Deserted | Page 6

the situation would be if she had only said Yes, instead of
No, that afternoon. People have odd notions sometimes, and it actually
seemed to him that his vexation with her for destroying the pleasure of
the present occasion was something quite apart from, and in addition to,
his main grievance against her. It might have been so jolly, and now
she had spoiled it. He could have boxed her pretty little ears.
She wondered why he did not try to light a fire, but she wouldn't ask
him another thing, if she died. In point of fact, he knew the sagebrush
would not burn. Suddenly the wind blew fiercer, there came a rushing
sound, and the top and walls of the wigwam were whisked off like a
flash, and as they staggered to their feet, buffeted by the whirling
bushes, a cloud of fine alkali-dust enveloped them, blinding their eyes,
penetrating their ears and noses, and setting them gasping, sneezing,
and coughing spasmodically. Then, like a puff of smoke, the
suffocating storm was dissipated, and when they opened their smarting
eyes there was nothing but the silent, glorious desolation of the ghostly
desert around them, with the snow-peaks in the distance glittering
beneath the moon. A sand-spout had struck them, that was all,--one of
the whirling dust-columns which they had admired all day from the
car-windows.
Wretched enough before, both for physical and sentimental reasons,
this last experience quite demoralized Miss Dwyer, and she sat down
and cried. Now, a few tears, regarded from a practical, middle-aged

point of view, would not appear to have greatly complicated the
situation, but they threw Lombard into a panic. If she was going to cry,
something must be done. Whether anything could be done or not,
something must be done.
"Don't leave me," she cried hysterically, as he rushed off to reconnoitre
the vicinity.
"I 'll return presently," he called back.
But five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes passed, and he did not
come back. Terror dried her tears, and her heart almost stopped beating.
She had quite given him up for lost, and herself too, when with
inexpressible relief she heard him call to her. She replied, and in a
moment more he was at her side, breathless with running.
"I lost my bearings," he said. "If you had not answered me, I could not
have found you."
"Don't leave me again," she sobbed, clinging to his arm.
He put his arms round her and kissed her. It was mean, base,
contemptible, to take advantage of her agitation in that way, but she did
not resist, and he did it again and again,--I forbear to say how many
times.
"Is n't it a perfectly beautiful night?" he exclaimed, with a fine gush of
enthusiasm.
"Is n't it exquisite?" she echoed, with a rush of sympathetic feeling.
"See those stars: they look as if they had just been polished," he cried.
"What a droll idea!" she exclaimed gleefully. "But do see that lovely
mountain."
Holding her with a firmer clasp, and speaking with what might be
styled a fierce tenderness, he demanded, "What did you mean, miss, by
refusing me this afternoon?"

"What did you go at me so stupidly for? I had to refuse," she retorted
smilingly.
"Will you be my wife?"
"Yes, sir; I meant to be all the time."
The contract having been properly sealed, Lombard said, with a
countenance curiously divided between a tragical expression and a
smile of fatuous complacency, "There was a clear case of poetical
justice in your being left behind in the desert to-night. To see the lights
of the train disappearing, leaving you alone in the midst of desolation,
gave you a touch of my feeling on being rejected this afternoon. Of all
leavings behind, there's none so miserable as the experience of the
rejected lover."
"Poor fellow! so he should n't be left behind. He shall be conductor of
the train," she said, with a bewitching laugh. His response was not
verbal.
"How cold the wind is!" she said.
"Shall I build you another wigwam?"
"No; let us exercise a little. You whistle 'The Beautiful Blue Danube,'
and we'll waltz. This desert is the biggest, jolliest ball-room floor that
ever was, and I dare say we shall be the first to waltz on it since the
creation of the world. That will be something to boast of when we get
home. Come, let's dedicate the Great American Desert to Terpsichore."
They stepped out from among the ruins of their sagebrush booth upon a
patch of hard, bare earth close to the railroad track. Lombard puckered
his lips and struck up the air, and off they went with as much
enthusiasm as if inspired by a first-class orchestra. Round and round, to
and fro, they