CHAPTER XV

WHEN THE TRAIN CAME IN

In a very dark corner of the station Tavia found a broken washbowl, and from the water pail she carried two cups full of water, with which to refresh her worn and haggard face.

Sam Dixon had brought her word that she might ride back to his boarding house with him, and share his coffee, but she was to say that she was his niece, and that she was on her way to her grandmother’s, “like little red riding hood,” chuckled Sam, when he disclosed his plan.

Tavia cared little for coffee, but she was weak, and the fear of being again left in the station alone prompted her to accept the well-meant invitation.  In fact, she had in her hours of desolation become quite fond of the little old man with the blackthorn cane.

“Yes, I’ll go gladly,” she answered, and his pleasure could not be doubted.

Accordingly, when the milk train had pulled out, and the station was again locked, Tavia jumped into the narrow carriage beside the old man, and, asking if he would not like to have her drive, she pulled up the reins, and they started off.

Here was a new experience.  If only now she could forget the agony that Dorothy must be experiencing, it would not be so dreadful to go at this early morning hour, over the dewy roads, in the ramshackle buggy with her benefactor at her side.

“At any rate,” she thought to herself, “I’ll have a good story to tell when I do get back to camp.”

“Is your place far?” she asked of Sam, more for the sake of talking than of asking.

“Not so very.  You see, it has always been rather rough out this way—­lumbermen and the like always puttin’ up at Dobson’s.  That’s why I thought you was better off in the station, than to try to make your way about last night.  And some of them rough fellows stop at my place—­that’s Dobson’s—­so while they’re out now is your chance to get a hot drink.”

As he spoke, a rough man, indeed, passed the carriage in which Tavia and Sam were riding!  Wasn’t he rough!  Tavia instinctively shrugged up closer to the old man beside her.

“Uncle Sam, was that a—­woodman?”

Tavia fell in quite naturally to calling the station agent Uncle Sam.

“Yep, he’s one of the sort,” taking care to keep his smile focussed on the man, who although he was going in the opposite direction was able to keep his eye on Tavia.  “You see they are the most suspicious set—­takes a man a lifetime to know them, a woman an eternity, and then she has to depend upon their good nature.”

Tavia smiled, and hurried the old horse until his ears “sassed her back.”  They jogged along—­every moment nature was getting more and more wideawake, until Tavia feared she would really wake up to the magnitude of her own personal offence, everything else seemed so straightforward and so upright!