The Rim of the Desert

by Ada Woodruff Anderson

"Of course," he answered. "And we have at least two hours of daylight left. Don't worry; I am going now to hurry that carriage around."

He had said "of course," but while he went back to the buggy, his mind reviewed the sordid shelters he had found in just such solitudes, where a woman's housekeeping was the exception. Men in communities employed camp cooks, but most prospectors, ranchers, and cattlemen depended on themselves. There had been times when he himself had been forced to make bread. He had learned that first winter he had spent in Alaska with Weatherbee. At the thought of that experimental mixture, he smiled grimly. Then, suddenly, he imagined this gently nurtured woman confronted by a night in such a shack as they had occupied. He saw her waiting expectantly for that impossible chaperon; and, grasping the situation, struggling pluckily to cover her amazement and dismay; he saw himself and Weatherbee nerving each other to offer her that miserable fare. He hoped they would find a housekeeper at the first house on that mountain road, but that lunch of Lighter's gave him a sense of security, like a reserve fund, inadequate, yet something against imminent panic.

Miss Armitage did not return to her seat when he was gone. She fell to pacing the level; to the upper spur and back; to the lower wall and return; then, finally, it was a few yards further to the bend, to discover what progress Tisdale had made. The buggy was not yet in sight, but the new rope stretched diagonally from beyond the breach in the road to a standing tree on the bluff above her, and he was at work with the hatchet, cutting away an upright bough on the fallen pine. Other broken limbs, gathered from the debris, were piled along the slide to build up the edge. When his branch dropped, he sprang down and dragged it lengthwise to reinforce the rest. Presently he was on the log again, reaching now for the buggy tongue, he set his knee as a brace on the stump of the limb, his muscular body bent, lifted, strained. Then the front wheels rolled up across the bole; he slipped to the ground and grasped the outer one, steadying it down. After a moment, when he had taken in the slack of the line, the remaining tires slowly followed, and he began to ease the vehicle along the patched roadway. The rain of rock was renewed; fragments of granite shifted under the bulkhead of boughs; the buggy heeled lower, lower; then, at the final angle, began to right while the rope strung taut. The narrowest point was passed, and Tisdale stopped a breathing space.

It was characteristic of the man to see the humor of the situation in that moment while he stood wiping the perspiration from his face. Jove, how Foster would enjoy seeing him labor like this for a girl. He imagined the boy sitting up there at some coign of vantage on the bluff, admonishing, advising him dryly, while he laughed in his sleeve. It was undeniably funny. Alone, with one of Lighter's saddle-horses under him, his baggage secured behind the saddle, he might have been threading the dunes of the Columbia now. This incipient slide need not have caused him ten minutes' delay, and eight, nine o'clock at the latest, would have found him putting up for the night at the hotel in Wenatchee. But here he was hardly over the divide; it was almost sunset, but he was dragging a buggy by hand around a mountain top. He hoped Foster never would find out what he had paid for these bays—the team of huskies that had carried him the long trek from Nome to the Aurora mine and on through Rainy Pass had cost less. Still, under the circumstances, would not Foster himself have done the same? She was no ordinary woman; she was more than pretty, more than attractive; there was no woman like her in all the world. To travel this little journey with her, listen to her, watch her charms unfold, was worth the price. And if it had fallen to Foster, if he were here now to feel the spell of her, that Spanish woman would lose her hold. Then he remembered that Foster knew her; she had admitted that. It was inconceivable, but he had known her at the time he confessed his infatuation for Weatherbee's wife. The amusement went out of Tisdale's face. He bent, frowning, to free the buggy of the rope.

It was then Miss Armitage, exhilarated at his success, hurried forward from the bend. "Oh," she cried radiantly, "how resourceful, how strong you are. It looked simply impossible; I couldn't guess what you meant to do, and now we have only to hitch the team and drive on to Wenatchee. But," she added gravely and shook her head, "it was defying Fate."

He turned, regarding her from under still cloudy brows, though the genial lines began to deepen anew. "I told you Fate was on our side. She threw those boughs there in easy reach. She might as well have said: 'There's some lumber I cut for you; now mend your road.'"

"Perhaps, well, perhaps," the girl laughed softly. "But if Fate had said that to any other man, at least to any man I know, he would not have heard."

But the Columbia was still far off when darkness closed, and with sunset the thunder-heads they had watched across the Kittitas Valley gathered behind them. It was as though armies encamped on the heights they had left, waiting for night to pass. Then searchlights began to play on the lower country; there was skirmishing along the skyline; blades flashed.

At last, between the lightning flashes, the blackness was so dense it was hardly possible for Tisdale to see the road, and he could not trust the nervous team to keep the track; it was necessary to stop, at least to wait until the moon should rise. But while he was preparing to tell her so, the silence was broken by the barking of a dog. Instantly it was swelled by a deeper baying, and the echo rang a continuous clamor through the gorge. Then a faint illumination brought out in silhouette a final bluff ahead; rounding it, they saw a low-roofed habitation, and in the open door a woman with a lamp.

One of the dogs stood bristling and growling beside her; the other, barking furiously, sprang from the porch so that for a moment Tisdale was busy with the plunging team. Then the woman spoke, and the setter, whimpering, snapping furtively, crept back to her feet.