Attendance upon the sick-room occupied Io's time for several days thereafter. Morning and afternoon Banneker rode over from the station to make anxious inquiry. The self-appointed nurse reported progress as rapid as could be expected, but was constantly kept on the alert because of the patient's rebellion against enforced idleness. Seizures of the same sort she had suffered before, it appeared, but none hitherto so severe. Nothing could be done, she told Io, beyond the administration of the medicine, for which she had full directions. One day an attack would finish it all; meantime, in spite of her power of self-repression, she chafed at the monotony of her imprisonment.

In the late afternoon of the day after the collapse, while Io was heating water at the fireplace, she heard a drawer open in the sick-room and hurried back to find Miss Van Arsdale hanging to the dresser, her face gray-splotched and her fingers convulsively crushing a letter which she had taken from under lock. Alarmed and angry, the amateur nurse got her back to bed only half conscious, but still cherishing her trove. When, an hour later, she dared leave her charge, she heard the rustle of smoothed-out paper and remained outside long enough to allow for the reading. On her return there was no sign of the letter. Miss Van Arsdale, a faint and hopeful color in her cheeks, was asleep.

For Banneker these were days of trial and tribulation. Added to the anxiety that he felt for his best friend was the uncertainty as to what he ought to do about the developments affecting her guest. For he had heard once more from Gardner.

"It's on the cards," wrote the reporter, "that I may be up to see you again. I'm still working, on and off, on the tip that took me on that wild-goose chase. If I come again I won't quit without some of the wild goose's tail feathers, at least. There's a new tip locally; it leaked out from Paradise. ["The Babbling Babson," interjected the reader mentally.] It looks as though the bird were still out your way. Though how she could be, and you not know it, gets me. It's even a bigger game than Stella Wrightington, if my information is O.K. Have you heard or seen anything lately of a Beautiful Stranger or anything like that around Manzanita?... I enclose clipping of your story. What do you think of yourself in print?"

Banneker thought quite highly of himself in print as he read the article, which he immediately did. The other matter could wait; not that it was less important; quite the contrary; but he proposed to mull it over carefully and with a quiet mind, if he could ever get his mind back to its peaceful current again: meantime it was good for him to think of something quite dissociated from the main problem.

What writer has not felt the conscious red tingle in his cheeks at first sight of himself in the magnified personification of type? Here is something, once himself, now expanded far beyond individual limits, into the proportions of publicity, for all the world to measure and estimate and criticize. Ought it to have been done in just that way? Is there not too much "I" in the presentation? Would not the effect have been greater had the method been less personal? It seemed to Banneker that he himself stood forth in a stark nakedness of soul and thought, through those blatantly assertive words, shameless, challenging to public opinion, yet delightful to his own appreciation. On the whole it was good; better than he would have thought he could do.

What he had felt, in the writing of it, to be jerks and bumps were magically smoothed out in the finished product. At one point where the copy-reader's blue pencil had elided an adjective which the writer had deemed specially telling, he felt a sharp pang of disappointed resentment. Without that characterization the sentence seemed lifeless. Again, in another passage he wished that he had edited himself with more heed to the just word. Why had he designated the train as "rumbling" along the cut? Trains do not rumble between rock walls, he remembered; they move with a sustained and composite roar. And the finger-wringing malcontent who had vowed to "soom"; the editorial pencil had altered that to "sue 'em," thereby robbing it of its special flavor. Perhaps this was in accordance with some occult rule of the trade. But it spoiled the paragraph for Banneker. Nevertheless he was thrilled and elate.... He wanted to show the article to Io. What would she think of it? She had read him accurately: it _was_ in him to write. And she could help him, if only by--well, if only by being at hand.... But Gardner's letter! That meant that the pursuit was on again, more formidably this time. Gardner, the gadfly, stinging this modern Io out of her refuge of peace and safety!

He wrote and dispatched a message to the reporter in care of the Angelica City Herald:

Glad to see you, but you are wasting your time. No such person could be here without my knowing it. Thanks for article.

That was as near an untruth as Banneker cared to go. In his own mind he defended it on the ground that the projected visit would, in fact, be time wasted for the journalist since he, Banneker, intended fully that Gardner should not see Io. Deep would have been his disgust and self-derision could he have observed the effect of the message upon the cynical and informed journalist who, however, did not receive it until the second day after its transmission, as he had been away on another assignment.

"The poor fish!" was Gardner's comment. "He doesn't even say that she isn't there. He's got to lie better than that if he goes into the newspaper game."

Further, the reporter had received a note from the cowman whom Ban and Io had encountered in the woods, modestly requesting five dollars in return for the warranted fact that a "swell young lady" had been seen in Banneker's company. Other journalistic matters were pressing, however; he concluded that the "Manzanita Mystery," as he built it up headline-wise in his ready mind, could wait a day or two longer.

Banneker, through the mechanical course of his office, debated the situation. Should he tell Io of the message? To do so would only add to her anxieties, probably to no good purpose, for he did not believe that she would desert Miss Van Arsdale, ill and helpless, on any selfish consideration. Fidelity was one of the virtues with which he had unconsciously garlanded Io. Then, too, Gardner might not come anyway. If he did Banneker was innocently confident of his own ability to outwit the trained reporter and prevent his finding the object of his quest. A prospective and possible ally was forecast in the weather. Warning of another rainfall impending had come over the wire. As yet there was no sign visible from his far-horizoned home, except a filmy and changeful wreath of palest cloud with which Mount Carstairs was bedecked. Banneker decided for silence.

Miss Van Arsdale was much better when he rode over in the morning, but Io looked piteously worn and tired.

"You've had no rest," he accused her, away from the sick woman's hearing.

"Rest enough of its kind, but not much sleep," said Io.

"But you've got to have sleep," he insisted. "Let me stay and look after her to-night."

"It wouldn't be of any use."

"Why not?"

"I shouldn't sleep anyway. This house is haunted by spirits of unrest," said the girl fretfully. "I think I'll take a blanket and go out on the desert."

"And wake up to find a sidewinder crawling over you, and a tarantula nestling in your ear. Don't think of it."

"Ban," called the voice of Camilla Van Arsdale from the inner room, clear and firm as he had ever heard it.

He went in. She stretched out a hand to him. "It's good to see you, Ban. Have I worried you? I shall be up and about again to-morrow."

"Now, Miss Camilla," protested Banneker, "you mustn't--"

"I'm going to get up to-morrow," repeated the other immutably. "Don't be absurd about it. I'm not ill. It was only the sort of knock-down that I must expect from time to time. Within a day or two you'll see me riding over.... Ban, stand over there in that light.... What's that you've got on?"

"What, Miss Camilla?"

"That necktie. It isn't in your usual style. Where did you get it?"

"Sent to Angelica City for it. Don't you like it?" he returned, trying for the nonchalant air, but not too successfully.

"Not as well as your spotty butterflies," answered the woman jealously. "That's nonsense, though. Don't mind me, Ban," she added with a wry smile. "Plain colors are right for you. Browns, or blues, or reds, if they're not too bright. And you've tied it very well. Did it take you long to do it?"

Reddening and laughing, he admitted a prolonged and painful session before his glass. Miss Van Arsdale sighed. It was such a faint, abandoning breath of regret as might come from the breast of a mother when she sees her little son in his first pride of trousers.

"Go out and say good-night to Miss Welland," she ordered, "and tell her to go to bed. I've taken a sleeping powder."

Banneker obeyed. He rode home slowly and thoughtfully. His sleep was sound enough that night.

Breakfast-getting processes did not appeal to him when he awoke in the morning. He walked over, through the earliest light, to the hotel, where he made a meal of musty eggs, chemical-looking biscuits, and coffee of a rank hue and flavor, in an atmosphere of stale odors and flies, sickeningly different from the dainty ceremonials of Io's preparation. Rebuking himself for squeamishness, the station-agent returned to his office, caught an O.S. from the wire, took some general instructions, and went out to look at the weather. His glance never reached the horizon.

In the foreground where he had swung the hammock under the alamo it checked and was held, absorbed. A blanketed figure lay motionless in the curve of the meshwork. One arm was thrown across the eyes, warding a strong beam which had forced its way through the lower foliage. He tiptoed forward.

Io's breast was rising and falling gently in the hardly perceptible rhythm of her breathing. From the pale yellow surface of her dress, below the neck, protruded a strange, edged something, dun-colored, sharply defined and alien, which the man's surprised eyes failed to identify. Slowly the edge parted and flattened out, broadwise, displaying the marbled brilliance of the butterfly's inner wings, illumining the pale chastity of the sleeping figure as if with a quivering and evanescent jewel. Banneker, shaken and thrilled, closed his eyes. He felt as if a soul had opened its secret glories to him. When, commanding himself, he looked again, the living gem was gone. The girl slept evenly.

Conning the position of the sun and the contour of the sheltering tree, Banneker estimated that in a half-hour or less a flood of sunlight would pour in upon the slumberer's face to awaken her. Cautiously withdrawing, he let himself into the shack, lighted his oil stove, put on water to boil, set out the coffee and the stand. He felt different about breakfast-getting now. Having prepared the arrangements for his prospective guest, he returned and leaned against the alamo, filling his eyes with still delight of the sleeper.

Youthful, untouched, fresh though the face was, in the revealing stillness of slumber, it suggested rather than embodied something indefinably ancient, a look as of far and dim inheritances, subtle, ironic, comprehending, and aloof; as if that delicate and strong beauty of hers derived intimately from the wellsprings of the race; as if womanhood, eternal triumphant, and elusive were visibly patterned there.

Banneker, leaning against the slender tree-trunk, dreamed over her, happily and aimlessly.

Io opened her eyes to meet his. She stirred softly and smiled at him.

"So you discovered me," she said.

"How long have you been here?"

She studied the sun a moment before replying. "Several hours."

"Did you walk over in the night?"

"No. You told me not to, you know. I waited till the dawn. Don't scold me, Ban. I was dead for want of sleep and I couldn't get it in the lodge. It's haunted, I tell you, with unpeaceful spirits. So I remembered this hammock."

"I'm not going to scold you. I'm going to feed you. The coffee's on."

"How good!" she cried, getting to her feet. "Am I a sight? I feel frowsy."

"There's a couple of buckets of water up in my room. Help yourself while I set out the breakfast."

In fifteen minutes she was down, freshened and joyous.

"I'll just take a bite and then run back to my patient," she said. "You can bring the blanket when you come. It's heavy for a three-mile tramp.... What are you looking thoughtful and sober about, Ban? Do you disapprove of my escapade?"

"That's a foolish question."

"It's meant to be. And it's meant to make you smile. Why don't you? You _are_ worried. 'Fess up. What's happened?"

"I've had a letter from the reporter in Angelica City."

"Oh! Did he send your article?"

"He did. But that isn't the point. He says he's coming up here again."

"What for?"

"You."

"Does he know I'm here? Did he mention my name?"

"No. But he's had some information that probably points to you."

"What did you answer?"

Ban told her. "I think that will hold him off," he said hopefully.

"Then he's a very queer sort of reporter," returned Io scornfully out of her wider experience. "No; he'll come. And if he's any good, he'll find me."

"You can refuse to see him."

"Yes; but it's the mere fact of my being here that will probably give him enough to go on and build up a loathsome article. How I hate newspapers!... Ban," she appealed wistfully, "can't you stop him from coming? Must I go?"

"You must be ready to go."

"Not until Miss Camilla is well again," she declared obstinately. "But that will be in a day or two. Oh, well! What does it all matter! I've not much to pack up, anyway. How are you going to get me out?"

"That depends on whether Gardner comes, and how he comes."

He pointed to a darkening line above the southwestern horizon. "If that is what it looks like, we may be in for another flood, though I've never known two bad ones in a season."

Io beckoned quaintly to the far clouds. "Hurry! Hurry!" she summoned. "You wrecked me once. Now save me from the Vandal. Good-bye, Ban. And thank you for the lodging and the breakfast."

Emergency demands held the agent at his station all that day and evening. Trainmen brought news of heavy rains beyond the mountains. In the morning he awoke to find his little world hushed in a murky light and with a tingling apprehension of suspense in the atmosphere. High, gray cloud shapes hurried across the zenith to a conference of the storm powers, gathering at the horizon. Weather-wise from long observation, Banneker guessed that the outbreak would come before evening, and that, unless the sullen threat of the sky was deceptive, Manzanita would be shut off from rail communication within twelve hours thereafter. Having two hours' release at noon, he rode over to the lodge in the forest to return Io's blanket. He found the girl pensive, and Miss Van Arsdale apparently recovered to the status of her own normal and vigorous self.

"I've been telling Io," said the older woman, "that, since the rumor is out of her being here, she will almost certainly be found by the reporter. Too many people in the village know that I have a guest."

"How?" asked Banneker.

"From my marketing. Probably from Pedro."

"Very likely from the patron of the Sick Coyote that you and I met on our walk," added the girl.

"So the wise thing is for her to go," concluded Miss Van Arsdale. "Unless she is willing to risk the publicity."

"Yes," assented Io. "The wise thing is for me to go." She spoke in a curious tone, not looking at Banneker, not looking at anything outward and visible; her vision seemed somberly introverted.

"Not now, though," said Banneker.

"Why not?" asked both women. He answered Io.

"You called for a storm. You're going to get it. A big one. I could send you out on Number Eight, but that's a way-train and there's no telling where it would lan............