In this Letter, we analyze soft X-ray (SXR) and hard X-ray (HXR) emission of the 2002 September 20 M1.8 GOES class solar flare observed by the RHESSI and GOES satellites. In this flare event, SXR emission precedes the onset of the main bulk HXR emission by ~5 minutes. This suggests that an additional heating mechanism may be at work at the early beginning of the flare. However, RHESSI spectra indicate a presence of the non-thermal electrons also before the impulsive phase. So, we assumed that a dominant energy transport mechanism during the rise phase of solar flares is electron-beam-driven evaporation. We used non-thermal electron beams derived from RHESSI spectra as the heating source in a hydrodynamic model of the analyzed flare. We showed that energy delivered by non-thermal electron beams is sufficient to heat the flare loop to temperatures in which it emits SXR closely following the GOES 1-8 Å light curve. We also analyze the number of non-thermal electrons, the low-energy cutoff, electron spectral indices, and the changes of these parameters with time.