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.