The Eastern Express, mantled in a seething whirl of snow, but still maintaining very nearly its scheduled time and even regaining a few lost minutes from hour to hour as, now well past the middle of the State, it sped on across the flatter country in its approach to the mountains, proceeded monotonously through the afternoon. Eaton watched the chill of the snow battle against the warmth of the double windows on the windward side of the car, until finally it conquered and the windows became—as he knew the rest of the outside of the cars must have been long before—merely a wall of white. This coating, thickening steadily with the increasing severity of the storm as they approached the Rockies, dimmed the afternoon daylight within the car to dusk.
Presently all became black outside the windows, and the passengers from the rear cars filed forward to the dining car and then back to their places again. Eaton took care to avoid the Dorne party in the diner. Soon the porter began making up the berths to be occupied that night; but as yet no one was retiring. The train was to reach Spokane late in the evening; there would be a stop there for half an hour; and after the long day on the train, every one seemed to be waiting up for a walk about the station before going to bed. But as the train slowed, and with a sudden diminishing of the clatter of the fishplates under its wheels and of the puffings of exhausted steam, slipped into the lighted trainsheds at the city, Eaton sat for some minutes in thought. Then he dragged his overcoat down from its hook, buttoned it tightly about his throat, pulled his traveling cap down on his head and left the car. All along the train, vestibule doors of the Pullmans had been opened, and the passengers were getting out, while a few others, snow-covered and with hand-luggage, came to board the train. Eaton, turning to survey the sleet-shrouded car he had left, found himself face to face with Miss Dorne, standing alone upon the station platform.
Her piquant, beautiful face was half hidden in the collar of the great fur coat she had worn on boarding the train, and her cheeks were ruddy with the bite of the crisp air.
"You see before you a castaway," she volunteered, smiling.
He felt it necessary to take the same tone. "A castaway?" he questioned. "Cast away by whom?"
"By Mr. Avery, if you must know, though your implication that anybody should have cast me away—anybody at all, Mr. Eaton—is unpleasant."
"There was no implication; it was simply inquiry."
"You should have put it, then, in some other form; you should have asked how I came to be in so surprising a position."
"'How,' in this part of the country, Miss Dorne, is not regarded as a question, but merely as a form of salutation," he bantered. "It was formerly employed by the Indian aborigines inhabiting these parts, who exchanged 'How's' when passing each other on the road. If I had said 'How,' you might simply have replied 'How,' and I should have been under the necessity of considering the incident closed."
She laughed. "You do not wish it to be closed."