a trace of hesitation or self-consciousness Banneker said, "All
right," and, taking his composition from its docket, motioned the other
to the light. Mr. Gardner finished and turned the first sheet before
making any observation. Then he bent a queer look upon Banneker and
grunted:

"What do you call this stuff, anyway?"

"Just putting down what I saw."

Gardner read on. "What about this, about a Pullman sleeper 'elegant as a
hotel bar and rigid as a church pew'? Where do you get that?"

Banneker looked startled. "I don't know. It just struck me that is the
way a Pullman is."

"Well, it is," admitted the visitor, and continued to read. "And this
guy with the smashed finger that kept threatening to 'soom'; is that
right?"

"Of course it's right. You don't think I'd make it up! That reminds me
of something." And he entered a memo to see the litigious-minded
complainant again, for these are the cases which often turn up in the
courts with claims for fifty-thousand-dollar damages and heartrending
details of all-but-mortal internal injuries.

Silence held the reader until he had concluded the seventh and last
sheet. Not looking at Banneker, he said:

"So that's your notion of reporting the wreck of the swellest train that
crosses the continent, is it?"

"It doesn't pretend to be a report," disclaimed the writer. "It's pretty
bad, is it?"

"It's rotten!" Gardner paused. "From a news-desk point of view. Any
copy-reader would chuck it. Unless I happened to sign it," he added.
"Then they'd cuss it out and let it pass, and the dear old pin-head
public would eat it up."

"If it's of any use to you--"

"Not so, my boy, not so! I might pinch your wad if you left it around
loose, or even your last cigarette, but not your stuff. Let me take it
along, though; it may give me some ideas. I'll return it. Now, where can
I get a bed in the town?"

"Nowhere. Everything's filled. But I can give you a hammock out in my
shack."

"That's better. I'll take it. Thanks."

Banneker kept his guest awake beyond the limits of decent hospitality,
asking him questions.

The reporter, constantly more interested in this unexpected find of a
real personality in an out-of-the-way minor station of the high desert,
meditated a character study of "the hero of the wreck," but could not
quite contrive any peg whereon to hang the wreath of heroism. By his own
modest account, Banneker had been competent but wholly unpicturesque,
though the cha