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 passenger 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."