motor through and return the same day. So, when
the accident happened to the car in Snoqualmie Pass, and the others were
taking the Milwaukee train home, I decided, on the impulse of the moment,
to finish this side trip to Wenatchee and return to Seattle by the Great
Northern. I admit seeing you on the eastbound influenced me. We--Mrs.
Feversham--guessed you were on your way to see this land, and when the
porter was uncertain of the stage from Ellensburg, but that you were
leaving the trail below Kittitas, I thought you had found a newer, quicker
way. So--I followed you."

Tisdale's brows relaxed. He laughed a little softly, trying to ease her
evident distress. "I am glad you did, Miss Armitage. I am mighty glad you
did. But I see," he went on slowly, his face clouding again, "I see Mrs.
Weatherbee had been talking to you about that tract. It's strange I hadn't
thought of that possibility. I'll wager she even tried to sell the land
off a map, in Seattle. I wonder, though, when this Weatherbee trip was
arranged to look the property over, that she didn't come, too. But no
doubt that seemed too eager."

The blue lights flashed in her eyes; her lip trembled. "Be fair," she
said. "You can afford to be--generous."

"I am going to be generous, Miss Armitage, to you." The ready humor
touched his mouth again, the corners of his eyes. "I am going to take you
over the ground with me; show you Weatherbee's project, his drawn plans.
But afterwards, if you outbid me--"

"You need not be afraid of that," she interrupted quickly. "I--you must
know"--she paused, her lashes drooped--"I--am not very rich," she
finessed.

Tisdale laughed outright. "Neither am I. Neither am I." Then, his glance
studying the road, he said: "I think we take that branch. But wait!" He
drew his map from his pocket and pored over it a moment. "Yes, we turn
there. After that there is just one track."

For an instant Miss Armitage seemed to waver. She sent a backward look to
the river, and the glance, returning, swept Tisdale; then she straightened
in her seat and swung the bays into the branch. It cut the valley
diagonally, away from the Wenatchee, past a last orchard, into wild lands
that stretched in level benches under the mountain wall. One tawny,
sage-mottled slope began to detach from the rest; it took the shape of a
reclining brazen beast, partly leopard, partly wolf, and a line of pine
trees that had taken root in a moist strata along the backbone h