Some trainmen were getting the injured man aboard the westbound passenger,
and the lady who had left the wrecked automobile to go with him sent back
a sonorous "Au revoir." But Elizabeth, who was hurrying down from the
station where she had accomplished her errand, turned in astonishment to
look after the speeding eastbound. Then a rocky knob closed all this from
sight.
The girl on the platform turned, and Tisdale moved a little to let her
pass. At the same time the lurching of the car, as it swung to the curve,
threw her against him. It all happened very quickly; he steadied her with
his arm, and she drew back in confusion; he raised his hand to his head
and, remembering he had left his hat in his seat, a flush shaded through
his tan. Then, "I beg your pardon," she said and hurried by him through
the door.
Tisdale stood smoothing his wind-ruffled hair and watching the receding
cliff. "Her eyes are hazel," he thought, "with turquoise lights. I never
heard of such a combination, but--it's fine."
A little later, when he went in to take his seat, he found her in the
chair across the aisle. The train was skirting the bluffs of Keechelus
then, and she had taken off her coat and hat and sat watching the
unfolding lake. His side glance swept her slender, gray-clad figure to the
toe of one trim shoe, braced lightly on her footstool, and returned to her
face. In profile it was a new delight. One caught the upward curl of her
black lashes; the suggestion of a fault in the tip of her high, yet
delicately chiseled nose; the piquant curve of her short upper lip; the
full contour of the lifted chin. Her hair, roughened some, was soft and
fine and black with bluish tones.
The temptation to watch her was very great, and Tisdale squared his
shoulders resolutely and swung his chair more towards his own window,
which did not afford a view of the lake. He wanted to see this new
railroad route through the Cascades. This Pass of Snoqualmie had always
been his choice of a transcontinental line. And he was approaching new
territory; he never had pushed down the eastern side from the divide. He
had chosen this roundabout way purposely, with thirty miles of horseback
at the end, when the Great Northern would have put him directly into the
Wenatchee Valley and within a few miles of that tract of Weatherbee's he
was going to see.
There were few travelers in the observation car, and for a while nothing
broke the silence but the clamp and rush of the wheels on the down-grade,
then the man with a camera entered and came down the aisle as far as the
new passenger's chair. "I hope you'll excuse me," he said, "I'm Daniels,
representing the _Seattle Press_, and I thought you would like to see this
story go in straight."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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