is pretty beamed in her eyes, "I really must have a taxicab or
some kind of a carriage to take me back to Ellensburg."

The station master, who was a very young man, answered her smile and,
reaching to take a coat from a peg on the wall, hastily slipped it on. "Of
course I could call up Ellensburg," he said; "that's the nearest for a
machine. But it belongs to the doctor, and even if he was in town and
could spare it, it would take till dark to bring it down. It's a mean road
over sandhills for thirty-five miles."

"It is hardly farther than that to Wenatchee," said Tisdale quietly. "With
good saddle-horses we should be able to make it as soon. Do you know
anything about the trail through to tap the Ellensburg-Wenatchee highway?"

The station master came around the end of his desk. "So you are going to
Wenatchee," he exclaimed, and his face shone with a sort of inner glow. "I
guess then you must have heard about Hesperides Vale; the air's full of
it, and while land is selling next to nothing you want to get in on the
ground floor. Yes, sir," his voice quickened, "I own property over there,
and I came that way, up the mountain road, in the spring to take this
position when the Milwaukee opened. But I don't know much about your
cut-off; I just kept on to Ellensburg and dropped down by train from there.
The main road, though, was in pretty good shape. It's the old stage road
that used to connect with the Northern Pacific, and they had to do some
mighty heavy hauling over it while the mountain division of the Great
Northern was building up the Wenatchee. It keeps an easy grade, following
the canyons up and up till it's six thousand feet at the divide, then you
begin to drop to the Columbia. And when you leave the woods, it's like
this again, bunch grass and sage, sand and alkali, for twenty miles. Of
course there isn't a regular stage now; you have to hire."

"Any road-houses?" asked Tisdale briefly.

"No, but you come across a ranch once in awhile, and any of them would
take a man in over night--or a lady."

Tisdale turned to the door. "I can find saddle-horses, I presume, at that
ranch off there through the draw. Is it the nearest?"

"The nearest and the only one." The station master walked on with him to
the platform. "It's a new place. They are working two teams, every day and
Sunday, while daylight lasts, grubbing out the sage-brush for planting.
It's a pumping layout to bring water from the Columbia, and they ar