The Rim of the Desert Part 4

"I understand, but," her voice fluctuated softly, "I dislike publicity so intensely. Of course it's different with Mrs. Feversham. She is accustomed to newspaper notice; her husband and brother are so completely in the public eye. But since you must use the story, couldn't you suppress my name?"

"Oh, but how could I? The whole story hinges on you. You were driving the machine. I saw you from the train window as you came through the cut. You handled the gear like an imported chauffeur, but it was steep there on the approach, and the car began to skid. I saw in a flash what was going to happen; it made me limp as a rag. But there was a chance,--the merest hairbreadth, and you took it." He waited a moment, then said, smiling: "That was a picture worth snapping, but I was too batty to think of it in time. You see," he went on seriously, "the leading character in this story is you. And it means a lot to me. I was going to be fired; honest I was.

The old man told me he wasn't looking for any _Treasure Island_ genius; what his paper needed was plain facts. Then his big heart got the upper hand, and he called me back. 'Jimmie,' he said, 'there's good stuff in you, and I am going to give you one more trial. Go over to North Yakima and tell us about the fair. Take the new Milwaukee line as far as Ellensburg and pick up something about the automobile road through Snoqualmie Pa.s.s. But remember, cut out the fiction; keep to facts!'"

"I understand," she repeated gravely, "I understand. The accident came opportunely. It was life and color to your setting and demonstrates the need of a better road. The most I can hope is that you will not exaggerate or--or put us in a ridiculous light."

"I swear to that." He settled his notebook again on his knee and lifted his pencil. "Nothing sensational," he added, "nothing annoying; now please give me your name."

"Well, then, write Miss Armitage."

"Miss Armitage. Thank you. Miss Armitage of?"

"San Francisco."

"Of San Francisco; and visiting the Morgansteins, of course. But going on now alone to meet the friends who are expecting you--am I right?--at North Yakima."

There was a brief silence, and she moved a little in her chair. "Where I am going now," she said, and looked at him once more across the invisible barrier, "is another story."

"I beg your pardon." Daniels laughed and, rising from his perch on the chair arm, put his notebook in his pocket. "And I'm awfully grateful. If ever I can be of service to you, I hope you'll let me know." He started up the car, then paused to say over his shoulder: "The light for photography was fine; the old man will double column every ill.u.s.tration."

"Ill.u.s.trations?" She started up in dismay. "Oh, no. Please--I couldn't endure--"

But Jimmie Daniels, with the camera swinging to his quick step, hurried on to the vestibule.

She settled back in her seat, and for a moment her consternation grew; then the humor of the situation must have dawned on her, for suddenly the sparkles danced in her eyes. Her glance met Tisdale's briefly and, suppress it as he tried, his own smile broke at the corners of his mouth.

He rose and walked out again to the platform.

This was the rarest woman on earth. She was able to appreciate a joke at her own expense. Clearly she had finessed, then, in the instant she had been sure of the game, she had met and accepted defeat with a smile. But he would like to discipline that fellow Daniels;--here he frowned--those films should be destroyed. Still, the boy would hardly give them up peaceably and to take them otherwise would not spare her the publicity she so desired to avoid; such a scene must simply furnish fresh material, a new chapter to the story. After all, not one newspaper cut in a hundred could be recognized. It was certain she was in no need of a champion; he never had seen a woman so well equipped, so sure of herself and her weapons, and yet so altogether feminine. If Foster had but known _her_.

Instantly, in sharp contrast to this delightful stranger, rose the woman of his imagination; the idle spendthrift who had cast her spell over level-headed Foster; who had wrecked David Weatherbee; and his face hardened. A personal interview, he told himself presently, would be worse than useless. There was no way to reach a woman like her; she was past appeal. But he would take that tract of desert off her hands at her price, and perhaps, while the money lasted, she would let Foster alone.

The train had left Lake Keechelus and was racing easily down the banks of the Yakima. He was entering the country he had desired to see, and soon his interest wakened. He seated himself to watch the heights that seemed to move in quick succession like the endlessly closing gates of the Pa.s.s.

The track still ran shelf-wise along precipitous k.n.o.bs and ridges; sometimes it bored through. The forests of fir and hemlock were replaced by thinning groves of pine; then appeared the first bare, sage-mottled dune. The trucks rumbled over a bit of trestle, and for an instant he saw the intake of an irrigating ca.n.a.l, and finally, after a last tunnel, the eastbound steamed out of the canyon into a broad, mountain-locked plateau.

Everywhere, watered by the br.i.m.m.i.n.g ditch, stretched fields of vivid alfalfa or ripe grain. Where the harvesting was over, herds of fine horses and cattle or great flocks of sheep were turned in to browse on the stubble. At rare intervals a sage-grown breadth of unreclaimed land, like a ragged blemish, divided these farms. Then, when the arid slopes began to crowd again, the train whistled Ellensburg on the lower rim of the plain.

Tisdale left his seat to lean over the railing and look ahead. He was in time to catch a fleeting glimpse of Jimmie Daniels as he hurried out of the telegraph office and sprang on the step of a starting bus. It was here the young newspaper man was to transfer to the Northern Pacific, and doubtless the girl too was changing trains. The Milwaukee, beyond Ellensburg, pa.s.sed through new, unbroken country for many miles; the stations were all in embryo, and even though she may not have resumed her journey at the Pa.s.s with the intention of stopping off at the fair, the same bus was probably taking her over to the old, main traveled route down the Yakima to the Columbia.

Again that unaccountable depression came over him. He tried to throw it off, laughing at himself a little and lighting a cigar. This pretty woman had happened in his path like a flower; she had pleased his eyes for a few hours and was gone. But what possible difference could her coming and going make to him?

The train started, and he settled back in his seat. The fertile fields were left behind, then presently the eastbound steamed through a gap in a sun-baked ridge and entered a great arid level. Sage-brush stretched limitless, and the dull green of each bush, powdered with dust, made a grayer blotch on the pale shifting soil, that every chance zephyr lifted in swirls and scattered like ashes. Sometimes a whiter patch showed where alkali streaked through. It was like coming into an old, worn-out world.

The sun burned pitilessly, and when finally the train had crossed this plain and began to wind through lofty dunes, the heat pent between the slopes became stifling. The rear platform was growing intolerable, and he knew his station could not be far off. He rose to go in, but the eastbound suddenly plunged into the coolness of a tunnel, and he waited while it bored through to daylight and moved on along a shelf overlooking a dry run. Then, as he turned to the open door, he saw the girl had not taken the Northern Pacific at Ellensburg. She was still there in the observation car.

Her eyes were closed, and he noticed as he went forward that her breast rose and fell gently; the shorter, loose hair formed damp, cool little rings on her forehead and about her ears. She was sleeping in her chair.

But a turn in the track brought the sun streaming through her window; the polished ceiling reflected the glare, and he stopped to reach carefully and draw the blind. A moment later the whistle shrieked, and the conductor called his station. He hurried on up the aisle and, finding his satchel in the vestibule, stood waiting until the car jolted to a stop, then swung himself off. But the porter followed with a suitcase and placed his stool, and the next instant the girl appeared. She carried her hat in her hands, her coat was tucked under her arm, and as she stepped down beside Tisdale, the bell began to ring, the porter sprang aboard, and the train went speeding ahead.

The station was only a telegraph office, flanked by a water-tank on a siding. There was no waiting hotel bus, no cab, no vehicle of any kind.

The small building rose like an islet out of a gray sea. Far off through billowing swells one other islet appeared, but these two pa.s.sengers the eastbound had left were like a man and woman marooned.

CHAPTER V

APPLES OF EDEN

Tisdale stood looking after the train while the girl's swift, startled glance swept the billowing desert and with growing dismay searched the draw below the station. "There isn't a town in sight!" she exclaimed, and her lip trembled. "Not a taxi or even a stage!" And she added, moving and lifting her eyes to meet his: "What am I to do?"

"I'll do my best, madam," he paused, and the genial lines broke lightly in his face, "but I could find out quicker if I knew where you want to go."

"To Wenatchee. And I tho--ought--I understood--the conductor told me you were going there, and this was your stop. It was his first trip over the new Milwaukee, and we trusted--to you."

Tisdale pursed his lips, shaking his head slowly. "I guess I am responsible. I did tell that conductor I was going to Wenatchee when I asked him to drop me at this siding, but I should have explained I expected to find a saddle-horse here and take a cut-off to strike the Ellensburg road. It should save an hour." He drew a Government map of the quadrangle of that section from his pocket and opened it. "You see, your stop was Ellensburg; the only through road starts there." He found the thoroughfare and began to trace it with his forefinger. "It crosses rugged country; follows the canyons through these spurs of the Cascades. They push down sheer to the Columbia. See the big bend it makes, flowing south for miles along the mountains trying to find a way out to the Pacific. The river ought to be off there." He paused and swung on his heel to look eastward. "It isn't far from this station. But even if we reached it, it would be up-stream, against a succession of rapids, from here to Wenatchee. A boat would be impossible." He folded the plat and put it away, then asked abruptly: "Do you ride, madam?"

She gave him a swift side-glance and looked off in the direction of the hidden Columbia. "Sometimes--but I haven't a riding habit."

Tisdale waited. The humor deepened a little at the corners of his mouth.

There was but one pa.s.senger train each way daily on the newly opened Milwaukee road, and plainly she could not remain at this siding alone all night; yet she was debating the propriety of riding through the mountains to Wenatchee with him. Then unexpectedly the click of a telegraph cut the stillness, and a sudden brightness leaped in her face. "A station master,"

she cried; "perhaps there's a telephone." And she hurried up the platform to the open office door.

Tisdale slowly followed.

The station master, having transmitted his message, swung around on his stool, and got to his feet in astonishment on seeing the girl.

"I have made a mistake," she said, with a wavering glance over the interior, "and I tho--ought, I hoped there was a telephone. But you can communicate with the nearest garage for me, can you not? Or a stable--or-- somewhere. You see," and for an instant the coquetry of a pretty woman who knows she is pretty beamed in her eyes, "I really must have a taxicab or some kind of a carriage to take me back to Ellensburg."

The station master, who was a very young man, answered her smile and, reaching to take a coat from a peg on the wall, hastily slipped it on. "Of course I could call up Ellensburg," he said; "that's the nearest for a machine. But it belongs to the doctor, and even if he was in town and could spare it, it would take till dark to bring it down. It's a mean road over sandhills for thirty-five miles."

"It is hardly farther than that to Wenatchee," said Tisdale quietly. "With good saddle-horses we should be able to make it as soon. Do you know anything about the trail through to tap the Ellensburg-Wenatchee highway?"

The station master came around the end of his desk. "So you are going to Wenatchee," he exclaimed, and his face shone with a sort of inner glow. "I guess then you must have heard about Hesperides Vale; the air's full of it, and while land is selling next to nothing you want to get in on the ground floor. Yes, sir," his voice quickened, "I own property over there, and I came that way, up the mountain road, in the spring to take this position when the Milwaukee opened. But I don't know much about your cut-off; I just kept on to Ellensburg and dropped down by train from there.

The main road, though, was in pretty good shape. It's the old stage road that used to connect with the Northern Pacific, and they had to do some mighty heavy hauling over it while the mountain division of the Great Northern was building up the Wenatchee. It keeps an easy grade, following the canyons up and up till it's six thousand feet at the divide, then you begin to drop to the Columbia. And when you leave the woods, it's like this again, bunch gra.s.s and sage, sand and alkali, for twenty miles. Of course there isn't a regular stage now; you have to hire."

"Any road-houses?" asked Tisdale briefly.

"No, but you come across a ranch once in awhile, and any of them would take a man in over night--or a lady."

Tisdale turned to the door. "I can find saddle-horses, I presume, at that ranch off there through the draw. Is it the nearest?"

"The nearest and the only one." The station master walked on with him to the platform. "It's a new place. They are working two teams, every day and Sunday, while daylight lasts, grubbing out the sage-brush for planting.

It's a pumping layout to bring water from the Columbia, and they are starting with forty acres all in apples."

"But they have saddle-horses?" said Tisdale, frowning.

"I can't tell you that. The fellow I talked with came over for freight and used one of the teams. Said they couldn't spare it. But that's your only chance. I don't know of any other horses in twenty miles, unless it's a wild band that pa.s.sed this morning. They stopped down the draw, nosing out the bunch gra.s.s for an hour or two, then skidooed."

Tisdale paused a thoughtful moment then asked: "When is the next freight due on this siding?"