A little piqued but more amused, for she was far too confident of herself to feel snubbed, the girl waited smilingly. Presently she said in silken tones:

"When you're quite through and can devote a little attention to insignificant me, I shall perhaps be sitting on the sunny corner of the platform, or perhaps I shall be gone forever."

But she was not gone when, ten minutes later, Banneker came out. He looked tired.

"You know, you weren't very polite to me," she remarked, glancing at him slantwise as he stood before her.

If she expected apologies, she was disappointed, and perhaps thought none the less of him for his dereliction.

"There's trouble all up and down the line," he said. "Nothing like a schedule left west of Allbright. Two passenger trains have come through, though. Would you like to see a paper? It's in my office."

"Goodness, no! Why should I want a newspaper here? I haven't time for it. I want to see the world"--she swept a little, indicating hand about her; "all that I can take in in a day."

"A day?" he echoed.

"Yes. I'm going to-morrow."

"That's as may be. Ten to one there's no space to be had."

"Surely you can get something for me. A section will do if you can't get a stateroom."

He smiled. "The president of the road might get a stateroom. I doubt if anybody else could even land an upper. Of course I'll do my best. But it's a question when there'll be another train through."

"What ails your road?" she demanded indignantly. "Is it just stuck together with glue?"

"You've never seen this desert country when it springs a leak. It can develop a few hundred Niagaras at the shortest notice of any place I know."

"But it isn't leaking now," she objected.

He turned his face to the softly diffused sunlight. "To be continued.

The storm isn't over yet, according to the way I feel about it. Weather reports say so, too."

"Then take me for a walk!" she cried. "I'm tired of rain and I want to go over and lean against that lovely white mountain."

"Well, it's only sixty miles away," he answered. "Perhaps you'd better take some grub along or you might get hungry."

"Aren't you coming with me?"

"This is my busy morning. If it were afternoon, now--"

"Very well. Since you are so urgent, I _will_ stay to luncheon. I'll even get it up myself if you'll let me into the shack."

"That's a go!" said Banneker heartily. "What about your horse?"

"I walked over."

"No; did you?" He turned thoughtful, and his next observation had a slightly troubled ring. "Have you got a gun?"

"A gun? Oh, you mean a pistol. No; I haven't. Why should I?"

He shook his head. "This is no time to be out in the open without a gun.

They had a dance at the Sick Coyote in Manzanita last night, and there'll be some tough specimens drifting along homeward all day."

"Do you carry a gun?"

"I would if I were going about with you."

"Then you can loan me yours to go home with this afternoon," she said lightly.

"Oh, I'll take you back. Just now I've got some odds and ends that will take a couple of hours to clear up. You'll find plenty to read in the shack, such as it is."

Thus casually dismissed, Io murmured a "Thank you" which was not as meek as it sounded, and withdrew to rummage among the canned edibles drawn from the inexhaustible stock of Sears-Roebuck. Having laid out a selection, housewifely, and looked to the oil stove derived from the same source, she turned with some curiosity to the mental pabulum with which this strange young hermit had provided himself. Would this, too, bear the mail-order imprint and testify to mail-order standards? At first glance the answer appeared to be affirmative. The top shelf of the home-made case sagged with the ineffable slusheries of that most popular and pious of novelists, Harvey Wheelwright. Near by, "How to Behave on All Occasions" held forth its unimpeachable precepts, while a little beyond, "Botany Made Easy" and "The Perfect Letter Writer" proffered further aid to the aspiring mind. Improvement, stark, blatant Improvement, advertised itself from that culturous and reeking compartment. But just below--Io was tempted to rub her eyes--stood Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy"; a Browning, complete; that inimitably jocund fictional prank, Frederic's "March Hares," together with the same author's fine and profoundly just "Damnation of Theron Ware"; Taylor's translation of Faust; "The [broken-backed] Egoist"; "Lavengro" (Io touched its magic pages with tender fingers), and a fat, faded, reddish volume so worn and obscured that she at once took it down and made explorative entry. She was still deep in it when the owner arrived.

"Have you found enough to keep you amused?"

She looked up from the pages and seemed to take him all in anew before answering. "Hardly the word. Bewildered would be nearer the feeling."

"It's a queerish library, I suppose," he said apologetically.

"If I believed in dual personality--" she began; but broke off to hold up the bulky veteran. "Where did you get 'The Undying Voices'?"

"Oh, that's a windfall. What a bully title for a collection of the great poetries, isn't it!"

She nodded, one caressing hand on the open book, the other propping her chin as she kept the clear wonder of her eyes upon him.

"It makes you think of singers making harmony together in a great open space. I'd like to know the man who made the selections," he concluded.

"What kind of a windfall?" she asked.

"A real one. Pullman travelers sometimes prop their windows open with books. You can see the window-mark on the cover of this one. I found it two miles out, beside the right-of-way. There was no name in it, so I kept it. It's the book I read most except one."

"What's the one?"

He laughed, holding up the still more corpulent Sears-Roebuck catalogue.

"Ah," said she gravely. "That accounts, I suppose, for the top shelf."

"Yes, mostly."

"Do you like them? The Conscientious Improvers, I mean?"

"I think they're bunk."

"Then why did you get them?"

"Oh, I suppose I was looking for something," he returned; and though his tone was careless, she noticed for the first time a tinge of self-consciousness.

"Did you find it there?"