Tisdale was silent.  After a moment he turned to the lower side of the basin, which afforded better foothold than the wall he had descended, and began to work up from niche to ledge, grasping a chance bunch of sage, a stunted bush of chaparral that grew in a cranny, to steady himself.  And the girl stood aloof, watching him.  Finally he reached a shelf that brought him, in touch with the obstruction overhead and stopped to take out his pocketknife, with which he commenced to create a loophole.  Little twigs rained down; a larger branch fell, letting the daylight through.  The roof was a mesh of pine boughs.

At last he closed his knife and, taking firm hold on a fixed limb, leaned to reach his other palm down to her.  “Come,” he said, “set your foot in that first niche—­no, the left one.  Now, give me your hand.”

She obeyed as she must, and Hollis pushed backward through the aperture he had made, getting the bough under one armpit.  “Now, step to that jagged little spur; it’s solid.  The right one, too; there’s room.”  She gained the upper ledge and waited, hugging the wall pluckily while he worked out on the rim of the basin and, stretching full length, with the stem of the tree under his waist, reached his arms down to her.  “You will have to spring a little,” he directed, “and grip my shoulders hard.  Now, come!”

At last she was safe beside him.  In another moment he was up and helped her to her feet.  They stood looking towards the mountain top.  The dun cloud stalking now with trailing skirts in the direction of the snow-peaks, hurled back a parting threat.  “It was the pine tree,” she exclaimed.  “It was struck.  And, see!  It has carried down most of that chimney.  Our staircase is completely wrecked.”

Tisdale was silent.  Her glance came back to him.  A sudden emotion stirred her face.  Then all the conservatism dropped from her like a discarded cloak, and he felt her intrepid spirit respond to his own.  Now she understood that moment in the basin; she knew it had been supreme; she was great enough to see there was nothing to forgive.  “You were right,” she said, and her voice broke in those steadying pauses that carried more expression than any words.  “Fate was with us again.  But I owe—­my life—­to you.”

“Sometime,” he answered slowly, smiling a little, “not now, not here, I am going to hold you to the debt.  And when I do, you are going to pay me—­in full.”

The beautiful color, that was like the pink of coral, flamed and went in her face.  “We must hurry back to the team,” she said and turned to finish the descent to the bench.  “Horses are always so nervous in an electrical storm.”  Then suddenly, as Tisdale pushed by to help her in a difficult place, she stopped.  “How strange!” she exclaimed.  “That terrible curtain has lifted from the desert.  It threatened a deluge any minute, and now it is moving off without a drop of rain.”

“That’s so,” he replied.  “A cross current of wind has turned it up the Columbia.  But the rain is there; it is streaming along those Chelan summits in a downpour.”