide me, somehow?—would you?” He was silent, trying to think, with a head not too clear, how best to do it; and she misunderstood. “Don’t make me go back—don’t tell Dad and Bunchy! If you can’t hide me, I’ll go now,” she said. “What you talkin’?” he said, roughly. “I’m thinkin’. Thinkin’ up how. Thinkin’ up how.” He put his hands to his temples. “My head don’t think,” he said thickly. “Here in the hut,” she said, eagerly and clearly. “They’ll never think of comin’ up here. Why, I don’t hardly know you.” “Won’t they though?” said the Inger, suddenly, and dimly remembered Bunchy, and the blow for the sake of the girl. Last, there came dancing to him something about a check for the debt to Bunchy which she had not paid. “As it happens,” said the Inger, “this is jus’ the first place where they will come lookin’ for you. Jus’ the first place....” “Why?” she cried. “Nev’ you mind,” he said. He could almost see her, standing within his door, her white face blooming from the black. But his sense of her was obscured to him by the need for immediate action, and by his utter present inability to cope with that need. “How’d you come—to come—to come up here?” he asked curiously. For a breath she hesitated, and there was a soft taking of breath in her answer. “I didn’t know no woman I could tell,” she said, “nor no other decent man.” From head to foot a fire went over the Inger, such as he had never known. And first he was weak with her words, and then he was jubilantly strong. He put them away, but they lay within him burning, where again and again he could turn to them for warmth. “How—how’d you hit the trail up?” he asked almost gently. Again she was silent for a moment, and her answer was very low. “I’d been by here once-to-twice before,” she said. 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.”