The girl rose and began to walk the platform.

Tisdale swung back and met the trader’s calculating gaze.  “Where is your bank?” he asked.

The business was quickly transacted and, when Lighter and his customer stepped out of the bank, Harry was there, driving the bays slowly up and down the street.  In the moment they waited for him to draw up, the trader looked Tisdale over again.  “Your easiest way to get this team over to the Sound is to drive through Snoqualmie Pass, the way you came.”

“But,” said Tisdale, knitting his brows, “I told you I wanted this team to drive to the Wenatchee valley.”

“You can’t drive on through the Cascades from there and, if you try to ship these colts aboard a Great Northern train, you’ll have trouble.”

“I shall probably leave them to winter in the valley.  Unless”—­Tisdale paused, smiling at the afterthought—­“I decide to sell them to young Morganstein when I get back to Seattle.”

Lighter laughed dryly.  “I thought so.  I sized you up all right at the start.  I says to myself:  ‘He don’t look like a feller to run a bluff,’ and I says:  ’Young Morganstein ain’t the sort to pick up any second-hand outfit,’ but I thought all along you was his man.”

“I see.”  The humor played softly in Tisdale’s face.  “I see.  But you thought wrong.”

Lighter’s lids narrowed again skeptically.  “Those letters you showed to identify yourself cinched it.  Why, one was signed by his brother-in-law, Miles Feversham, and your draft was on the Seattle National where the Morgansteins bank.  But it’s all right; I got my price.”  He nudged Tisdale slyly and, laughing again, moved to the heads of the team.  “Now, sir, watch your chance; they’re chain lightning the minute you touch the seat.”

Tisdale was ready.  At last he felt the tug of the lines in his grasp, the hot wind stung his face, and he was speeding back in the direction of the station.  The girl came to the edge of the platform as he approached, and while the solitary man from the freight office caught the first opportunity to store the baggage under the seat, and the second to lift in the basket of samples from Bailey’s orchard, she tied her veil more snugly under her chin and stood measuring the team with the sparkles breaking in her eyes.  Then she gathered her skirts in one hand and laid the other lightly on the seat.

“Don’t try to help me,” she said breathlessly.  “Just hold them.”  And the next instant she was up beside him, and her laugh fluted in exhilaration as they whirled away.

Kittitas fell far behind.  They were racing directly across the seven miles of level towards a pass in a lofty range that marked the road to Wenatchee.  Far to the left lines of poplars showed where the irrigating canals below Ellensburg watered the plain, and on the right the dunes and bluffs of the unseen Columbia broke the horizon.  But the girl was watching Tisdale’s management of the horses.  “What beauties!” she exclaimed.  “And Nip and Tuck!” Her lips rippled merriment.  “How well named.  Wait, be—­ care—­ful—­they are going to take that ho-le.  Oh, would you mind giving those reins to me?”