‘If you-all need any help, now,’ he said, ‘we wouldn’t want, Tom and me, for you to think you lacked a friend or maybe two or three. Anything a strong man can do. Yes, we just said maybe we’d go.’

After that they sat in silence for a while again, each man meditating the thought as it stood in his mind. Then Nathan arose and opened the door, waiting a moment as he leaned out into the dark. Two other shapes appeared rising on the steps, a large red-faced man and a strong gaunt boy of twenty or so. As they came into the room another followed and stood at the door, keeping back within the shadow. Jasper greeted the florid man as Tom and brought him to a seat, but the other stood by the door, twirling his hat about in his hand, some friend of Nathan’s. Then they were all still for a time, or someone would make a question about some casual or seemingly trivial thing, but every speech counted in their communion. Jasper was moved that he had friends who had come. Ellen saw this in his stiff voice and his silence. She saw it in his question of the way.

‘It’s nigh twenty mile to where you come from. How far is it now from Pike’s to where you turn off?’

‘We taken the new road at Sidney’s old place. About sixteen mile, it is to the road crossen. Eighteen in all I reckon.’

‘Around eighteen,’ Tom said. ‘I’d call hit eighteen.’

‘Is the road good now?’ Jasper asked.

‘Right good a piece of the way. New worked.’

‘You came a-horseback?’ Jasper said. He was moved almost beyond speech by this expression of loyalty. ‘A-horseback I reckon.’

‘Yes, we rode our critters. Tom, he says to me, “I reckon you heared Jasper Kent is in trouble.” We asked in town on court day where you live now and by and by Tom he finds a man that knows.’

‘Is the road worked all the way to Pike’s now?’ Jasper asked.

‘All the way. A right fair road hit is in good weather.’

They could feel Jasper’s gratitude and it repaid them for the long journey they had taken. Acknowledged gratitude loosened Tom’s speech so that he talked to great length of the roads, the ways to go, the shortcuts one could make in a dry season. He disputed a little with Nathan as to which of two ways was shortest, but joined him heartily again in computing another distance. Their long dialogue made a solution in which Jasper’s emotion could dissolve itself. When they were quiet again Jasper said:

‘I’m right proud, right proud to know you-all thought to come.’

‘We thought you might maybe need a man or so,’ Tom said.

They sat a little while longer, stilled now for all had been said. Then Nathan said that they would go, and with a nod to her he went out at the doorway. Tom followed, nodding even more meagrely, and the young man inclined his head faintly in her direction as he went, looking at the ground. Jasper left the door open as long as their horses could be heard going back across the pasture.