desert, would be too grave a risk.  To all intents and purposes they were marooned on an island with no reasonable chance of exit—­except!  To Banneker’s feverishly searching mind reverted a local legend.  Taking a chance on missing some emergency call, he hurried over to the village and interviewed, through the persuasive interpretation of sundry drinks, an aged and bearded wreck whose languid and chipped accents spoke of a life originally far alien to the habitudes of the Sick Coyote where he was fatalistically awaiting his final attack of delirium tremens.

Banneker returned from that interview with a map upon which had been scrawled a few words in shaky, scholarly writing.

“But one doesn’t say it’s safe, mind you,” had warned the shell of Lionel Streatham in his husky pipe.  “It’s only as a sporting offer that one would touch it.  And the courses may have changed in seven years.”

Denny wired in the morning that the inquiring traveler had set out from Manzanita, unescorted, on horseback, adding the prediction that he would have a hell of a trip, even if he got through at all.  Late that afternoon Gardner arrived at the station, soaked, hollow-eyed, stiff, exhausted, and cheerful.  He shook hands with the agent.

“How do you like yourself in print?” he inquired.

“Pretty well,” answered Banneker.  “It read better than I expected.”

“It always does, until you get old in the business.  How would you like a New York job on the strength of it?”

Banneker stared.  “You mean that I could get on a paper just by writing that?”

“I didn’t say so.  Though I’ve known poorer stuff land more experienced men.”

“More experienced; that’s the point, isn’t it?  I’ve had none at all.”

“So much the better.  A metropolitan paper prefers to take a man fresh and train him to its own ways.  There’s your advantage if you can show natural ability.  And you can.”

“I see,” muttered Banneker thoughtfully.

“Where does Miss Van Arsdale live?” asked the reporter without the smallest change of tone.

“What do you want to see Miss Van Arsdale for?” returned the other, his instantly defensive manner betraying him to the newspaper man.

“You know as well as I do,” smiled Gardner.

“Miss Van Arsdale has been ill.  She’s a good deal of a recluse.  She doesn’t like to see people.”

“Does her visitor share that eccentricity?”

Banneker made no reply.

“See here, Banneker,” said the reporter earnestly; “I’d like to know why you’re against me in this thing.”

“What thing?” fenced the agent.

“My search for Io Welland.”

“Who is Io Welland, and what are you after her for?” asked Banneker steadily.

“Apart from being the young lady that you’ve been escorting around the local scenery,” returned the imperturbable journalist, “she’s the most brilliant and interesting figure in the younger set of the Four Hundred.  She’s a newspaper beauty.  She’s copy.  She’s news.  And when she gets into a railroad wreck and disappears from the world for weeks, and her supposed fiance, the heir to a dukedom, makes an infernal ass of himself over it all and practically gives himself away to the papers, she’s big news.”