Deserted | Page 5

"I did not suppose that
there were any ladies within hearing."
"I got out of the car supposing there was plenty of time to get a
specimen of sagebrush to carry home," she explained; "but when the

cars started, although I was but a little way off, I could not regain the
platform;" which, considering that she wore a tie-back of the then
prevalent fashion, was not surprising.
"Indeed!" replied Lombard, with the same formal manner.
"But won't the train come back for us?" she asked, in a more anxious
voice.
"That will depend on whether we are missed. Nobody will miss me.
Mrs. Eustis, if she hasn't gone to bed, may miss you."
"But she has. She went to bed before I left the car, and is asleep by this
time."
"That 's unfortunate," was his brief reply, as he lit a cigar and began to
smoke and contemplate the stars.
His services, so far as he could do anything for her, she should, as a
lady, command, but if she thought that he was going to do the
agreeable after what had happened a few hours ago, she was mightily
mistaken.
There was a silence, and then she said, hesitatingly, "What are we
going to do?"
He glanced at her. Her attitude and the troubled expression of her face,
as well as her voice, indicated that the logic of the situation was
overthrowing the jaunty self-possession which she had at first affected.
The desert was staring her out of countenance. How his heart yearned
toward her! If she had only given him a right to take care of her, how
he would comfort her! what prodigies would he be capable of to succor
her! But this rising impulse of tenderness was turned to choking
bitterness by the memory of that scornful "No, sir." So he replied
coldly, "I 'm not in the habit of being left behind in deserts, and I don't
know what it is customary to do in such cases. I see nothing except to
wait for the next train, which will come along some time within
twenty-four hours."

There was another long silence, after which she said in a timid voice,
"Had n't we better walk to the next station?"
At the suggestion of walking he glanced at her close-fitting dress, and a
sardonic grin slightly twitched the corners of his mouth as he dryly
answered, "It is thirty miles one way and twenty the other to the first
station."
Several minutes passed before she spoke again, and then she said, with
an accent almost like that of a child in trouble and about to cry, "I 'm
cold."
The strong, unceasing wind, blowing from snowy mountain-caverns
across a plain on which there was not the slightest barrier of hill or tree
to check its violence, was indeed bitterly cold, and Lombard himself
felt chilled to the marrow of his bones. He took off his overcoat and
offered it to her.
"No," said she, "you are as cold as I am."
"You will please take it," he replied, in a peremptory manner; and she
took it.
"At this rate we shall freeze to death before midnight," he added, as if
in soliloquy. "I must see if I can't contrive to make some sort of a
shelter with this sagebrush."
He began by tearing up a large number of bushes by the roots. Seeing
what he was doing, Miss Dwyer was glad to warm her stiffened
muscles by taking hold and helping; which she did with a vigor that
shortly reduced her gloves to shreds and filled her fingers with
scratches from the rough twigs. Lombard next chose an unusually high
and thick clump of brush, and cleared a small space three feet across in
the centre of it, scattering twigs on the uncovered earth to keep off its
chill.
"Now, Miss Dwyer, if you will step inside this spot, I think I can build
up the bushes around us so as to make a sort of booth which may save

us from freezing."
She silently did as he directed, and he proceeded to pile the brush
which they had torn up on the tops of the bushes left standing around
the spot where they were, thus making a circular wall about three feet
high. Over the top he managed to draw together two or three bushes,
and the improvised wigwam was complete.
The moonlight penetrated the loose roof sufficiently to reveal to each
other the faces and figures of the two occupants as they sat in opposite
corners, as far apart as possible, she cold and miserable, he cold and
sulky, and both silent. And, as if to mock him, the idea kept recurring
to his mind how romantic and delightful, in spite of the cold and
discomfort,