Miss Forbes unembarrassed.

"Oh, as far as you'll let me," she answered. "Did you ride in from your
ranch and drag Io out of the tangled wreckage at the end of your lasso?"

"My ranch? I wasn't on a ranch."

"Please, sir," she smiled up at him like a beseeching angel, "what did
you do that kept us all talking and speculating about you for a whole
week, though we didn't know your name?"

"I sat right on my job as station-agent at Manzanita and made up lists
of the killed and injured," answered Banneker dryly.

"Station-agent!" The girl was taken aback, for this was not at all in
consonance with the Io myth as it had drifted back, from sources never
determined, to New York. "Were you the station-agent?"

"I was."

She bestowed a glance at once appraising and flattering, less upon
himself than upon his apparel. "And what are you now? President of the
road?"

"A reporter on The Ledger."

"Really!" This seemed to astonish her even more than the previous
information. "What are you reporting here?"

"I'm off duty to-night."

"I see. Could you get off duty some afternoon and come to tea, if I'll
promise to have Io there to meet you?"

"Your party seems to be making signals of distress, Miss Forbes."

"That's the normal attitude of my friends and family toward me. You'll
come, won't you, Mr. Banneker?"

"Thank you: but reporting keeps one rather too busy for amusement."

"You won't come," she murmured, aggrieved. "Then it _is_ true about you
and Io."

This time she achieved a result. Banneker flushed angrily, though he
said, coolly enough: "I think perhaps you would make an enterprising
reporter, yourself, Miss Forbes."

"I'm sure I should. Well, I'll apologize. And if you won't come for
Io--she's still abroad, by the way and won't be back for a
month--perhaps you'll come for me. Just to show that you forgive my
impertinences. Everybody does. I'm going to tell Bertie Cressey he must
bring you.... All right, Bertie! I wish you wouldn't follow me up
like--like a paper-chase. Good-night, Mr. Banneker."

To her indignant escort she declared that it couldn't have hurt them to
wait a jiffy; that she had had a most amusing conversation; that Mr.
Banneker was as charming as he was good to look at; and that (in answer
to sundry questions) she had found out little or nothing, though she
hoped for better results in future.

"But he's Io's passion-in-the-desert right enough," said the irreverent
Miss Forbes.

Ban