"East wire free as air, Jim," he said. "You can begin that there story whenever you want."
And so, weary as she was, and with nerves still high-pitched, Stella Donovan began, slowly at first, until she got the swing of her "lead,"
and then more rapidly; one after another the yellow sheets on which she wrote were fed past Westcott"s critical eyes and into the hands of Carson, who operated his "bug" like a madman.
An hour went past, an hour and a quarter--Stella Donovan was still writing. An hour and a half. Westcott saw her face tensing under the strain, saw it grow wan and white, and, reaching down he gripped the fingers that clenched the pencil.
"No more, Stella," he said firmly, "you"ve sent four thousand!"
She looked at him tenderly. "Please, Jim," she begged, "just let me add one more paragraph. It"s the most important one of all."
The miner released her hand and the girl wrote hurriedly, this time pa.s.sing the sheets direct to Carson. Heroically the station agent stuck to his task, and as he tossed the first of the sheets aside, an eddying wisp of wind caught it, danced it a moment on the table-top, then slid it over under the very palm of big Jim Westcott"s right hand.
Slowly he picked it up and read it.
"So!" he said, with something strangely like a cry in his deep voice, "so you"ve resigned from the _Star_, and you"re going to stay in Haskell?"
The girl looked at him, her lips trembling.
"I never want to be a lady reporter again," she whispered. "Never!"
They were in the open doorway now, and through the lush, warm gloom a belated light twinkled down in Haskell, slumbering like a bad child in the gulch below. And as they stood there watching a fair young moon making its first bow in a purple sky, their lips met in a long tender kiss; when they lifted their eyes again it was to let them range over the eternal misty hills with their hearts of gold in which lay the future--their future.