"Have you seen her since the smash?"

"Don't know. Got a kind of confused recklection of seeing her wobbling around at the side of the track. Can't be sure, though. Might have been me."

"Might have been you? How could--"

"Wobbly, myself. Mixed in my thinks. When I came to I was pretty busy putting my lunch," explained the other with simple realism. "One of Mr.

Pullman's seats butted me in the stomach. They ain't upholstered as soft as you'd think to look at 'em. I went reeling around, looking for Miss I. O. W., she being alone, you know, and I thought she might need some looking after. And I had that idea of having seen her with her hand to her head dazed and running--yes; that's it, she was running. Wow!" said the young man fervently. "She was a pretty thing! You don't suppose--" He turned hesitantly to the file of bodies, now decently covered with sheets.

For a grisly instant Banneker thought of the one mangled monstrosity--_that_ to have been so lately loveliness and charm, with deep fire in its eyes and perhaps deep tenderness and passion in its heart. He dismissed the thought as being against the evidence and entered the initials in his booklet.

"I'll look out for her," said he. "Probably she's forward somewhere."

Without respite he toiled until a long whistle gave notice of the return of the locomotive which had gone forward to meet the delayed special from Stanwood. Human beings were clinging about it in little clusters like bees; physicians, nurses, officials, and hospital attendants. The dispatcher from Stanwood listened to Banneker's brief report, and sent him back to Manzanita, with a curt word of approval for his work.

Banneker's last sight of the wreck, as he paused at the curve, was the helpful young man perched on the rear heap of wreckage which had been the observation car, peering anxiously into its depths ("Looking for I.

O. W. probably," surmised the agent), and two commercial gentlemen from the smoker whiling away a commercially unproductive hiatus by playing pinochle on a suitcase held across their knees. Glancing at the vast, swollen, blue-black billows rolling up the sky, Banneker guessed that their game would be shortly interrupted.

He hoped that the dead would not get wet.

CHAPTER III

Back in his office, Banneker sent out the necessary wires, and learned from westward that it might be twelve hours before the break in the track near Stanwood could be fixed up. Then he settled down to his report.

Like his earlier telegram, the report was a little masterpiece of concise information. Not a word in it that was not dry, exact, meaningful. This was the more to the writer's credit in that his brain was seething with impressions, luminous with pictures, aflash with odds and ends of minor but significant things heard and seen and felt. It was his first inner view of tragedy and of the reactions of the human creature, brave or stupid or merely absurd, to a crisis. For all of this he had an outlet of expression.

Taking from the wall a file marked "Letters. Private"-it was 5 S 0027, and one of his most used purchases--he extracted some sheets of a special paper and, sitting at his desk, wrote and wrote and wrote, absorbedly, painstakingly, happily. Wind swept the outer world into a vortex of wild rain; the room boomed and trembled with the reverberations of thunder. Twice the telegraph instrument broke in on him; but these matters claimed only the outer shell; the soul of the man was concerned with committing its impressions of other souls to the secrecy of white paper, destined to personal and inviolable archives.

Some one entered the waiting-room. There was a tap on his door. Raising his head impatiently, Banneker saw, through the window already dimming with the gathering dusk, a large roan horse, droopy and disconsolate in the downpour. He jumped up and threw open his retreat. A tall woman, slipping out of a streaming poncho, entered. The simplicity, verging upon coarseness, of her dress detracted nothing from her distinction of bearing.

"Is there trouble on the line?" she asked in a voice of peculiar clarity.

"Bad trouble, Miss Camilla," answered Banneker. He pushed forward a chair, but she shook her head. "A loosened rock smashed into Number Three in the Cut. Eight dead, and a lot more in bad shape. They've got doctors and nurses from Stanwood. But the track's out below. And from what I get on the wire"--he nodded toward the east--"it'll be out above before long."

"I'd better go up there," said she. Her lips grew bloodless as she spoke and there was a look of effort and pain in her face.

"No; I don't think so. But if you'll go over to the town and see that Torrey gets his place cleaned up a bit, I suppose some of the passengers will be coming in pretty soon."

She made a quick gesture of repulsion. "Women can't go to Torrey's," she said. "It's too filthy. Besides--I'll take in the women, if there aren't too many and I can pick up a buckboard in Manzanita."

He nodded. "That'll be better, if any come in. Give me their names, won't you? I have to keep track of them, you know."

The manner of the two was that of familiars, of friends, though there was a touch of deference in Banneker's bearing, too subtly personal to be attributed to his official status. He went out to adjust the visitor's poncho, and, swinging her leg across the Mexican saddle of her horse with the mechanical ease of one habituated to this mode of travel, she was off.

Again the agent returned to his unofficial task and was instantly submerged in it. Impatiently he interrupted himself to light the lamps and at once resumed his pen. An emphatic knock at his door only caused him to shake his head. The summons was repeated. With a sigh Banneker gathered the written sheets, enclosed them in 5 S 0027, and restored that receptacle to its place. Meantime the knocking continued impatiently, presently pointed by a deep--

"Any one inside there?"

"Yes," said Banneker, opening to face the bulky old man who had cared for the wounded. "What's wanted?"

Uninvited, and with an assured air, the visitor stepped in.

"I am Horace Vanney," he announced.

Banneker waited.

"Do you know my name?"

"No."

In no wise discountenanced by the matter-of-fact negative, Mr. Vanney, still unsolicited, took a chair. "You would if you read the newspapers,"

he observed.

"I do."

"The New York papers," pursued the other, benignly explanatory. "It doesn't matter. I came in to say that I shall make it my business to report your energy and efficiency to your superiors."

"Thank you," said Banneker politely.

"And I can assure you that my commendation will carry weight. Weight, sir."

The agent accepted this with a nod, obviously unimpressed. In fact, Mr.

Vanney suspected with annoyance, he was listening not so much to these encouraging statements as to some unidentified noise outside. The agent raised the window and addressed some one who had approached through the steady drive of the rain. A gauntleted hand thrust through the window a slip of paper which he took. As he moved, a ray of light from the lamp, unblocked by his shoulder, fell upon the face of the person in the darkness, illuminating it to the astounded eyes of Mr. Horace Vanney.

"Two of them are going home with me," said a voice. "Will you send these wires to the addresses?"

"All right," replied Banneker, "and thank you. Good-night."

"Who was that?" barked Mr. Vanney, half rising.

"A friend of mine."

"I would swear to that face." He seemed quite excited. "I would swear to it anywhere. It is unforgettable. That was Camilla Van Arsdale. Was she in the wreck?"

"No."

"Don't tell me that it wasn't she! Don't try to tell me, for I won't believe it."

"I'm not trying to tell you anything," Banneker pointed out.

"True; you're not. You're close-mouthed enough. But--Camilla Van Arsdale! Incredible! Does she live here?"

"Here or hereabouts."

"You must give me the address. I must surely go and see her."