The girl at Silver Thistle

For a long while Nevada remained by the sofa. Most of the time the injured girl lay dozing. As often as she opened her eyes she found herself looking into Nevada’s radiant face. Then a smile passed between them.

Trains went by, following each other rapidly, trains that had been halted and delayed by the “Special’s” unexpected stop at Silver Thistle. At eleven o’clock Nevada’s father returned from his run. She heard him roll the little speeder into the tool house, and a few minutes later came the sound of his thick-soled shoes on the floor. Mrs. Buckley met him in the kitchen and in low tones informed him of the presence of the superintendent’s daughter in the station-house.

Before retiring, Mrs. Buckley and Nevada moved the patient to the bed in the latter’s room. Nevada herself, took the sofa having moved it near the open door. With the lamp turned so low that it filled the little apartment with a soft, subdued glow, she prepared to keep watch through the night. Twice she dressed the injured finger, carefully and tenderly. She was pleased to note that the inflammation was much reduced and that the girl slept more quietly.

“She will be almost well of the sting tomorrow,” Nevada declared happily. “And we will have such a good time together.”

Nevada had never known the joy of close fellowship with a girl of her own age. All her life she had been without a playmate. She had never gone to school, even for a day. Her mother had been her teacher and companion, and the only home she had ever known was the station-house close by the railroad, always in some remote place. Her only acquaintances, the big-hearted men of the train crews who could not play with her, although they had ever been her devoted friends, bringing her sweets and toys, and waving their bronzed hands in happy recognition from the time she could lift her own chubby ones in response.

Now that a girl of her own age had come into her life, her cup of happiness was so full she could not sleep. As often as the patient moved, Nevada rose quickly, eager to render any service she could give. Late in the night the patient sank into a calm, peaceful slumber. Then it was that Nevada turned the lamp lower and went to sleep. When she awoke, the bright, dazzling sun of the desert was streaming in through the window. She heard her mother at work in the kitchen. From the pump-house came the irregular “Put-put Put-put!” of the gasoline engine as it labored vigorously in its work of refilling the deplenished tank. She knew by this that her father was up and at work. As a usual thing she was out in the tool house with him, or in the kitchen with her mother at this time of day. She heard a slight movement from the bed, and looking over, saw her patient sitting up.

“Isn’t it a lovely morning!” exclaimed the superintendent’s daughter. “And I feel fine. My hand does not pain me at all.”

“I am so glad,” returned Nevada. “I’ll bring you fresh water and you can dress at your leisure, that is, if you feel like getting up.”

“Oh, yes, I want to get up! I’m not an invalid. We must fill these days full, you know.”

The young guest thanked her hostess as she brought basin and water and then she added, “Just a moment, please. Before you go I want to ask your name. I haven’t heard it yet.”

“It’s Nevada,” was the answer, the radiant glow of the desert in her cheeks and the brightness of the desert stars in her eyes.

“Nevada,” the other girl repeated. “Nevada, a lovely name, and it fits you,” she said frankly. “And now I’ll tell you mine. It is Debue.”

“Oh, that is the name of your father’s car,” said Nevada.

“Yes, he named it in my honor,” Debue informed her.

“It is certainly a pretty name. And now that we are fully acquainted, you’ll call me Nevada, or ‘Neva,’ if you like, just as do father and mother and Jerry Kerrigan.”

“That will be lovely,” Debue agreed, as she sprang out of bed. “We’re going to have a big time together. And you will call me Debue.”

The “big time together” had its beginning soon after breakfast. The stipulation of Debue was that it must not interfere with the regular work of her hostess, and though the injured hand prevented her from giving much assistance, she did help Nevada with her household tasks. Then they visited the pump-house where the busy gasoline engine kept up its noisy chugging. They watched the coming and the going of the trains. They received letters, messages and bundles from men of the crew. They even gathered an armload of the pink-tinted thistle blossoms, plucking only those that stood away from rocks and sage clumps where the dreaded scorpions might lie in hiding. Before noon came they seemed as well acquainted as though they had always been together.

Late in the afternoon, when supper was over, the dishes cleared away and Bob Buckley had gone out on his regular evening trip with the speeder to light the signal lamps, the two girls took a short walk into the desert. The sun had gone down behind the Funeral Range. The dazzling golden light of day was replaced with the subdued shades of dusk, shades that changed from crimson to lavender, from lavender to purple. The shimmering heat waves were driven away by a cooling breeze. The desert, with its vast, far-reaching border lines came out in clear outline. Distant sand ridges, buttes and ranges that could not be seen during the day, were now clearly visible. Desert birds, that had been hushed and silent through the hours of dazzling heat, now opened their throats and sang.

“I did not know the desert was so beautiful, and yet so vast and mysterious,” spoke Debue, as the two, walking hand in hand, reached the summit of a sand ridge a mile from the station. They had followed a dim trail made by Nevada in her regular wanderings. After crossing a broad, mesquite-grown mesa, they dropped down into a dry, shale-floored coulee, and then climbed the ridge beyond. Here they stood looking around them. To the utter amazement of the visitor, they had reached, in this brief time, a spot that seemed isolation itself. Silver Thistle, with its cluster of yellow buildings, the railroad with its line of telegraph poles and lifting semaphores, all were blotted out. It was as if the whole world were a desert, and they its only inhabitants.

“I can’t understand it!” exclaimed Debue in surprise. “We have not come far. The station must be right over there!” she said, raising her hand and pointing across the mesa.

Nevada laughed merrily. “You would miss it a long way, if you went in that direction to find it,” she said.

“Then I must be lost,” admitted Debue.

“Not exactly that,” Nevada corrected. “You’re confused a little in direction, that’s all. I had the same difficulty when I first came out here. This old desert is very deceiving to the eye, and this particular spot is especially so. The station is hidden behind that lifting sand ridge over there. When we dropped into the coulee we lost sight of it, and we made a turn in climbing up here. I call this my lookout, and I often come out here in the evening just to catch the spirit of the desert.”

They stood for a time, silently, held speechless by the wonder and awe of the vast arid waste around them. The world seemed a long way off. Then came a sound, a dull, distant rumble that grew louder and louder as the moments passed. Not until the musical tritone of a locomotive whistle lifted clear and distinct as a bugle call, did Debue realize that it was the sound of an approaching train.

“It’s Number Sixteen,” said Nevada, and then she added in tones of infinite meaning, “Do you know it has been almost a whole day since you came?”

“A very happy day it has been for me,” Debue told her.

“The very happiest day in all my life,” the desert girl added.

They turned from the ridge, and hand in hand, walked slowly through the growing dark toward the station-house. They were tired, both of them, and they made ready at once to retire. Again it was arranged for Debue to occupy Nevada’s bed, while the latter prepared to sleep on the sofa near the open door. Debue’s hand was dressed for the last time, Nevada assuring her the bandage could be removed on the morrow.

A few minutes after getting into bed, Debue was soundly asleep. Nevada put out the light and soon followed her into dreamland. How long she slept she did not know. Some time in the night she awoke with a start, and found herself sitting up, carried at once from utter unconsciousness to complete wakefulness. She looked toward the bed. The window curtain had been rolled to the top and the window left wide open. A silvery desert moonlight poured in. She could see every corner of the room, the white sheets of the bed, and the head of the sleeping Debue on the pillow. Nevada knew she was sleeping, by her long, regular breathing. Absolute stillness filled the station-house. In a vague way Nevada realized that a train had passed, yet she knew no train had awakened her. Something else had disturbed her sleep and she looked around with a feeling of alarm.

She got up and tiptoed to the clock in the living-room. It was a quarter of one. Her father had been home almost two hours, so it could not have been his coming that awoke her. Debue had not called or made any unusual sound. What was it, then? Some unusual sound had awakened her, of this she was certain.

She took a peep into the kitchen, then came back toward the sofa. Just as she entered the open door of her room, she was startled by a slight sound outside, a sound that seemed to come from near the window. She paused, peered intently in that direction and heard the sound resolve into a low, muffled tread. While she looked, the dark form of a man, stooping low, crept away from the house and moved slowly toward the railroad.