The snub left 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?"