Banneker ran through the roster in the pocket-ledger. “Not yet. Some one that’s hurt?”
“Don’t know what became of her. Peach of a girl. Black hair, big, sleepy, black eyes with a fire in ’em. Dressed right. Traveling alone, and minding her own business, too. Had a stateroom in that Pullman there in the ditch. Noticed her initials on her traveling-bag.”
“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.