"but she is worth waiting for and working for. You ought to understand,
Hollis, how the thought of her buoys me through."

But it was a long time to remember a picture seen only by the flicker of a
camp-fire and starshine, and the woman of Tisdale's imagination clouded
out the face he tried to recall. "Still Weatherbee was so sensitive, so
fine," he argued with himself. "A woman must have possessed more than a
beautiful body to have become the center of his life. She must, at the
start, have possessed some capacity of feeling."

He put his thumb on the spring to open the lower case, but the image so
clearly fixed in his mind stayed the impulse. "What is the use?" he
exclaimed, and thrusting the watch back into the bag, quickly tied the
string. "I don't want to see you. I don't want to know you," and he added,
pushing the poke into its place and closing the box; "The facts are all
against you."




CHAPTER IV

SNOQUALMIE PASS AND A BROKEN AXLE


Tisdale leaned forward in his seat in the observation car. His rugged
features worked a little, and his eyes had their far-sighted gaze. Scarred
buttes crowded the track; great firs, clinging with exposed roots to the
bluffs, leaned in menace, and above the timber belt granite pyramids and
fingers shone amethyst against the sky; then a giant door closed on this