"But you couldn't prevent me, you know."
"Yes, I could."
"How?"
The special was rushing through the darkest of the high-walled clefts in the lower part of the canyon. "This way," he said, his love suddenly breaking bounds, and he took her in his arms.
She freed herself quickly, breathless and indignantly reproachful.
"I am ashamed for you!" she panted. And then, with carefully calculated malice: "What if Herbert had been looking?"
"I shouldn't care if all the world had been looking," was the stubborn rejoinder. Then, passionately: "Tell me one thing before we go any farther, Eleanor: have you given him the right to call me out?"
"How can you doubt it?" she said; but now she was laughing at him again.
There was safety only in flight, and he fled; back to his desk and the work thereon. He was wading dismally through a thick mass of correspondence, relating to a cattleman's claim for stock killed, and thinking of nothing so little as the type-written words, when the roar of the echoing canyon walls died away, and the train came to a stand at Timanyoni, the first telegraph station in the shut-in valley between the mountain ranges. A minute or two later the wheels began to revolve again, and Bradford came in.
"More maverick railroading," he said disgustedly. "Timanyoni had his red light out, and when I asked for orders he said he hadn't any—thought maybe we'd want to ask for 'em ourselves, being as we was running wild."