scattered like ashes. Sometimes a whiter patch showed where
alkali streaked through. It was like coming into an old, worn-out world.
The sun burned pitilessly, and when finally the train had crossed this
plain and began to wind through lofty dunes, the heat pent between the
slopes became stifling. The rear platform was growing intolerable, and he
knew his station could not be far off. He rose to go in, but the eastbound
suddenly plunged into the coolness of a tunnel, and he waited while it
bored through to daylight and moved on along a shelf overlooking a dry
run. Then, as he turned to the open door, he saw the girl had not taken
the Northern Pacific at Ellensburg. She was still there in the observation
car.

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