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 passengers 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?”