"Stop! ho! stop!" he yelled at the top of his lungs. But there was no one on the rear platform to see him, and the closed windows and the rattle of the wheels were sufficient to render a much louder noise than he could make inaudible to the dozing passengers. And now the engineer pulled out the throttle-valve to make up for lost time, and the clatter of the train faded into a distant roar and its lights began to twinkle into indistinctness.
A voice fell like a falling star: "Gentlemen do not use profane language in ladies' company."
He first looked up in the air, as on the whole the likeliest quarter for a voice to come from in this desert, then around. Just on the other side of the track stood Miss Dwyer, smiling with a somewhat constrained attempt at self-possession. Lombard was a good deal taken aback, but in his surprise he did not forget that this was the young lady who had refused him that afternoon.
"I beg your pardon," he replied with a stiff bow: "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 couple of 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 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."